Design is at once personal and impersonal. Design is catalysed by, let’s face it, Bobby at Bobby’s car reselling business. Design works closely with business, and it’s not surprising that people like Nussbaum at BusinessWeek are excited about “design thinking”. At the same time, design is personal: driven by an intangible mix of the emotional and cerebral. No wonder there’s so much confusion on both business and design sides.

I’ve long respected Poynor as a writer and critic, and found his recent article (’Down with Innovation‘) in International Design Magazine troubling on one level, and on another, comforting. Comforting because he raises the value of what designers make. So why do I feel troubled? I’m not sure: perhaps because I feel he’s right, and perhaps because — in my gut — I feel threatened. I will never be able to completely separate myself from the thing he feels is making design, in a sense, impure. Poynor’s vision of a designer’s work is, after all, hard to live up to: “something brilliant and extraordinary that illuminates our perception of what human life can be”. Doesn’t that sound more like art?

Poynor’s views on design thinkers like Nussbaum are clear:

Poynor’s article has been described as cynical. My interpretation is that he is railing angrily against design that is degraded, stripped down, and tossed around as a funky new business toy. He’s railing against design that forgets both the original role of graphic designers and the “inherent intelligence” in the beauty of design. He simply doesn’t want to forget what design is (something tangible, an elegant book jacket design) with something airy, intangible, and transient (an elegant business strategy). So: “Give me something tangible, something brilliant and extraordinary that illuminates our perception of what human life can be. For that, we still need designers.”

“Making things look nice”, “stylizing”, “colouring in”. Design is often sneered at as trivial work. Apply whatever logical process to design you want. There is no framework or formula to arrive at a great design. I wouldn’t call it emotional and I wouldn’t call it cerebral — it’s a bit of both — and it’s definitely personal. The way I solve a design problem is totally different from the way another designer solves a problem. It is not easy work: I’m often tearing out my hair. In the end, I find myself in partial agreement with Poynor. Let’s not forget the aesthetic value of what we produce. Business moves on to the next goal; aesthetic value lasts. Who’s going to queue to see a business strategy in a museum in 2108, after all?

There’s more discussion about Poynor’s article at IxDA. Here it’s pointed out by a clever commentator that we shouldn’t confuse conscientious designers with those who believe “design is too important to be left to designers”.