 One time in London, all my slides were being shown before I started talking with my first big workamp. Now I'm used to it. Hola, alishboa! So how cool is it? Let me just do something here, because otherwise... Okay, perfect. So how cool is it to finally be back all in the same room just hugging and seeing each other? How's workamp? How has it been? Just sound a little more excited, please. I know it's after lunch, but... So anyway... Okay, I'm loving this. This is not working. You have this, like... There it is! Okay, if not, I'll just use... It's okay. So anyway, before I get into this, I want to express my gratitude to the Portuguese community, whom I really adore, to the organizers for having me, to you for being here, and to Yoast for their support. Okay, see, I shouldn't have touched anything. Anyway, we can do this. So with the goal of increasing diversity, the Yoast Diversity Fund supports last-represented speakers at tech events. They have helped me be here today, but they also have helped me be at many other work camps and events in the past. So for those who don't know me, my name is Rafaela Isidori, and that's almost where the Portuguese ends. Among other things, I'm a multidisciplinary designer, and I've been working for over 35 years. Yes, I'm that old. But today, I'm not here to tell you about me. Today I'm here as the founder and the president of Design Culture Collective, which is a nonprofit association dedicated to promoting the culture and the value of the practice of design. It's a mouthful, I know. Indeed, that's what I'm going to talk to you about, but before we start, I want to get some stats. And since we're being watched by people at home, instead of raising hands, I want you to clap them so they can hear it. So whenever you feel that you belong to what I'm talking about, just please clap your hands loudly so they can hear it, okay? So how many of you here describe yourselves as designers? Not a lot, good, okay. So how many young designers? Gen Z's. Okay, one. How many millennials? Okay. How many of my generation? And is any designer here born before 1964? Okay. Actually, in Turin, there were two. So, no, that even though they may not be here and may also not be around because they have an age at this point, there have been huge ones. And they have shaped practices and visions. So, obrigada. It's important, especially for young designers, to be aware that the practice of design has existed even before digital. And that it transcends disciplines and transcends generations. The practice of design is in constant evolution because the context in which the practice is applied are constantly expanding and evolving. But what is design exactly? We know it's one of those terms that many use lightly, often without a clear understanding of its meaning. And I have even observed in many colleagues a sea load approached where each designer thinks that design is what they do. And the rest... There's a rest. So, for Saul Bass, who was a graphic designer, design is thinking that becomes visual. And we know that good design is invisible. And Irene Au, who is an experienced designer, explains it well, describing it as a refrigerator. If it works, no one notices. When it doesn't, you can tell. For John Maeda, who is a designer in the more modern sense of the term and whose work lives at the intersection of design and technology, design is a solution to a problem. For Charles and Ray Ames, who were primarily industrial designers, design is a plan to arrange elements so they best serve a specific purpose. Massimo Enlella Vignelli introduced the key concept that design, by creating standards, creates languages. But to me, it's Hans Hofmann, an artist and teacher of the last century who perfectly captures the true role of design, defining it as the intermediary between information and understanding. And I also like the vision of Rebecca Rubens, for whom design is inventing with intention. Where if you remove the inventive part, you get an engineer. And if you remove the intention, you get an artist. Interestingly, the definition of design in the English Wikipedia differs from the Italian one, which is the one I'm bringing here. Design is the practice of ideating physical, digital, or conceptual objects through the drafting of a plan, hence through a process. And this is the key information. Design is the process of drafting such plans, not the final outcome. It's the journey. It's the path that goes from the emptiness of the before to the post-production outcome, going through all the necessary intermediate stages. A path that actually looks more like this, but that's for another talk. However, Wikipedia continues with that combines functionality and aesthetics. And there it is. The aesthetics. The irky and frankly annoying general and obviously wrong perception of what design is. Maybe it's because it's the easiest aspect to notice, and so that's what remains attached. Or maybe it's what we're taught. Maybe even to tone it down a bit. We'll touch upon this later. For now, let's go back to the initial point. To design means to plan. A designer is the person who plans the form, shape or structure of something before it's made. In other words, anyone who creates tangible or intelligible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, visual services, experiences can be referred to as a designer. We refer to the tangible deliverables of design as to projects. A word that comes