Ellen Lupton: Design is Everything

In a recent episode of Design Matters, host Debbie Millman interviewed Ellen Lupton about her current book, D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself (website):

[Debbie Millman:] You wrote in the foreword that you believe that design is an instrument for packaging ideas and making them public. And that somehow sounds to me that it could conceivably include everything. Do you agree with that?

[Ellen Lupton:] Well, in a way design is everything. I really believe that all throughout our day, we make design decisions. I think the minute you get up out of bed and decide whether or not to make the bed, that’s a design decision. And that reflects how you use your time and what your values are, and what you want to communicate to yourself everytime you walk past that open door. So I think design is a universal function within life. I think that we are constantly making decisions about our environment, and how we communicate, and how we dress, that are at bottom design decisions. What we often don’t do is approach it consciously, and I think that that’s when design becomes really exciting, and when it really becomes a tool, it’s when you begin doing it in a very conscious and critical way. Design is thinking, you know, design is looking at the world and wondering why things don’t work, and often the answer lies with design.