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It’s Design, Darling · Design Darlings

• speaker-0: Okay, hello, darling. ⁓ speaker-1: Darlene, welcome to our first Design Darlene's episode. Very excited to be here. speaker-0: Heck yes, we are your darling dorks with master's degrees in design who are very obsessed with what makes, or bakes a good design in the world and we love to talk about it all the time, anytime we dish. speaker-1: Anytime, all the time, we love design. I think too, I wanna kind of talk through why we're doing this, right? Because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's more podcasts. So why are we making this podcast? Why is it different than the infinite number of options you have to choose from already? And I think as lovers of design and as many a listener to many a podcast, there's lots of incredible podcasts about speaker-0: Absolutely. speaker-1: design, about professional practice, about very heady topics that we think about in our daily lives. But I also love listening to things that are very light, culture, ⁓ joy, all these sort of things that are happening in our real world today. And I think having something that sort of combines all those together, something where we can really nerd out about the design of pens and hot takes on Pantone color of the year. But then how can we bring in what's happening today in society and our world and politics and kind of bring that into it and really have a way that's a place that's intersectional around design. So this isn't going to be siloed to just branding or just service design or interiors or fashion. We're going to talk about design with a capital D and just the full spectrum of where these things come into play. speaker-0: Definitely. Well, I think, you know, the accessible part of that is key. like design is literally all around us. Like if Mother Nature didn't make it, then babe, guess what? It was designed like a human made it. So being able to do a download and see like you're talking about, like design is ubiquitous because we are interacting with design literally all the time, all day, every day. So like that pen you have, you know, someone decided that it needed to be in the world. And then there was a whole production and supply chain line and distribution. There's all these things that deliver that pen to your hand. This very double-wears Prada. When she's like, oh, you think you're outside of this? You think your blue top keeps you from being anything other than part of this fashion world? And you're like, wait, what? that is, mean, yes. So your pen that you picked up is not just a pen. It is part of the huge process. speaker-1: that pen that you scrounged out of the clearance bin that the piggly wiggly is worth billions of dollars and thousands of people's time, you know? speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. So it's not just a pen. speaker-1: Not just a pen. Cool. And I think too, we want to be silly and irreverent and light. There's a lot of, you know, ill in the world. And so we want to be a space where people can come designers of all kinds of backgrounds and can come together and laugh and giggle and be a little non-serious. ⁓ we're going to say all the things that you are not allowed to say on client calls and that, know, when you're, you're chief marketing officers in the room, the things that you, you know, wish you could say that you can't say, ⁓ That's what we're here for. speaker-0: Yes. And just generally, if you're a nerd and you're like, you know what, I love pens or I love talking about snow shovels or Bic lighters, then girl, come on, y'all come sit down and feel free to nerd out with us and everything around the topics. And we'll have guests. will absolutely have guests who are other designers, folks making things in the world, be that systems, objects, know, fashion, you name it, because anything made is design. Actually, that makes sense. think about how do we, how should we define design? I feel like that's a simple question, but it's huge. And so I like a definition from Victor Papinek from Design for the Real World, which is, design is a conscious effort to impose meaningful order and design must be meaningful. And meaningful replaces the semantically loaded noise of expressions like beautiful, ugly, cool, cute, disgusting. Realistic, obscure, abstract, like those are very convenient labels. ⁓ But the way that we act and engage with something is a way like a design fulfills its purpose in its function, which is, know, a lot of people have say form and form follows function is design. And I mean, there's truth to that. There's a lot of truth in things not having a function either. You're like, how did this get here? We will talk about those as well. speaker-1: Yeah, I think about the designers of the world who like started with an idea that had this beautiful intentionality and function to it. And they're like, this is solving a real purpose. And then what happens a lot in the real world is you get a lot of other people's opinions who are just like, what have we added this? And what if we added this? And what if we did it this way? And then you get something that gets actually hits the shelves and is on the market. And people are like, huh? How did this get there? So yeah. speaker-0: That's called Design by Committee, kids, and we will definitely talk about how terrible that is. ⁓ my gosh. speaker-1: I design by committee. No, I don't. That's a lie. We hate it. ⁓ Okay, fantastic. But yeah, no, I love that idea of it being intentional. And how do we kind of keep that at the center of things? ⁓ I think also too, you know, what is design is also understanding sort of the broad discipline of what design, our sort of pop culture understanding of design versus speaker-0: No you don't. speaker-1: the sort of niche disciplines. think, you know, we've all been at that like that dinner party or that like, you know, Thanksgiving dinner where your aunt is like, so what do do for work? What do you do? What do you do? And you're like, oh, I work in