| Posted by Ken Ramsley , Nov 14,2002,13:56 | Forum |
Design is also like traveling on foot in a thick fog by following the clues from a hand-held compass. You trust your compass to point you in the planned direction even though you can’t see very far ahead. To ignore the guidance of your compass merely dooms you to walk in circles.
In his youth, Abraham Lincoln once navigated a barge down the Mississippi River, and from that experience he realized that although the river took him where he wanted to go, he never would know from moment to moment what he might find around the next bend. The river changes from day to day and even the word of other river men would be of little use. Instead he charted his course 'from point to point' by planning in detail only as far as he could see. Design is like this, too. You may suspect that you are traveling to New Orleans, but you don’t know exactly how you will get there, or what it will be like upon arrival. You only know that eventually you are most likely to show up given enough perseverance.
Design is creating something new through a process that has never taken place before - and never will again. And through this process, design brings into reality something which has never existed - and by definition, something which has never been experienced. It is the process of using our imagination to create a picture in our minds of where we want to go next in the uncharted world of possibilities so that we eventually arrive in a specific way where we once only intended to go in a broader sense.