Design as Conversation

How is Design a conversation? It is an interaction between the work and its audience. It is like all conversation and provokes a response. A work of design provokes its audience to act. It initiates an idea and leads us down a path it has designated. To do this, it uses its forms, colors, and composition to compel us. It draws from our knowledge and emotions to nudge us into the right directions. Like a sinuous line drawing our gaze a focal point in a figure, design pulls a single thought from the haze in our minds.

In return, the audience acts.  We buy, we sell, we consume, we move, we use, we work, we dance, and we react to what the design has drawn from us. We are not without control but have only appeased the desire that design instilled in us. Even more, we imbue significance to the design. Our memory links our actions to our thoughts and the work becomes forever a part of our past. As we look at design once more in another time, it provokes a whole new set of thoughts that brings us to a completely different set of actions. The conversation between design and its audience continues.

True design does this. Whether it is for aesthetic appeal or functionality, a work of design can strike up a conversation. A dress can conjure desire between man and woman. The design brings a man close; it brings out beauty, and it makes him act. And as he act, the dress becomes part of the memory. Each element stands out even clearer as it links his action to the object that made him do it.

The conversation of design can be small or infinite. We can choose to act or not and end the conversation there or we can move forward and let our induced desire surface. And at each instances in time there will be a new thought that design can pull from, and from that, the possible outcomes can be infinite.