Appreciating designers

Recently I read Simon Garfield's "book about fonts", Just My Type.

It was just the right blend of fact and narrative for reading at night before bed and I was a little sad that it had to end.  However, Just My Type has had one lasting effect - I can't go anywhere or do anything without taking stock of the font designs and choices around me and contemplate what they say about the entity/business/person who created them and, more to the point, employed them in this sign, or that menu, or that blog...

Design (both capital D Design and lowercase d design) is ubiquitous.  Mostly we don't (and some would argue, shouldn't) notice the role design plays in our daily lives, until we come up against something poorly designed.  I have a teapot that I love aesthetically, but functionally it's a dud (it drips).  I have a pair of shoes which squeak when I walk which annoys me no end because I put them on forgetting that they squeak.  The touchscreen menu on my Samsung phone drives me nuts with its over- or under-sensitivity (and yes, I have tried innumerable times to calibrate it).  However I almost never notice the wonderfully simple and elegant water carafe with the glass that inverts on top to keep dust and bugs out that sits on my desk (until I'm thirsty).

When I was an architecture school undergrad I used to spend literally DAYS on preparing my work for visual presentation.  Days and days in a small, overheated, poorly ventilated computer studio staring at a large computer screen and trying to make the most of my (limited) 3dsMax and Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop skills.

This time lapse film makes it all look so easy...

I wish I'd had those skills when I did these images...

(As a side note, notice the "woven" joists in the top image and "knitted" concrete wall in the bottom image?  These are images from my final year design project for which I designed a facility for the Massey University textile design programme.)

Um, so, what was my point again?  Oh, that's right.  Appreciate designers in our world.  Appreciate the good ones more than the lesser (I'm not an advocate of medals for turning up), but encourage appreciation of the conscious effort to make good things.  How?  Post about good design on your blog.  Or message that designer you've always admired and simply say "Thank you for designing.  I appreciate it."