Make Life Better. By Design

Good signage is the perfect combination of form and function. Tracing the Roman origins of classic letterforms and why they continue to be relevant today.  First of a short series.

We wear clothes all the time. The scope for clothes to make life better is huge. Do we pay clothing the attention it deserves?

We all encounter doors and the handles, hinges and their other associated paraphenalia every day of our lives. But how much thought do we give them? A perhaps unconsidered opportunity to Make Life Better. By Design.

A conversation with personal training business expert and blogger Matt Robinson. Quickly finding common ground in good design as problem-solving, we discover just how close our different interests are.

Newness has a fascination all its own, but by definition it cannot last. What alternatives are there?

In conversation with web developer Lucy Davies, who does not think of herself as a designer, despite lots of evidence to the contrary

Using words is a form of design. Writing and reading have a huge role to play in making life better.

Packaging is ubiquitous. For something so short-lived it nonetheless has an important job and consumes a lot of resources. In this episode, Kevin Drayton looks at the design and lifecycle of packaging, particularly relevant with the surge in internet shopping and concern with recycling and plastics.

What is your relationship with packaging? Have you a considered attitude to the stuff or is it just an inevitable part of consumer culture?

Design often asks us to reconcile what initially may seem to be antithetical requirements. Architecture in particular needs to blend art and science, intuition and analysis, emotion and logic. But the proposition holds true in all design to varying degrees.

In this episode Kevin Drayton references E M Forster's much-quoted line: "Only connect the prose and the passion" as shorthand for this aspect of design

What criteria are used now, and have been used in the past, to judge design? Do these vary from one sector of design to another, or are they universally applicable?