What is design?
~Through my work and books~

Design has become the center of our lives

Hello. I'm Shiba, a designer in the design department.
I joined Monosus about two and a half years ago.

Until then, my design work process consisted of reading books and consulting with designer friends to learn how to use applications like Photoshop and Illustrator, then showing the finished product to multiple friends and having them evaluate my work.
I never thought I'd join a production company and make design the center of my life, but I started attending a vocational training school to learn the basics of web design and coding, and what I learned there made me want to make design my career.

In fact, at Monosus, I learned the basic know-how of logical practical work, such as choosing colors, shapes, and fonts and adjusting their spacing, from members who work in the design industry, such as professional designers and art directors, and using that knowledge to work on the jobs I was asked to do and read books, I began to think about how to get involved in design, and with a new perspective, I worked on my next job through trial and error, and it became natural for me to gather information from books and the Internet every day. I would like to introduce one thing that I felt changed my perspective in particular.

The role of the designer is to
It's not just about color, shape and size

While working on various projects, I naturally became interested in something called UI/UX, which is the technical term for how easy a website is to use and the sensations you get from using the experience.

I used to think of web design simply as creating a form that matches the image of each company, product, or brand. However, when I actually got involved in production, I realized that the roles of sites are endless, and that design is not about fitting into a mold, but about matching each service and purpose. Among them, there are two jobs that particularly broadened my perspective.

One of these was the design of a system screen for a company that rents out heavy machinery to construction sites in Asia. The entire process from rental to collection, including inquiries about the ownership and operating status of heavy machinery for rental, a registration screen for receiving orders based on orders from on-site personnel, and a screen for checking the status of arrangements after registration, was completed within a single system, and the UI was redesigned to be easy to operate on the latest PC terminal specifications introduced at the site and in the Internet environments of various Asian countries.

The other project was the launch of a shopping site that sells luxury watches to wealthy people from around the world. In creating this site, we researched the functions of other e-commerce sites and repeatedly simulated the buyer's perspective, enhancing the conditional search function and carefully examining its priorities to make it easier to find desired or rare products. We also focused on making it easy for sellers to register products and manage products currently on sale. In addition, to ensure a stress-free user experience, we created mockups each time, adjusting the details of movement and speed, and worked our way closer to completion, in order to create rich and simple screen transitions.

Nowadays, with the evolution of CSS and JavaSprict, the expression of website movements has become much richer. In addition to the traditional basic movements such as scrolling up and down the page and the behavior of buttons for screen transitions, it has become necessary to express the movements of each part that reflect a rich feeling and visually enjoyable movements such as parallax more naturally.

In order to ensure that there was no difference between what I felt was natural and what the average end user felt, I had to visit and operate many sites, and share my senses through actual experience while reflecting that in the mockups of the site I was creating. When I wanted to reflect intuitive operability, like the two sites above, I carefully organized the flow, spent time to better understand the structure of the service, and always thought about the design so that it could be operated without stress.

As I am also a daily web user, through the work mentioned above I have become more aware of things in my daily life than ever before, such as the OS, of course, but also the movement of pages on sites I visit, the position, color and shape of app buttons, and how easy it is to find the information I am looking for. I have begun to pay more attention to design than to my original purpose for visiting a site.

Design has a profound impact on society and culture

The other thing I want to talk about is not a practical experience, but the breadth of design that I felt from reading books. I never really liked reading books, but I started to read more in my late teens. In my twenties, I was particularly absorbed in literary novels, but recently, since I started working in design, I often come across design-related books and books that give me new insights related to design, so I read a lot.
Among them, I would like to introduce a book that had a particularly strong influence on me and broadened my perspective on design.

The book is called "Japanese Design - The Future Created by Aesthetic Sense."

The author is Hara Kenya, who is the representative of the Japan Design Center and a professor at Musashino Art University. This book talks about using the aesthetic sense of Japanese culture as a resource to revitalize Japan's industry and economy, which is at a turning point in every aspect. Written from the unique perspective of Hara, who has expressed the Japanese aesthetic sense not only through graphic design but also through exhibitions and products, it is a very interesting read.

The parts that I particularly resonated with were the parts written about "attachment to the things we craved in the post-war era when materials were scarce (※1)", "the reality that fruitless production that is destined to be discarded is intended (※1)", and "mass production and mass consumption in Japan, which has always taken pride in its GDP (※1)".

Possession of wealth alone does not make one happy. Only when one has the wisdom to properly manage what one has and the quality of the culture involved can one be fulfilled and happy.

"Japanese Design: The Future Created by Aesthetic Sense" by Kenya Hara, Iwanami Shinsho, 2011, Amazon

In addition to the above passage, what Hara wrote in his previous book, "The Design of Design," "Design is the act of discovering the true essence of things (※2)," and "It has been involved in the creation of 'experiences' rather than 'things' (※2)," made me agree with his thinking, which shifts away from the accelerated production that postwar Japan has prioritized, and towards valuing the sensitivities that arise from the activities of daily life, and towards enriching the very culture of daily life through design.

From the left: "Japanese Design - The Future Created by Aesthetic Sense," "White," and "Design of Design." All are written by Hara Kenya.

"Delicate," "careful," "meticulous," "succinct" -- Hara, one of Japan's leading creators, has a persuasive perspective on how to utilize the aesthetic sense that has been cultivated in Japanese culture for over a thousand years in future industries. I could never speak in the same way, but I can empathize very much with the idea of using design to revitalize a bright future for Japan, and it makes me want to reflect even a little of that in the designs I work on in the future.

*1 "Japanese Design: The Future Created by Aesthetic Sense" by Kenya Hara, Iwanami Shinsho, 2011, Amazon
*2 "Design of Design" by Hara Kenya, Iwanami Shinsho, 2003, Amazon

From the moment we became aware of design

What is design? I sometimes wonder if I've become a little more like a designer compared to a few years ago when I was only interested in the color, shape, size and balance of applications and monitors without even thinking about it. However, the more I learn about design, the more difficult it seems to be to see the answer. I've come to think that design is composed while taking into account many things, such as the people who use it, the people who provide it, the country or region where it will be used, and the culture there. The way it is expressed changes depending on what I can and want to be involved with, and my own sense and image also changes. At this point, I believe that design is something that is constantly changing depending on how designers, members, and clients relate to society.

That's why I want to be involved in design in a more positive way.