Ted Audio Collective.

Audio Collective.

This is Design Matters with Debbie Melman from design observer.com.

On this program, Debbie Melman talks with design writer Ralph Kaplan about his long and colorful career and

about the responsibility of designers. There's a difference between making

things right and making things nice which is what many designers in the past thought

their mission was. Here's Debbie Millman.

For more than 50 years Ralph Kaplan had Be Milman.

For more than 50 years, Ralph Kaplan has been thinking, writing, and speaking about design.

This year he received the Design Mind Award from the Cooper Hewitt's National Design Museum, which recognized him for changing how we think about and practice design.

In his world, design deals not only with products, but also the larger context in which they are used.

Ralph Kaplan is also an author.

His books include By Design, which has the wonderful subtitle Why There Are No Locks on the bathroom doors in the

Hotel Louis the 14th and other object lessons.

Milton Glazer has said of his writing, at heart, Kaplan is a moralist who understands that the subject of design permits him to write about

anything from an ethical point of view.

He writes as though he believes that there is no such thing as popular

culture, only culture itself. He currently writes for Voice, the online journal of AIGA, the Professional

Association for Design.

Ralph Kaplan lectures widely, and he teaches a graduate course in design criticism here

at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he joins me in our studio today.

Welcome to Design Matters Ralph.

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