What is Design?

A textbook could simply define “design” as a planned arrangement of visual elements to construct an organized visual pattern, but in reality, there is much more to design than this. Design is everywhere: in the obvious forms – in art displayed in galleries or in intricate patterns of clothing, as well as in the not-so-obvious forms – in the planned construction of a dining chair or even in the graffiti found scrawled across public walls. With design being present in everything one encounters on a day-to-day basis, exactly how functional or beneficial does design prove to be to people in society? Just because design exists, this does not necessarily mean that it is useful for functional or practical purposes. However, for the most part, design is often highly useful – fulfilling a particular purpose that it had been originally designed for. The street layouts of cities are designed in a manner where drivers will not be facing head-on collisions every five minutes; winter coats are designed to not only look fashionable, but also to act as insulators to keep its wearers warm; billboards and advertisements are designed in ways to successfully convince audiences to purchase a certain product. As the ideals of the art nouveau (“new art”) state: design does not have to be restricted solely to artwork displayed in museums – it can be a part of anything and everything. Just as the saying claims, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” the concept of design also lies in the eye of the beholder. Whether a particular design is applauded as an aesthetically pleasing masterpiece or is rejected as a distasteful cluttered mess is determined solely by the individual. In any case, however, design has served, and continues to serve, a significant purpose in society: to give meaning to something and to serve as a form of communication – thus, connecting the artwork behind the design to the people of society.