Frank Chimero

The Shape of Design began as a talk by Frank Chimero at the Build Conference, November 2010. Encouraged by the lecture’s response, Frank began to expand some of its themes into a book, eventually leading to a Kickstarter campaign to self-publish the work. The fundraising project launched in February 2011 and met its fundraising goal on the first day. It eventually reached four times its funding goal, making The Shape of Design one of the earliest successes from the design community on the Kickstarter platform. Since then, the book has found its way into design classrooms around the world as foundational reading, and grown its audience to include chefs, woodworkers, writers, and other creative practitioners.

The Shape of Design

Fabian

Design doesn't need to be delightful for it to work, but that's like saying food doesn't need to be tasty to keep us alive. There is a tendency to think that to delight someone with design is to make them happy. Indeed, the work may do that, but more appropriately, the objective is to produce a memorable experience because of its superior fit.

The designer acts as a proxy for the audience's needs while arguing for her own creative concerns. This makes the whole arrangement precarious, because it means that the designer is being paid by the client, but is obligated to the audience, for it is the audience's presence that imbues the work with its value. It is a double-allegiance, a necessary duplicity. Design's two-faced behavior is a product of its middle position between the elements it connects. Bridging two things means a bond with both of them.

Design can speak the tongue of art with the force of commerce.

The first step of any process should be to define the objectives of the work with Why-based questions. The second step, however, should be to put those objectives in a drawer. Objectives guide the process toward an effective end, but they don't do much to help one get going.

The Shape of Design quotes

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