design. You're like, oh, so you do graphic design? Are you a fashion designer? And you're like, no, no, Aunt Sharon, like, I don't, I don't just do graphic design. I do do some graphic design, but like design is more than that. I have a background in industrial design and it's always funny when you say you're industrial designer, people think that you design factories and so you're like, no, no, not really, but good guess, context clues, you're putting that together. yeah. Let speaker-0: I was going to ask you what is your, how would you define design? I think you have a design Corinthians that- ⁓ speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Yes. So yes, my counter, my sort of add-on to the lovely Victor definition that Robin shared is my sort of design ethos is by the fantastic Dieter Rams. He is on my Mount Rushmore of designers. Dieter would have a prominent place there, but he has his 10 principles of good design. So those are, if you are not familiar, you should look them up. immediately is good design is innovative, good design makes a product useful, good design is aesthetic, good design makes a product understandable, good design is unobtrusive, good design is honest, good design is long lasting, good design is thorough down to the last detail, good design is environmentally friendly, and good design is as little design as possible. So recommend looking those up, tattooing them on your face, putting them everywhere you can as a designer. And also too, just if you don't know Dieter Rams, because it still shocks me when I talk to designers and I like name drop somebody and like I named dropped Dieter Rams the other day to somebody and they were like, huh? And I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean you do not know Dieter Rams? And if you haven't, I recommend watching the Dieter Rams documentary because he is this old, curmudgeonly, German man who has put in the work and has all of the sort of credentials to be a grumpy angry old man. And there's this fantastic scene where he's in the MoMA archives and he's going through their chair collection and essentially just pointing out how horrendous all of his peers work is. So he'd be like this chair I do not like it. It is ugly. This chair I do not get. This chair it is too fussy. It is too much and then he'll see like there's a part where he sees Frank Gehry's chairs and he's like, these chairs, I do not like him and I do not like his designs. You know, they do not make sense. I'll see one and he'll be like, this chair, I understand it. I do not like it, but I like them. And then there's another chair that has like, it's meant to be out an outdoor chair and there's a bunch of holes in it. And he's like, this chair, it is so impractical. If there was sun. would get burnt you would have ze silliest you know ze silliest print on your body from these holes so he's fantastic so please look up Deeter bombs know your elders know these 10 principles of good design speaker-0: a lot of design sass. feel like people have sass about design just all the time, generally, no matter what. And so being able to qualify what makes good design is great. And I think that when we talk about things on this show, we will be able to even maybe do it like a D to ROM score. The ROM score. The ROM score. And we can see how does it do on the checklist of the 10 design principles. Is it 10? It's 10, 1, 3. speaker-1: attack. speaker-0: Yeah, And how do we decide that? How do we determine that? ⁓ So we'll do that. That would be fun. speaker-1: I also, for kicks and giggles, when looking up definitions for the show, tried to understand because AI is everywhere. We all serve at the altar of our AI overlords. And I want to know what Google said. So according to Google Gemini, when you type in define design, it says, quote, the four foundational principles of design are often remembered by the acronym CRAP. Yes, crap. Contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity, which help create organized, visually appealing, and effective layouts by managing visual weight and relationships between elements. So if we take a step back from the acronym, OK, if we're talking purely graphic design, there's some truth here. But I think it's funny that Google's first hit on what is design is like, design is crap. But also, in my 10 to 15 plus years in the design industry, I've never heard this acronym before. Maybe graphic designers learn this, but I just thought that this was funny. And also it's another proof point for me why we cannot let AI replace human intelligence. speaker-0: No, I will second you on that. ⁓ I have my MFA from SCAD, master's in design management. And so I had a breadth and depth of design discipline ⁓ education and I never came across that acronym. ⁓ And so I think that's such a funny, really kind of strange return that AI gave to to you, to us, to the people. ⁓ And because it's just, I don't know, I think everyone in a way, like the internet is a drive by sampling of stuff and how do you know what to discern through, like what is actually relevant and of value ⁓ and what is something that's just, you the algorithm kind of kicking you back a lot of, a lot of stuff. Like when Google, I remember this, this will be one of our stories we tell people when we're very old, but Because everyone, oh my gosh, went in on it and everyone's like, oh, Google was giving returns of like to accelerate the cooking of your spaghetti, you should put gasoline in it. And like if you want your cheese to be cheesier, add glue. all just the like the dregs of the Internet. It was just finding things from every corner and then returning it, which even a search, you know, even if you had just searched without AI, how can I cook pasta faster? You would have never returned that result. Like that was from the most obscure corner of the Internet. And A.I.'s like Hey boss, I did good, like look at this thing. So as it's evolving as a tool, we also have to learn how to be literate in using a lot of those things. So I will say in reading and writing a thesis on