thinking

I have been studying and working in many places in Italy and abroad. Through this I have experienced many lost in translation incidents while working in a group, especially when everybody is working in a third language that it’s not his own. Sometime it is very funny, sometime frustrating.

This same obstacles are there even when you work in your own language. This mostly happen because behind the same words we have different significances that emerges from different paths, experiences, and education.

I believe the real strength of Design is and should be that of a Translator. Be able to act as a hub. Take all the inputs and distribute mediated, designed outputs. Re-evaluate and proceed in the design loops.

I think Mediation and Translation are the central concepts on how I see Design now.

I keep thinking that progress is not innovation.

We always talk, and hear talking, about progress in a positivistic way, but we hardly ever hear what is the real, underlying value of progress.
Are we only looking at monetary values?
Or should we broaden the perspective and consider that progress-is-innovation when it is ‘good’.

But than, again, what is ‘good’?
I think that when we take a systemic perspective, and we consider the links between the value factors, and what happens inside those links, and the result is creating a complex, multiple, and diffuse positive impact we are doing good.

This is where and why Design, il Progetto, is important.
When I design I do not look only at Beauty, or at Function, or at Saleability, or at User, or at Materials, or at Competition. I look at all of this, and more. Than try to come up with a mediation that is a solution. One of infinite possible solution in the mediation area.

Mediation is the area where Design happens and Designers operate.

Design is Translation. Design in Translation

Progress is not (always) Innovation