Designers need to get with the programme

Having just picked up Design Week (13 September) – it takes a while to reach me as I’m based in San Francisco – I noticed several interesting things about the issue:

Congratulations on the new full-colour cover. It gives the magazine a real shelf-shout, as they’d say in WH Smiths (do you still have Smiths in England? I haven’t visited for a while).

More importantly, but probably less flattering for you guys, I noticed in the same issue the letter from Jon Risdon on CAD design. He picks up on the point that “traditional designers are still sniffy” about using CAD systems. I can’t believe people are still crapping on about this. In the same issue there’s a feature on 3D modelmakers in architecture, product and packaging design. Now if anyone ought to feel threatened in the CAD wars, you’d think it was the 3D modelmakers.

Not a bit of it. Without exception, the feature highlighted the advantages, not just to the modelmakers but also to designers, of using all the means at their disposal to get the job just right. Modelmakers have adapted with the times and see things like Computer controlled milling machines and the like as an integral part of their job, so isn’t it time designers got with the programme (software or otherwise)? It seems to be a case of “you gotta roll with it” as you say over there in the UK.

Joe Julian

Hot Springs Design

San Francisco