 There are so many misconceptions about design. Here, you find 10 things that are commonly confused with design. Sorry, but you will not like some. My name is Kosell Ragnetti. I'm a designer, an architect and a PhD candidate with over 30 years of experience. And this channel is all about design, sustainability and other treats. It's been common that when I tell someone that I'm a designer, they will start assuming certain prejudices about my profession. Students and colleagues, especially the first ones, also have some distorted ideas of what design is or does. And here I'm going to expose you 10 things design is not about. Listen carefully, you could figure out something about what is design. So let's start at once. Problems. Designers are usually asked to give answers and solve problems. If you look at some design definitions, missions and visions of some great institutions and many books as well, you will probably find something like design solves problems. So we as designers would be something like problem solvers. If this was the case, why there appears to be more and more problems and each one is more complex than the preceding one. This solving problem idea can't be more distance from reality. Usually designers create more problems more than what they actually solve. Any design project unsubjected to a sustainability analysis or see if the benefits of the solution is not violating someone's labor, human or legal rights. No need to explain any further. Design is about the future and problems are rooted to the past. They are the consequence in our present of bad decisions made in the past. Yes, we look into the past to learn from our failures and our success. Design projects into the future. That is why we talk about design projects. When we design, we create based in research and observations. We create opportunities that could become reality in our present. If they don't come true, they will become just a non-developed project, just like the Russian constructivism. A project is a set of opportunities, a way of changing our present for a better future, at least in theory. So please stop talking about problems and focus on the opportunities. Giving answers. This is something I said in my first video, designers, good designers, the ones that create opportunities are the ones capable of doing the right questions. They don't just give answers, they construct the design output. Based in observation and research, this means that as a designer you must do the right questions and find the right ways of doing so. Let me put a small example. If a client comes to you for a logo, will you do a logo? He wants a logo, there is your logo. Or should you make some questions in order to find out what he needs? Does he really need a logo or something else? You are the expert, you should figure out if he needs a logo or not. Not him. If you don't do this, you are not doing a sign, you are doing an illustration. Design has created and adopted instruments for observing the variables involved. This goes from a simple sketch where you ask the observed reality for its proportions, its color, its textures. But design can also work with big data, anthropological observations or psychological inputs. As you can imagine, design to work in everyday more complex environments must work in association with other disciplines who are more suitable for doing certain questions. We as designers must learn how to make the right questions and we as teachers must teach how to do them. Of these and other disciplinary relationships I will talk in further videos. You have any suggestions on this? Leave your comments below. Ideas. Designers have such great ideas, they are so creative. They are like illuminated. Nah, that's not true. Design is all about work. In 1981 Bruno Munati published a book called The Cosa Nase Cosa, which incredibly has not been translated to English until now, as far as I can recall. If I'm wrong, please leave a comment below. You can find it in Spanish as como nace en los objetos. I'm going to do an in-depth review for this and other design related books in a future book review series, so be sure to subscribe. Munati states that designers, usually after hearing the client's brief, have this idea pop up in their heads. This is the worst thing you could do. An idea surged this way is a total catastrophe. Ideas, as an initial point for a project, are usually condemned to produce a deficient output. Highly experienced designers properly can sit down and present an almost instant proposal. But this proposal is based in years of experience, where they have gathered experience and information, so actually their idea is not coming from a divine illumination. And even then, they will take this first approach and work it further on, develop it, construct over it. So design is not about ideas, it's about construction and development of the final result. This is one of the reasons why you produce in such an environmentally deficient way. We don't do the work. Pop, I got an idea. Does it look like that's enough? Study telling. The marketing department of big companies are the ones who create stories, to sell us unnecessary, bad, old or the same products once and once again. And they usually do so at higher prices, because we're willing to pay for the story. This is a marketing tool, it's not design, not even a design tool. The product doesn't really become better, you think it's better, but it's the same. The fact that cars change from one year to another, it's not true. Yes, they change the form of the lights, but the technology basically is the same as a 4T, internal combustion engine. Yes, we have electric cars now. When they sell you a product, they are appealing to your basic instinct. Usually sex and safety. Simply by changing the story, they will make your actual possessions obsolete. Design should be timeless. Talent. If you make an incredible illustration, you're not doing design. Illustration is just another tool used by design. But it's not design, just like Photoshop, lettering, carpentry and many other techniques. You can retouch a photography, draw a sign, or build a chair, but you are not doing design. When you design a photo, create a new typography, or poster and design a new chair, then you're doing design. Because all of them are the mediums to go to your desired better future. Talent can help you, but won't secure a great project by its own. You can be highly talented in any technique, but if you don't have a purpose, you will finish with an empty nut shell. This takes me to number 6. Fashion. What's in and what's out? Fashionista, trends, tendency, it girl, it boy. They all refer to the same thing. Empty nut shells. All of these concepts suffer from a lack of substance, content. They are empty shells. They don't have a real function to respond to, except to sell you something cheap at a high price. They are another marketing tool. Another form of program obsolescence. They also belong to the marketing department. Fashion in any of its forms is not design. Ego. Design Star System is a huge industry. A name associated to a bag, perfume, clothes or car and design. These designers are the ones that have found a personal style. The ones you can recognize, they have a special presence. Once they got the formula, they will apply to chairs, lamps, toothbrushes, pasta, buildings. It really doesn't matter. The same aesthetic is good for whatever you want. They put themselves, their ego, in front of the user. And design is here to create opportunities to the users, a better future not to show off. Art. Design is not art. It's not a form of art. Yes, you can trace back some historical theories that stated that design evolved from art. That it is so closely related that they are as one. Maybe in some European historical perspectives, they still believe in this. And even there, design didn't start with the Bauhaus. Design has been with humanity since we civilized ourselves. Design is far a more complex discipline than art, where multiple variables come into play, especially if we count the human factor. For art, the user is something that is rarely considered. The artist's view is what counts and it's in the center of the art creation. Design is the inverse way. The user is the center of the creation process. And the designer disappears. Or should disappear. Unless, of course, we are talking about big egos. But remember, then we wouldn't be talking about design. The relation between art and design is an issue I will surely devote a complete video. Maybe just like all the other ones. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss them. Design thinking. This is an easy one. Design thinking is a five-step marketing concept. Emphasize, define, ideate, prototype and test. Create it to communicate a summarized methodology idea to non-designer professionals. Design and design thinking are related but are not the same. One is a methodology, the other is a discipline. Everything is design. Everything that surrounds us has been designed. No, it doesn't. There's a lot of crap out there that wasn't created using design criteria. Design is created only by designers, short and easy. If you think I miss one, you think I'm wrong, or you got a friend but one I mention, please leave your comments below. And don't forget to subscribe and do the building in order to get notified when a new video comes out. Don't forget that design is a discipline we construct all together. Ciao.