The main talent that distinguishes the Italian Designer is Fantasy. It will be because we have almost three thousand years of history behind us, or perhaps because we have never had raw materials available and we have always had to be "transformers", it will be because we have coexisted in a territory where the greatest number of works of art is concentrated at world, it will be because in the Italy of the Commons habits and customs differed a lot. Of course it is that we do not really miss Imagination and Fantasy! Now, the aim is to define the process of creating the design object. Let's start from the examination of cognitive processes and let's give some definitions:
1. SENSATION is the input coming from the sense organ.
2. PERCEPTION is a subjective decoding of the sensations received and is, therefore, the acquisition, processing and representation of sensory information.
3. ATTENTION is the selection of relevant information.
4. MEMORY is the maintenance of mental representations.
5. THOUGHT is the manipulation of symbols and the solution of problems.
6. FANTASY is free holistic thought; through Fantasia you can think of anything, free from constraints and restrictions.
7. INVENTION finalizes the Fantasy to a practical use, in other words it is the applied Fantasy; to invent is to create what was not there before.
8. CREATIVITY develops in a holistic design mode what Fantasy and Invention predict.
9. IMAGINATION It is used to visualize what Fantasy, Creativity and Invention are "thought" in our mind.
10. MASTERY is excellent skill in some specific fields/activities.
Now, the universe of artifacts is the main reference
for the study of the evolution of human culture. Its quantitative
multiplication is consequent to the Industrial Revolution. The panorama of what
was called applied arts, or decorative arts, and a first embryo of what would
later become industrial design, in other words: the applied design, ie the
"Engineered" Design. Moving from the monopoly market to the
competition market, the issues related to Safety and Quality also take hold,
expressly requested by the consumer. In particular, while the Safety
requirements are directly regulated by means of specific laws, with regard to
Quality it is possible to objectively verify only the production process,
leaving the examination of the practical and of pleasantness (subjective) tests
to the users. In this last case it will be the Ergonomics to equip the Designer
with that formidable tool, that is, the "gear" to compete more
successfully in the global market, minimizing moreover risks related to the
offer.
(*) Franco Grossi (2015), Master & Maker, ISBN 978-88-98683-00-0, pages 57-60.
