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The Evolution of the Designer

We live in a sped-up world in which technological advances occur faster and faster. We can’t imagine, for instance, living in our homes and working in our offices without products that were lab experiments only five years ago. Often, it has been technological innovation that has served as the catalyst for these changes. For example, will the 3D printer – the cost of which has plummeted in only a decade – move from the lab and the factory into our homes and offices in the near future? How could seemingly small changes like this actually have a big impact on society, socially, economically and culturally?

Technology has bestowed a greater responsibility on the designer by radically altering his role. Design will not only be about creating products that are a result of innovation, but envisioning future scenarios and communicating these clearly to the public, suggesting new production processes and testing the manifold uses of new technologies. The designer is now in a position to tell factories which tools should be made and/or designed in order to make products, becoming as much researchers, scientists and engineers as “designers.” In this way, they must begin to use technology as a tool with which to expand what we perceive as “normal” and constantly re-create our quotidian world.

The Evolution of the Desinger (pdf)

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