Definition of Design

What is Design?

The process of making. Both human and non-human. Both material and immaterial. At many scales.

Over the last century the term “design” has referred to the making of things, and the term “designers” has referred to those who make these things. (Usually these are useful things as opposed “non-useful” things which have been historically categorized as “art”.) Critical here is that design as a term and as a field is much broader than the making of concrete objects.

Design is a process to shape movements, transform systems, develop concepts and make things. This needs to be taken further, design as a process is not just reducible to human practices. Design is the process of making -- whether human or not. This is important for many reasons, not the least of which is that human making is always embedded in larger and smaller non-human processes. It behooves the human designer to understand that they are part of multiple other non-human processes.