When you tell someone you’re writing about design, they usually ask, What kind of design? And that’s understandable, because there are so many design disciplines (industrial, graphic, interior, fashion, interactive, etc.). But actually, those design disciplines tend to cross over and blend a lot—nowadays you may find one designer working in three or four of those different areas. So when talking about design, I don’t make much distinction between the different disciplines. But I do think there are two very distinct types of design—separated not by discipline but by matters of intent and purpose. So in answer to that question, What kind of design is Glimmer about?, I would say this: It’s about the kind of design that solves problems.

 

There is another kind of design that’s really not about solving problems. That type of design tends to be focused on style, aesthetics, and self-expression. To succeed in that realm, it may be necessary to do whatever it takes to be original and to stand out—even if that means creating something completely impractical. Those Alexander McQueen 10-inch stiletto shoes pictured here are strangely beautiful but they also make the simple act of walking very, very difficult. And God help you if you had to run in them. Those shoes create a lot more problems than they solve. (Click on the image below to link to an eye-opening slide show and video.)

 

 

When I went to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair last year while researching Glimmer, I saw an $11,000 rocking chair for two that somehow managed to complicate the simple act of sitting; to use it, you had to work to maintain a delicate balance with a seating partner, lest you both tumble to the ground. As I wrote in the book, “If it’s true that design can make things easier for those who have it hard, some of the furniture at the ICFF demonstrates that design can also succeed by making things a little harder for those who have it easy.”

 

Design that is purely about style and self-expression can be wonderful, of course. As a form of art, it can delight and inspire people. Museums are filled with this kind of design. And it’s the kind that tends to attract the most of the attention in the glossy magazines. But I made the decision somewhere along the line that Glimmer would focus on the other kind of design—the kind that works, that helps, that solves, that improves. And if it does all that while also managing to be elegant and delightful to look at, so much the better.

 

The sculptor Donald Judd once explained the difference between design and art as follows: “Design has to work. Art does not.” (To which the painter David Hockney countered by pointing out that, “Art has to move you and design does not. Unless it’s a good design for a bus.”)

 

Those McQueen shoes are more art than design (at least by my preferred definition of design). They may move you—just don’t try to move in them.