Ted Audio Collective.

Audio Collective.

This is Design Matters with Debbie Milman from Design Observer.com.

On this program, Debbie Milman talks with Williams Drantel,

editorial director of Design Observer.

The role of Design conceptually has fundamentally shifted.

She'll also speak with Julie Lasky, editor of a new website about design and social change.

Nobody has ever really effectively defined what design is.

It can be anything, and in fact it really can be everything.

Here's Debbie Milman.

This year I spent my summer vacation in the cat skills with my family.

My father's wife was at a writer's workshop in Saratoga and her

departure left me in a house full of men ranging in age from 20 to 70. Consequently,

every night after my dad came home from work, the boys gathered into the living

room with plastic plates piled high with Taco Bell or KFC or takeout from the local Chinese restaurant, turned on the high definition

television and spent the entire evening watching baseball. In an attempt to

participate in the daily routine and to avoid sitting alone in some other quieter part of the house,

I joined them every night in the living room with a stack of magazines, my computer, and a copy of David Carson's 1995 book, The End of Print,

which I was re-reading in an effort to prepare for an interview the following week.

When Dad looked over and saw me reading, he took a look at the title,

furrowed his brow, and chuckled.

Thinking he was berating me for not paying attention to the game, I asked him what could possibly be so funny.

...