Björn Rust (he/him) is a post-industrial designer, researcher and educator, developing context-sensitive solutions in service of people and the planet.

Recent writings

  1. On the limits of orthodox economic theory and the role of design in supporting state economic policy
  2. Opportunity hoarding
  3. Doing away with bullshit

What’s in a name

Whether or not we like to acknowledge it, how we identify ourselves plays a role in how others perceive us. But few professions suffer the same ambiguity as ‘designers’.

The crux of the problem appears to be a side effect of using language indiscriminately; we use the word ‘design’ as both a noun and as a verb, describing both the outcome and the process.

So writes Rob Peart for AIGA. He goes on to describe the tendency of designers to call themselves ‘problem solvers’. The newly appointed creative director of Google Creative Labs, Matt Wade agrees that designers do indeed solve problems, »... but so do butchers and bakers and candlestick makers.«

Today, design thinking is penetrating every industry and the definition of design has become so broad that in essence, everyone is a designer. Perhaps this simply makes a case for definitions informed by the product of our labour, rather than our process.

Inspired by: Eye on Design