Reading Reflection of Design a Short History

After reading the first six chapters from John Heskett’s “Design, A Very Short Introduction,” I have already learned a lot about design. The class lectures fallowed the book very well and after reading the book I had an even better understanding of the material we had already learned. The first chapter was very interesting to me because it has never occurred to me that everything besides nature was designed. Therefore if everything we have created is design and if our culture is everything around us, then design is culture. Something else I found interesting from the chapter was that design is not influenced by outside factors, rather it is influenced by human nature to improve our lives.

The next chapter of the book focuses on the history of design. This showed me another thing I did not realize before reading this book, I never realized that since the beginning of man design has been there. This chapter touched on the major points of the history like the Industrial revolution up to contemporary or modern techniques.

Another thing I found important from the reading is the discussion of utility and significant. The utility part of design is if it’s practical, purposeful, and efficient. The significant of the design is the role or meaning it will have. The culture determines the utility and significant so therefore there is not one design that works everywhere.

Something else that interested me while reading these chapters was chapter five, about the importance of design in communication. I have been interested in this for a while and this gave me a better understanding and even more interest for this type of design.

Another thing I found interesting was the importance of environments and that they could be so different in different cultures. An example of this is American homes compared to Japanese homes. The Japanese homes are much smaller and therefore designed to use the space more efficiently compared to the American home with large appliances and sometimes having multiple bathrooms and laundry rooms. This has made me notice many wastes of space and makes me wonder if we should make better use of it like Japan.