Make Life Better. By Design

My guest for this episode believes that people are the important ingredient in successful enterprises. He also happens to be a chemistry graduate and vociferous advocate for making things i.e. manufacturing. Dean Morgan talks us through his road to believing that people and how you treat them is the key to making life better. His life in chemistry, manufacturing and rugby (yes, rugby!) is the story of a life where design, perhaps unknowingly, has underpinned success.

The aim of many designers is to create timeless work. Whilst aiming for a long design life is admirable, we shouldn't get hooked up on trying to avoid the time in which we live and work. This episode explains that good design can be timeless yet still reflect the times in which it is designed. Indeed understanding and learning from the past is just as important as familiarity with new developments in materials, technology and thinking.

Knowledge, Learning and Better Choices was the title for this issue suggested by the AI elves. Perhaps I should listen to then next time. Making life better by design is about making choices and taking decisions. The more you know about a subject, the better your choices should be. This episode looks in more depth at that premise and emphasises the benefits of involving both head and heart in the process.

It's often the case that when we do something with the aim of making our life better, that the decision, the choice has unanticipated effects on others. How concerned should we be about this? Few people act from entirely selfish motives, but trying to tread the path to self-fulfillment without inadvertently straying onto someone else's patch can be tricky. However much we'd like to act alone, we are part of a wider society; the butterfly wings of our choices and actions can have consequences ...

Everything is designed.Better design makes life better for everyone.Everyone is a designer.But what does all that mean? This episode goes back to the basics of what the podcast is about, including a practical illustration of how we are all designers.

Doctors have been known to undertake drug trials on themselves before releasing them on the public. Many architects try out new ideas when building their own homes. In this podcast Kevin Drayton considers three such schemes, each with a very different character.

Light, natural and artificial, are essential tools in a designer's armoury. This podcast looks at natural light: how it illuminates buildings and the spaces within, and why orientation and the time of year can radically change it. A later episode will deal with natural light.

There are lots of really useful sources of information that will tell you how to do something. In this episode I suggest that with the end goal firmly in mind, there may be different ways to achieve that goal. The resources you need may appear quite unexpectedly. Don't be dogmatic; stay flexible and you may still Make Life Better. By Design.

How can we all be the same but different at once? Every coin has two sides and there are no guarantees in life - except death and taxes. This episode looks at the paradoxes involved in trying to make life better and why there's no point worrying about getting things wrong.

Hearing loss continues to carry a whiff of stigma. People happy to wear glasses, get their teeth fixed and exercise regularly may still be reluctant to adopt hearing aids. But design came to the rescue some time ago. The dramatic take up of earbuds means that having something shoved in your lugs no longer shouts 'disabled'. Design development has also moved hearing aids into the chic accessories or 'wearables' market; which if it means you can seek help for your hearing loss without fee...

Keen to get a graphic designer's take on if and how design can make life better, I set up an interview with Nathan Clegg, only to find that I must have made a schoolboy error setting up my mike. Unwilling to throw away Nathan's comments, I tried to salvage my part of the interview, with little success. Mea culpa.

Good signage is the perfect combination of form and function. Tracing the Roman origins of classic letterforms and why they continue to be relevant today. First of a short series.

We all encounter doors and the handles, hinges and their other associated paraphenalia every day of our lives. But how much thought do we give them? A perhaps unconsidered opportunity to Make Life Better. By Design.