Latest thinking

The Need for Design and Designing for Need

Blog

23 Sep 2010

Sevra Davis

“Design isn’t radical enough.”

Happiness is an original iPhone app

Blog

01 Sep 2010

The news that doctors are increasingly using their iPhones to measure their patients' heartbeats is a great reminder of how a device can be engineered for one purpose and used in a completely different way (a disruptive innovation, to trot out the well-worn phrase). Bet Apple didn't see iStethoscope coming.

Notes on narrative: Sennett and the arts

Blog

09 Jun 2010

Benedict Dellot

Asking what binds human beings together, Richard Sennett recently offered two ingredients that act as cultural glue: ritual and narrative. Speaking at a great lecture with Dr Rowan Williams just a couple of weeks ago, Sennett argued that, “without shared rituals and narratives society has no purpose. The everyday relations between human beings risks falling apart. And yet modern society courts just that risk. The cultural glue of ritual and narrative is weakening.” Williams seemed to strike the same chord - referring to his latest book on Dostoevsky he pointed out that storytelling as ritual allows us to bond with one another as well as with a “realm beyond ourselves” yet it too is being washed away.

Frugal innovation

Blog

07 Jun 2010

When I studied product design as a student, I loved the combination of thinking about people and how they interact with technology. One of things that makes product or industrial designers distinct from engineers and other technologists is that they don’t start with what the technology can do, but with what people want (or moreimportantly I suppose, what people need).

In-house or out: embedding design

Blog

26 Apr 2010

As little as a year ago it seemed that in-house design teams, in both the public and private sector, had practically vanished. So had senior civic roles in design: Leeds City Council was often named as the last remaining local authority to employ a Civic Architect. With a handful of notable exceptions – Apple and The Guardian, for example – it seemed to have become conventional for organisations to buy design services in from outside consultancies.

RDInsights: Robin Levien

Video

02 Oct 2008

Ceramics and glass designer Robin Levien has been a RDI since 1995. In this interview he talks to Mike Dempsey as part of the RDInsights series.

RDInsights: Timothy O'Brien

Video

14 Jul 2008

Theatre designer Timothy O'Brien became an RDI in 1991.

RDInsights: Peter Brookes

Video

06 Jul 2008

Graphic designer, Peter Brookes became an RDI in 2002. You can listen to his interview with Mike Dempsey here.

RDInsights: Kenneth Grange

Video

11 Jun 2008

Industrial designer, Kenneth Grange became an RDI in 1969.