“The essential function of our profession [design] in our society is to enhance and cultivate communications toward an easier understanding of ideas and complex problems, in the shortest possible time for higher visual and auditory retention of data.”
“For design is about the making of things: things that are memorable and have presence in the world of the mind. It makes demands upon our ability both to consolidate information as knowledge and to deploy it imaginatively to creative purpose in the pursuit of fresh information.”
“To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to transform prose into poetry.”
“To design is to plan and to organize, to order, to relate and to control. In short it embraces all means of opposing disorder and accident. Therefore it signifies a human need and qualifies man’s thinking and doing.”
Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University
Visit: We met with their Design Librarian, Mary Catharine Johnsen (who agreed to join our Advisory Board). She had created a visualization of our project, outlining our clients, our sources, and our objectives The LibGuide which she had created for the Design students and faculty is one of the best we have seen.
Their Design archives are documented online, as are thier holdings in Architecture.
Discoveries: The Swiss Poster Collection.