Design For Life

"Design For Life" is a reality TV series on the BBC. It is much like Master Chef, but designing instead of cooking. The judge on this series is world-famous designer, Philippe Starck, who brings 12 hopeful British designers to a school of design in Paris. Contestants are voted off by Starck based on their design concepts and progress each episode.

This TV series is very beneficial for an industrial designer to watch for many reasons. The first is that it gives you a first hand view of the design process. You see this whole process for each of the contestants, from being given the brief to the final presentation. This involves seeing how different designers negotiate their way through this process, and the successes and failures of each contestant. As an industrial designer it is obviously important to have a sound understanding of the design process, so much so that it becomes second nature.It is therefore very beneficial to watch other designers and the processes they use to help you work out what works well and how you could use this yourself.

Another reason this TV series is very beneficial for industrial designers, especially student designers, to watch is purely to see Philippe Starck. Being one of the worlds most famous designers it is fairly safe to say that he knows what he is talking about when it comes to design. It is therefore very beneficial to listen as he talks about design, whats good whats bad, what works what doesn't. It is not very often that an industrial design student can watch a design develop from concept to final presentation, with Philippe Starck there to comment and judge throughout the whole process. This is a wonderful insight.

This TV series also gives a bit of an insight into the world of design. The design industry is very different to any other industry people go into. For a design student it can be hard to know what to expect once you leave the sheltered environment of uni and into the real design world. I think that in this sense this TV series can be very beneficial to design students to give them a taste of what to expect once they graduate.

I was particularly challenged when Starck made the point that there are too many products in our world. There are products always being designed that society does not need. Why should we design this products? This really challenged me to not design for the sake of more products, but to design so we have more products that we actually need.