Role of the designer
Are designers just commercializing emerging trends and fashions, or do they set the trends? Do we need so many fonts, shoe styles, smartphone models, and breakfast cereal flavors?
Experience designers have always worked within the constraints and pressures of commercial settings, because their services are tied to the demands of individuals, companies, and organizations who pay for their services. And yet, for centuries, individual designers and design movements set important trends that supported or led to major shifts in industrial, social, and personal attitudes towards aesthetic and functional appreciation of experience.
The twentieth century marked a dramatic change in the role of the designer. It was a part of a shift to the modern--the notion that the world is turning a new page with the power of scientific and industrial breakthroughs. Influential movements in philosophy, art, architecture, and industrial design, brought forward the ideas of "total design".
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