The Design Less Taken

There are many ways to define design. Each definition and the point of view it represents. Every definition assigns a role and meaning to the designer, the creation, the process and the outcome. Among the definitions i’ve heard: giving shape to an idea, when aesthetics meet purpose, the universal language, a personal expression that serves the collective, art and science intertwined, and many many more.

Design is a journey. It begins when the problem is presented to us and ends when the outcome is presented to the audience. This journey begins on a single path, that quickly turns into a series of junctions and diversions. Each junctions poses a choice to be made, each choice takes us further down the path until the next decision point. A sequence of decisions from the moment we meet the problem until the moment we finalize the solution.

Beginners, who take their first steps on this journey, find themselves facing each decision-making junction, without proper tools, struggling and floundering, mainly stalling out of insecurity. The long and winding torturous road of the novice decision maker. The more they go down roads like this, the better they are equipped with each and every deliberation on the way. The better, quicker and more effective will their decision be. Roadmaps, experience, foresight, mistakes, knowledge - all of which will assist them to be quicker to the solution. Each one and his own decisions, her own solutions.

When we talk about a unique style of designer, we actually mean that his tools are distinct, his decision-making is consistent, and therefore the solutions he comes to, the destinations in this journey, are in the same territory. While experience shortens the range of the journey to the experienced designer, the naivety in the lack of knowledge allows the novice designer full objectivity in the choice, devoid of foreign interests and considerations, free from prejudices and ingrained assumptions. His empty backpack takes him lightly to new and fascinating districts - in retrospect such liberating and adventurous lightness ..

What would happen if, once, taking this journey, one would make an opposite decision to what he’s used to. Just one decision, no more. Suddenly imagine new encounters, initial splits, landscapes and sights she’s never experienced, dilemmas that require new tools and skills she does not have. This kind of decision, the more it is made at the beginning of the journey, the more it will redefine a completely different direction from what she is used to. How fascinating can such a journey be, to the unknown (or the lesser known). A journey that requires us to grow again, to expand, to step out of our comfort zone. All that is required is clear awareness. Recognize this delicate and fragile point where we make a decision, small or large. Isolate that decision. Examine it. Understand it. And in that moment look up and around, at the infinite possible directions. Avoid the instinct and choose a different path. The one narrow one that

disappears in the unfamiliar thicket. Take a deep breath and go with it. With no security, no peace, maybe fear, maybe paralysis. But with huge excitement of a first timer. Going back to the days when we knew so little, with no habits to castrate us on the way up. Times in which we did not walk our natural path because there was none. The first days when every choice, no matter what, was our first time. Like pioneers in the spaces of creation. In the inner spaces of each and every one of us. Discover how wide and infinite the canvas is. Embrace the unfamiliar, breathe again.

The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.