Opening eyes to the importance of design
By Evelyn, with additional reporting by Elena, Zara and Aadya
If you were to draw a continuous straight line with a biro, you would have travelled almost two miles before running out of ink. This was just one of many eye-opening facts that Mr Quinton, Head of DT at Eltham College, presented in a lunchtime lecture to Year 7 academic scholars about the importance of design in our lives.
The word design refers to something that is or has been intentionally created. Mr Quinton gave an overview of the history of design, from prehistoric cave paintings to more recent everyday examples, like the first commercially successful ballpoint pen designed and patented by Hungarian inventor László Bíró almost 100 years ago, the UK road-signs created by graphic designers Richard ‘Jock’ Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, and the innovative appliances of James Dyson. Mr Quinton talked about what makes a good design and the many different areas of our world in which design has been applied. He enthused about the subject. “It’s just my passion,” he said, when asked why he chose to study the subject at University.
On the controversial topic of artificial intelligence and the role it might play in designs of the future, Mr Quinton expressed caution. This tool can definitely be used as a source of inspiration, he said, but we shouldn’t rely on it. “AI limits human creativity”, he said in an interview after the talk.
The human mind is capable of solving most problems, concluded Mr Quinton, except perhaps the challenge of getting all of the toothpaste out of a tube. That, he joked, is “a dream that I think would be hard to achieve.”