from the neuter past participle of the Latin proicere, which means throw forward. And in fact, the designer, when designing, moves a concept in time, through time. They project their idea into the future. With this in mind, let's go back to the core concept of design. And once again, clap your hands. I imagine that most of you designers in the room work in digital design. Okay. Graphic design. Communication design. Content design. Service design. How about brand design? How many experienced designers? Product? I don't expect many fashion designers here, but nor industrial designers with textile. Type designers. Lighting design. Sound design. Both designers. Interior designers. Garden designers. Accessories designers. I bet a few are learning to become prompt designers. Just one. Okay. You should. Okay. I'm not even talking about architects or chefs. Anyone here practicing a design I did not mention, because the list is far from complete. And while we may or may not call them designers, all those writing business or financial proposals, creating learning experiences, structuring digital architectures, writing plugins, compiling research projects, planning events, all of that is design. So, as you can see, aesthetics have little to do with these activities or better. Aesthetics, the form, is a default outcome of the process. Not the intention, nor the goal. And yet, too many, design is still considered a decoration or at best as a visual related activity. So, we are still stuck in a space time in which the general perception that is that design is something with an aesthetic form. And this perception is held not only by final users or outsiders to the field who, not understanding design, can end up being manipulated through design, but also by thousands of businesses for which design, in spite of the whole design thinking trend, remains a superfluous decorative endeavor. Even though there are companies that for decades now have had design as the core of their business and of their success. Most people make the mistake of thinking that design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer that designers are handed this box and told, make it look good. That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works. So, show hands if you know whose quote is this. Okay, no one? This is Steve Jobs in an interview given to New York magazine in November 2003. That's 20 years ago. So, Apple has been a design-centered enterprise since the beginning as in Jobs' vision. Again, in 2022, Apple has reminded as remained, I'm sorry, the top ranking as the world's most valuable brand. And to date, continues to be the brand with the highest value ever recorded. And yet, not even the clear and continued in time success of Apple and other design-driven companies like Google or Airbnb or Calm have managed to transfer Jobs' vision of what design is. Not to the public at large, nor to the decision makers. Then I guess it's up to us. It is our mission to transform an idea often tossed around improperly, sometimes using a diminishing insulting way to identify things that cost more than they are worth in the idea of a practice that adds multi-layered value and purpose of a process through which a product, service or experience is planned and thought out and shaped and iterated to make it the best possible within its limits and in spite of those limits of an approach in which the designer throws forward with vision, creativity and imagination, their idea of a solution, of something new, of a new mediation with the world around us. But let's get back to the mission of Design Culture Collective and to the core of this talk. Hopefully, you're getting a clearer picture of what we mean with the practice of design and with its value. Let's dig down a bit. Vision. It's an essential feature for the designer as they need to see things that are not there yet. They need to throw forth their creative mind to imagine something that doesn't yet exist and imagine it so well to then create a blueprint for it to transfer its specs to other so they can build it. But today's designer has to also be keenly aware of the implication of their vision. They need to be aware and mindful of their intention. Because, and again, let's stop and reflect on how the vision of a single Steve Jobs along with his determined intention has, in about 40 years, totally transformed our lives. Let's think about the power of that vision and the strength of that intention. They have structurally enabled the change of our relationship with each other and with the world. Design has great power. Design mediates and intermediates our interaction with what surrounds us. It shapes the environments we live in. The tools we use are clothes, homes, devices, accessories. But not only that, design mediates and intermediates and so shapes, communications, the way information is provided to us and the way we consume it. It shapes teaching, marketing, entertainment. Most of our experience not to say all of them are mediated and intermediated by design. For clarity, the semantic difference between the term is in the fact that mediation is considered natural and free, while the concept of intermediation implicates some kind of business transaction. So design mediates and intermediates us through tools or systems that have been designed for us. Sometimes. Sometimes we know they can be used against us. Design has a great power and we know that from great power