TRACING DESIGN-DREAMS

Design is defined in many different ways. So is the role of designers. A general definition is that to design is to change the existing situation for the better. But who defines what is better? What are the designers’ responsibilities in an age of globalization and “post-industrialization”? Is it to enhance the life condition of the people, or is it to serve the system, to encourage more and more consumption, to create a fake (artificial) demand, and to create new dreams for people, those dreams that are not even their own dreams? In a world struggling with hunger, poverty and rapid consumption of limited resources, what designers can do and are doing? Are the designers out of system, trying to serve the community, using their knowledge and expertise in service of the poor, and even the ordinary people becoming the marginal ones? Pieces of designed objects are getting more and more a symbols of power and prestige and sources of cultural capital. Like works of art. Still many other questions related to responsibilities of designers (in different fields such as architecture, industrial design, graphic design, etc.) can be raised. This paper aims at discussing these questions, via an expanded search through design-related news in different types of mass-media, the texts in advertisements, etc., trying to discover the notions which are embodied in them and the massages which are conveyed explicitly, or as is the case most of the time, implicitly.