American Scientist

Design is ubiquitous, for everything deliberately made and done is necessarily designed. Sometimes the design is quite overt, as when a painter composes a landscape according to received aesthetic principles, or a poet shapes a sonnet following a strict form. Other designs are less obviously or less explicitly thought about, as when a person adjusts water flow from a faucet to achieve the preferred temperature or when we walk along familiar streets to reach a destination. The word design has a plethora of denotations and connotations, and it is to this multiplicity of meanings that we owe at least in part the confusion and ambiguity that often accompanies the word's use. Even within the relatively narrow scope of the activity of professional designers, design means different things in different contexts.