come great responsibilities. Today's designer better be very aware that the product of their vision, their intention, have an impact on others and on the world. They need to fully understand the real implications of their work. Of its impact from conception to production and above all in its final use. They need full awareness of the ultimate scope of the products they give life to. Beware of the designer who doesn't enforce and cultivate the necessary transparency that will allow their user to always fully understand the implication that comes from using that product. They can't fail to respect the right of those using the outcome of their work to always be able to understand and so to choose. The designer must be always fully mindful that their design choices have to be guided by solid values. Because it's no longer possible to think about designing any experience, physical or digital without including critical and conscious attention to all aspects that will have an impact on the user and on the environment. Design is political because it creates and reshapes standards. Design is political because it contributes to the creation of policies. Because it has a direct and an indirect impact on everything and everyone. And the designer simply cannot avoid considering the ethical, social, economic and systemic implication of their work. Which doesn't obviously mean to typistically think that we can work only on what we like but it means to continuously and consistently work to educate ourselves and to expand our awareness. A full, mindful awareness of the power of the design action and of its impact. It's on these principles that Design Culture Collective was founded and its mission is to promote a design practice based on a strong culture. So to foster design that it's rooted on principles and best practices of positive, enhancing, protective, inclusive, respectful. And it's essential to speak about a culture of the design practice and not a generic design culture. As some businesses do when they brag about having an entire team dedicated to design who are often at best asked to apply the standardized formulas and stiff processes and are at worse but not rarely given a box and asked to make it pretty. Design is making choices. There is no design without critical thinking. And there is no critical thinking without culture. So you see there are two key terms here culture and practice. Culture from the Latin colore to cultivate generally refers to models of human activity and to the symbolic structures that give meaning and importance to those activities. Anthropologist James Sproutley offers this beautiful and synthetic description of the term. Culture is the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behavior. So let's unpack that. The acquired knowledge to learn and keep learning hence that is in continuous evolution. That people use to interpret and experience so to understand it digest it make meaning of it. Therefore this competence acquired metabolized transformed into meaning becomes the engine that powers our actions. So it informs our choices our prerogatives our priorities our intentions our values. So what is a practice? According to the Oxford dictionary the carrying out or exercise of a profession especially that of a doctor or a lawyer or a designer seems pretty logical but also the customary habitual or expected procedure way of doing something. So here we touch upon the way something is carried out how is applied and conducted in the practice of design. These habits or customs are all the theories rules, norms, good practices attitudes, values etc that are shaped by our culture. The acquired knowledge that is first metabolized and then transformed into meaning and then in the mindful intention that powers our actions informs our choices shapes our prerogatives and defines our priorities as designers. Culture roots our values it informs and supports our critical choices and therefore shapes our practice and outputs. And yet culture is generally undervalued when discussing design overshadowed by technical abilities or horror by the blind application of predefined formulas which are often oblivious often intentionally of the greater good. For all these reasons DCC aims at promoting and enhancing a cultural approach to the practice of design by creating and promoting knowledge and awareness by disseminating amongst those who design but also amongst those who decide about the value of the design practice and about the power of design. We believe it necessary to cultivate and promote a culture that can inform and guide designers that stimulates critical thinking in those who practice design or study to become a designer or teach design in all those that feel design is at the core of their professional and personal life but we also hope that a strong culture and the recognition of this value will inform and guide those who commission buy, approve, use and receive design. Design has great power and with great power comes great responsibility. It is to be able to face and manage these big or small responsibilities that the designer should be able to refer back to a solid cultural foundation. To guide their vision and focus their intention to give their projects the best possible foundation and to have the most positive impact. And so you see all circles back. Thank you. Thank you, Rafaela. I stayed in my time so, you know Yeah Thank you. Thank you very much, Rafaela.