Every morning a person wakes up and begins their day the same way: some are going to school, some to university, and some to work. However, in the hustle and bustle of gray everyday life, people stop paying attention to things that seem commonplace, whether it’s a scribbled workbook, a new notebook or a kitchen set gathering dust in grandma’s cupboard. 

• But does everyone know what’s behind this or that picture on the cover? 
• Was painting on saucers a spontaneous idea or is there a whole creative story behind it? 
• What is “design” and how it manifests itself in human life? 

Web Design Essentials

Some products are so familiar that no one would think that the famous shape of a woman’s waist for a Coca-Cola bottle was designed by Raymond Lowe. This prominent designer also gained popularity when he slightly improved the look of the cigarette pack by changing the green color to white and depicting the logo on both sides of the pack. 

The product seemed to receive minimal changes, but the cost of making the pack went down and sales of LuckyStrike cigarettes went through the roof. Also, the logo design for High Stream Moving, which does moving, was developed by web designers and helps promote their brand in Canada. Check out the design on their website: https://highstreammoving.com/location/moving-from-toronto-to-calgary/.

In all of this now and try to understand. “Design is the activity of designing the aesthetic properties of industrial products and the result of this activity. Thanks to this definition from Wikipedia, there is a fairly precise meaning of the term, however, this is not enough to fully understand what is meant by such a broad meaning. 

Looking at the varieties of the manifestation of design, we can see that this field of activity is constantly embracing something new. The new architectural style – Art Nouveau in the early twentieth century contributed to the development of crafts, new construction technologies, the emergence of new trends in design, literature, fine arts.

This led to the emergence of new types in design. All known industrial design allows to improve external properties of: 

• an object; 
• transport design creates fashionable and comfortable forms of the car; 
• computer design develops registration of the information environment; 
• architectural design designs buildings; 
• interior design allows the most pleasant and convenient design of an internal space; 
• design ceremonies is the complex design of solemn events; 
• landscape design combines actions for beautification, gardening and cultivation of territories;
• future design designs, etc. 

Design in our lives that we don’t notice

Today, design is involved in almost all spheres of life. Every day producers of goods and services are increasingly forced to turn to design activities, in order to be one step ahead of competitors, distinguished by originality, and to keep up with the times, thereby showing its importance and necessity for the potential buyer. Thus Boris Arvatov, a theorist of production art in the 1920s, derived the opinion that design is not art, although it “descended” from it. 

Design is a design that will take into account, in addition to the conditions of production, the conditions of consumption. It will become a kind of link between production and consumption. 

Since prehistoric times, we can notice that people have tried in every possible way to distinguish their things, to emphasize what belongs to a particular person. Without realizing it, they began to decorate their own tools, and then household items, depicting original drawings and ornaments, sometimes clear only to the author. Even the uneducated are inherent in decorating, as well as having no knowledge of the beautiful. Most likely, by such actions people have already manifested the desire to be in the most aesthetically attractive environment. 

Thanks to the arts and crafts found during excavations, researchers can now study the life of the owners of some kitchen utensils. This is amazing and valuable in that in no other way do we have the opportunity to learn about the people who lived hundreds of years ago. If you think about it, what was it but a manifestation of design? 

A distinctive, not always understandable expression of a person with a desire to make his or her object environment as attractive as possible. Looking at the history of design, it is clear that everything is closely related to the evolution of the material human environment, through the development of technology and technology. In the role of the object of design activities is now absolutely everything. Some products of craft production and applied art, moved seamlessly into the field of design. 

Basically, it is products that have been used by people since ancient times, and their function is almost unchanged, such as dishes, clothing, furniture, etc. Today, all these items are produced in various fields of activity. In this case, any applied object, from the field of applied art, created by a designer, can be distinguished from each other, if we talk about clearly defined forms. But this boundary becomes blurred in some cases, and then it becomes difficult to determine whether it is design or applied art.

Industrial design

In the last couple of decades the practice of design has become rather complicated, and it is becoming more and more difficult to draw a line between design and other areas of the artist’s professional activity outside art. 

