Being a designer Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

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Disclosure | Opinion column

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25267/P56-IDJ.2021.i1.10

André Ricard

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One of man's first creative acts was to infer that those stones that hurt him when he stepped on them, could become a very useful cutting element in his daily chores. This cognitive capacity that the human species intrinsically possesses has always driven it to adopt new behaviours and devise new tools that allow it to subsist.

This cognitive capacity that the human species inherently possesses has always led it to adopt new behaviours and devise new tools to enable it to survive. Initially these instruments were limited to rudimentary tools which, like prostheses, complemented and improved the quality of their life activities. Over time, however, it was realised that such tools were not to be expected to be found by chance, but could be intentionally shaped by modelling certain existing natural materials.Creativity was born, therefore, with the essential purpose of enabling the species to survive and improve its living conditions. This creative skill, by specialising, gave way to craftsmanship, which had the mission of detecting, imagining, creating and elaborating the essential tools that the community needed for the progressive improvement of what we now call well-being.

As much as times have changed and as much as creativity has diversified into multiple specialities, that creative mission, characteristic of the craftsman, is the one that corresponds to design today. This is how it should be understood. By this I mean that design must remain the creative activity that provides the community with the essential useful objects it needs to improve its well-being. And particularly those objects of little mechanical complexity in which it is the form itself that facilitates the function.  Objects that those who use them understand how and why they fulfil their function. I insist that I refer to "useful and essential objects", which defines a very specific creative territory, of objects with which we maintain an intimate interaction, passive or active. Objects such as a piece of furniture or even a simple pair of scissors... It is in my opinion in this specific creativity of useful and essential things that lies the essence of what I consider to be the role of design today.