Thinking breaks - Design

Design – a book about how design can be more than what meets the eye. An armchair and a payment app not only tell us how to use them correctly. They also contain attitudes about what is important, says the book's author Peter Gall Krogh, an architect at Aarhus University.

Regardless of whether they are bent from steel in large-scale industry or a carpenter has sanded the edges, things are always things, Krogh explains: Before the lamp takes on character, the designer has given it shape and tested and rejected or refined ideas.Every design carries messages about what is important in life. Some designs will promote sustainable development by recycling materials, others focus on maintaining old craft traditions with classic natural materials, and still others will make our lives more efficient and productive with industrial mass production.

Design is also about a certain way of approaching the world. Both the product designer and the IT developer can only create useful solutions if they understand the people who will use them and the situations in which they will be used. But the same applies to the scout leader who plans activities for children and the nurse who prepares rehabilitation courses for patients.

Peter Gall Krogh: "Normally, we see design as a profession that helps companies increase sales of certain products, create solutions to problems, or make products particularly useful. But design in the form of chairs in schools and apps on phones also shapes how we live together, who we are, and what we imagine new technologies should be able to do for us in everyday life."

The book is from Aarhus University Press's series, "Thinking Breaks - Knowledge for Everyday Life".

See all Tänkepauser books from Aarhus University Press here .