design and the history of design and design thinking, I never ever, ever came across it. ⁓ But I think it's one of the things I did come across ⁓ in graduate school that shaped my approach and understanding and practice. was looking at design through what Richard Buchanan called the four orders. And you can, we'll put the PDF up. It's a wicked problems in design thinking. And the idea of wicked problems was thought to have been ⁓ sort of a Genesis point here or a place where people started to talk about it more and enter the lexicon. ⁓ But the idea of the four orders of design being a little bit of what you referred to, Ali, saying, So the first order of design that we think of is 2D flat design. It's posters, it's visual language, it's actual language. So your semantics and your semiotics and it's your visual branding. It's your graphic design, it's your film and flat media. And then the second order would include objects like industrial design. It would include furniture design. It would be even things like lipstick and cosmetics. It even includes fashion because that is an object. You were designing an object. So we're going from 2D to 3D. The third layer of that, the third order would be interaction design. So I am interacting with this poster. I'm interacting with this object. I'm interacting with a form on a website. I'm having an interaction or I'm interacting with a computer interface. So now we're having this interaction of, ⁓ of subject and user, right? That's your user sort of, it's an added layer of user design. And then the fourth, ⁓ order is the containing system. So that's your architecture. Those are things that like, architecture, interior design, it houses all of those other orders. It's like a Russian nesting doll. And that's such a cool way to think about not only how we are traditionally educated in design, because people will choose one of those, you know, usually one of those places to focus in design management. go across all of them to understand how they fit together and form a system. But it's also the way that really strong brands function. So like. If you go into everyone loves to point to Apple because Apple did a great job of creating a design culture through their visual language, their objects, the way that you interacted with them going into the store and also the store itself. Fashion design, fashion brands do it really well too. When you walk into a fashion, a strong fashion house, you know what that brand is. You know that experience because it contains all of those things. ⁓ and actually speaking of like 2d design. Fashion brands are the most, and their logos are the most knocked off designs in the world. That 2D, that flat symbol, putting you in that club, that's one of the most knocked off types of designs in the world. thinking about culture and the way culture is created, when design, when a brand does its own culture very well, it creates through all of those four orders. And it's just like, chef's kiss. speaker-1: thinking back to like high school and junior high, where like the ultimate status symbol was if anyone that you knew was lucky enough to like go to Europe for the summer on a vacation, the popular girls would always come back with that knockoff Louis Vuitton, you know, 2000s purse, where it was instead of Louis Vuitton and be lovey-laton or something and you've got the little, you know, knockoff colorful lockup. Yeah. ⁓ incredible, incredible. Also too, you're talking about Apple. Honestly, when I think about these four orders, my mind immediately goes to one of my, you know, one of my favorite places on earth, which is not Disney World, but is in fact, IKEA. IKEA, think, beautifully just encompasses, you know, some people go to IKEA and I think like immediately all of their anxieties are triggered. And they're like, I need to be in the store. and out of the store as quickly as humanly possible. I'm like, I can spend a whole afternoon in IKEA. I love it. I love it. From the minute you come in, you see the colors, the blue and the yellow, and then you go upstairs and you eat your little Swedish meatballs, and then you get your little cart and you go through the showroom. It's just, it's the perfect blend of the graphics and the objects and the design of the flow of the store and the larger little ecosystem that you're a part of. I love it. It's the happiest place on earth for me. speaker-0: You're also not overwhelmed by choice. feel like, I mean, and there's so much talk about this IKEA being designed like a maze and you know, there's like, I heard this podcast once talk about like how it's sinister the way IKEA traps you in there and I don't really believe that. We'll get into design. Yeah. Evil design. Yes, there is evil design, but I don't think that IKEA necessarily took that angle. But yes, from a, you know, from that Four Orders, like it is all contained in there. And when you think about human culture, the Four Orders aligns to that perfectly because let's say you go to Paris. It has the richest, speaking of, all right, you're your own girl. She went to Paris. It has very rich visual symbolism, like the 2D, the visual design alone that has been there is like storied in beauty and it's recognizable. Those metro signs, especially from like, know, French Holy moly. Then you get into the objects like the the different sorts like, mean, Art Nouveau had such an influence on like the architecture and the, ⁓ excuse me, the cast iron, even down to like a croissant, like a croissant is also an object. Like that is a cultural object and the little plates that, you get escargot served in, the metal with the little dips into the, yes, like that is a designed object. And then you think about the interactions and the customs of French folks and like, that culture there in Paris, which is also uniquely Parisian. And then the container of that is the geographic border, right? Like it's the literal container in which Paris is sitting in the objects, the designs, the practices and the customs, which I call the third order. Like that's the interaction