Blog 9 The Greatest PDT Debate
- Mikey Burke
- May 4, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: May 5, 2020
The day had arrived, we were ready for battle, we had been preparing for weeks for the battle behind our computer screens. Samuel and I were fighting against the motion of ‘Every person is not a designer: Design should be the reserve of the professional’. This was a really enjoyable topic to research as I got research people who are not designers which I usually don’t ever have to do for a design course. The fact that I 100% agreed with our side of the argument (I might be biased) made it so much easier to research, prepare and be passionate about our case which reflected on our unanimous landslide victory. As always it was an absolute pleasure working with Mr Meany, so I’m going to waste no more time and let him take it away. I hope you enjoy reading through our script of the great PDT Debate.
Sam
Design is everywhere, inevitably everyone is a designer whether you like it or not.
We arrange the layout of our rooms, we capture pics for our insta, we choose the outfits we wear. We build, we create, we arrange and restructure every day… These are all elements of design.
As Nobel prize winner Herbert Simon said “Everyone designs, who devises a course of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” Basically whoever changes situations into preferred ones is actually designing.
Design is not just a profession; Design is a hobby. If we only let the professionals design, there’d be a lot of unhappy people out there. My father, for instance, He’s a geography teacher, but he’s also a designer. He’s designed sheds and chicken coops. He’s built walls, fences and dog kennels. He takes photos, he edits them. He is a designer, but it is not his profession.
It is genuinely unfair to leave design to the reserve of the professional as you are stripping the ordinary person of their hobby, their pastime, their form of enjoyment.
It’s like telling people they can’t play soccer because ‘It’s the reserve of the professional’.
Leading on from this,
If we only allowed the professionals to design... The world would’ve missed out on some of the greatest design ideas in our history.
Bernard Silverman ( electrical engineer) and the barcode technology
Mary Anderson ( real estate developer ) and the windscreen wiper.
Sherman Poppen ( engineer ) and the snowboard.
Mikey
If these people left these innovations and explorations to the professional designers. The world, as we know it, would be vastly different. If only designers are allowed to design our world doesn’t that limit our scope for developments to our societies?
If we only let professionals design, we’re generating less ideas!! Instantly, we are limiting potential solutions and preventing creativity and inspiration. That is why design should be universal and for all, like the famous Austrian designer Victor Papanek said
“The truism that design is a process all human beings are engaged in”.
Some of you may know of Etsy, it is an online platform where 25 million members present their homemade design projects. These members are hobby designers, people who express their creative opinion online. To disallow them from designing and showcasing their work here would be unjustified and unprecedented.
Humans are born to be creative and inventive, half our brains are wired to these innovative traits. To constrain people from demonstrating these attributes because they don’t have the “professional” title is unfair in today’s modern world.
Design is everywhere
Everyone is a designer, whether you like it or not.
Thank you for your time.
That’s the script for our argument. Big shout out to Donagh and Edward for their hard-fought performance, but it just wasn’t meant to be lads. Of course, it would have been better in class, but it still ran off smoother than I thought it would. Everyone was well educated on their points, and all the debates were great to listen too with fun and sometimes tense after discussion. Thanks for tuning in!!
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