The creation of completely new industrial products; cosmetic changes in the appearance of industrial products with imperceptible changes in their technical characteristics; the invention of a corporate style – all this is now called design and is developed by professional designers. 

One of the problems of theoretical conceptualization of design is still the question of the nature of design activity and its relations with other types of art. Of course, industrial designers work on the form of a product that needs to be mass-produced. At times this can be compared to the work of engineers and designers who come up with new materials that have an impact on the appearance of the object world. In everyday life, design products are everywhere around modern man. 

There are a lot of things we don’t pay attention to for a long time. It’s becoming something completely ordinary and familiar, but have you ever thought about the process of choosing a ballpoint pen? It is an everyday attribute of modern office supplies, used by absolutely everyone. Most people are guided only by its appearance before buying it, sometimes forgetting to check whether it writes at all. 

However, taking a look, you can see how different they are. Behind every little pen like this is an entire project to build it. From detailed drawings to an almost jewel-like finish, the designer painstakingly tries to convey his idea using a writing product that is commonplace to everyone, but special to him. 

Exactly for this pen he chooses exactly this color and not any other, as this very shade is the most pleasant to combine, say, with the metal finishing, on which the master worked so scrupulously, and many other nuances that are known only to the creator of the product. The designer put a lot of effort into having ballpoint pens, once created by him, in every person’s pencil case. 

The special place of design in our lives and its problems

The problem of design is touched upon in completely different aspects of activity, including in the cinema. So in the comedy drama “The Devil Wears Prada” the director emphasized the moment when the viewer can learn about the difficult process of clothing design. It tells how in 2002 Oscar de Laurenta created a collection of sky blue dresses. 

After that, Yves Saint Laurent showed a collection of francs of the same shade. Then other designers introduced sky blue into their palette, and over time, products of this color seeped into major clothing stores and, gradually descending lower and lower, reached some discount store. 

Only it’s not blue, not turquoise, not azure, but sky blue. “However, millions of dollars and a lot of hard work went into making this shade appear,” says the heroine. It was amazing to find out that a seemingly unremarkable shade of blue could have such a great resonance in the fashion world. Thanks to the efforts of eminent designers and competent use, “sky blue” became a color that would remain in history for a long time, while today a girl can wear a sweater of this shade without giving it any importance. 

Design has taken its place in all areas and is constantly all around us, whether we like it or not. Just sit down at your desk to see for yourself. There are probably a stack of notebooks, an organizer with sheets of paper for notes, a favorite cup, and perhaps even some candy wrappers. 

Take a closer look at the covers of lying notebooks, it is the designer who decides where there will be a place for the signature, whether the edges of the sheets will be rounded, where the cover pattern, in what color scheme to perform. 

• Why has this particular cup become a favorite? 
• It is comfortable to hold in your hand or beautifully made drawing? 
• Who, if not the designer, thinks through all the details, from the shape to the small details in the painting? 
• Why would anyone want to eat this particular candy?

Because the orange and beige color on the wrapper inspires more confidence than the toxic green.

 What are you leaning on with your elbows? This is the work surface of the minimalist desk, which at one time was so carefully designed by the designers. Many people think they have nothing to do with design. However, everything around a person is designed for people. All things in a room or any other place were created by designers to allow people to be in a comfortable space and surround themselves with aesthetically pleasing things. Changing human needs force designers to revise their work in order to improve it. In the same way, fashion dictates its own rules.

 Subject to the consumer’s hobbies, design will change again. The main function of design is to acquire favorable aesthetic properties for an industrial product, but this does not exclude the influence of consumer opinion on the final result. Thus, the activity of design is not directed in one direction without an answer, but interacts with the person. 

Therefore, do not think that someone tells you what to buy, but you yourself can set the fashion. Design activity has accompanied us for a long time, it’s just that nowadays, with the use of new technologies, this process has become more obvious. The fact that design objects are all around us is part of our lives.