part of it. Like that is the brand of Paris. Like that is culture, but humans designed that long before they were thinking about design as a ⁓ Discipline or like a very meta practice, but that's what really good brands do they design that to the to a tee where you're like ⁓ I know what that where that's from. ⁓ that's from Louis Like that's French design that I you know, there when you know logo and you have that thing where you're associating is This entire other thing that pen is not just a pen that you know That shirt is not just a cerulean shirt. Yeah, those things that you have. They're not just those things ⁓ And so like the design of really strong brands, they do that so well. They just created a world for you. They created that world and you get to live in it and exist in it and you can buy things from it. Good news. You can buy things from our lovely worlds that we have designed and take it home with you. speaker-1: Right. And then I think in thinking about Paris, right, it's such a clear, there's so many micro and macro interactions that come together to make that system recognizable as Paris. So well oiled and so. speaker-0: Totally. speaker-1: distinctive that I think what's also interesting is when you take an element of that and put it take it out of its system and then put it into a new system the distinction is glaring it's obvious right so if you let's say you again let worse this college freshman um I will raise my hand um you know put a target on my back every you know white girl who was a freshman in college had a picture of Paris and the Eiffel Tower in their college room dorm, right? Because we wanted to seem cultured and worldly, but you take a very distinctive visual artifact from one system, you put it in a janky, dark, cold college dorm, it immediately feels out of place, right? Or if you try to wear some ⁓ gorgeous Parisian stylish outfit, but you're in a rural America, you're gonna seem out of place. I also think it's interesting to see like, when you try to bring artifacts from one system into another, there's like a visual tension, there's an immediate recognition that like this doesn't belong, but then how do you start to make it belong, you know? speaker-0: It's like, how do you integrate instead of appropriate? then where do you walk that line of like, this is exotic and different, but like it's part of who I am because it's part of how you have identified or experienced culture. Right. And so you're bringing it back and now it's a part of you. Also, like I was at a World's Fair picture of your Eiffel Tower. Was it like a very realistic one? Like because there's a romanticism there of like, were you using? OK, here we go. Let's get. Were you using a symbolism to associate yourself with Paris or are you using it as something that you're like, I'm going to go there one day and I love culture. Like I want to go experience Parisian culture. Like what was your aspiration in that? speaker-1: ⁓ I mean, totally it was, for me, it's a symbolic marker to say like, I have culture. Like I know where Paris is, you know? I wanna show people that I understand the world and I, you know, I'm cultured. But then also too, you're like, ⁓ well, if I like Paris, then I know fashion and I'm stylish and I'm like cool, right? So obviously it's a marker of, you know, trying to sort of show, there's a peer pressure to show the people around you that you're cool, your culture, you have... You know, you're global, you're international, right? But then, you know, if somebody actually asked you anything about Paris, you'd be like, I don't know, like, yeah. So. There's a of posturing, there's a bit of posturing, but but it's also genuine. Like I did genuinely want to be cultured and go to Paris one day, which eventually I was able to do. So like, yeah, yeah, I think it's twofold, right? speaker-0: So that poster was. So like that Eiffel Tower was your LV logo. Like that was your bag. speaker-1: Instead of having a simple, speaker-0: And you could have gone and gotten an LV bag and been like, ooh, Parisian. And you could have taken that. think what were they getting? Is it the Speedy? I think it was the Speedy back in the 2000s that everyone was getting. was I think it was the baguette. think it was the Speedy. But that was, know, like, where did you get that? Because also LV stores, don't feel like had really proliferated a ton in the States. So it was also like, ⁓ I went over there. I got to go. I got my my bag. speaker-1: And that was a very common, right? There was a famous Mari Como collection that really was like the first sort of giant viral, you know, designed collection for Louis Vuitton. speaker-0: We'll talk about collaborations in another episode, absolutely. Putting it in the pin board, going on design collaborations, Supreme, give them snaps for their, ⁓ my gosh, their collaborations. ⁓ my, that's gonna be such a fun deep dive episode around collaborations. Okay. I'm putting a pin in it. I will not shut up if I get into it now. Talked a lot about things. We talked about ⁓ what is design. which will be an ongoing conversation. We some lines in the sand with our boy Dieter Roms and Richard Buchanan. ⁓ Yeah, I feel like let's tell folks what is next. What's going to happen after this? speaker-1: is next? Well, you know, every episode we're going to get a little nerdy. We're going to get a little more niche. Each episode we're going to try to have sort of a theme that is centered around. And we're also going to try to talk about, you know, what's happening in pop culture and the news when design does sort of, you know, break the break into the common fold. And yeah, so just stay tuned for historic drive-bys, cultural commentary and just how design is generally embedded into our everyday lives. So we have some exciting topics coming up, everything from the design of wine to our thoughts on the Pantone color of the year and, you know, everything in between. speaker-0: Awesome. All right then, we'll talk to you soon. Ta-ta, darling. speaker-1: Ha-ta, darling. Okay, bye. Bye.