First Encounters With Design

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    My favorite cotton bed sheets were one of the oldest in the house: given to my mom in the late seventies they had become one of the most loved. The colorful Japanese-inspired flower print was playful and inviting for us kids to snuggle in and build forts with. The soft fabric was light and cool enough to sleep in on summer nights. The dreamy, vibrant and exotic pattern was chic enough to make into long cape when playing Princess. To me, those sheets evoke childhood feelings of comfort and intimacy.
    Maybe it is my childhood bias, but when I look at those sheets now I see an undeniably perfect design. There is no way that if us kids had favored the sheets with the black geometric patterns instead, that we would have experienced the same feeling of content and comfort. Sleeping on colorful flowers and organic forms has got to be more conducive to comfort and relaxation than lying on a print of Escher's crazy geometric optical illusions. What girl wouldn't rather lie in a field of pretty flowers like Snow White?
    Someone definitely knew what they were doing when they designing this print. However, beyond providing the roof of child's fort, these prints were bringing a taste of a different culture into American homes in the late seventies, when floral prints were huge. That was a time when the influence of Japanese culture was spreading because of their booming economy. Japanese fashion designers like Hanae Mori were also becoming more prominent, putting Japanese prints into the spotlight. However these weren't the only designs being exported to America. Given the success of Japanese businesses over American ones, there was much head-scratching over what made the Japanese business management model superior to American ones. This led to many managerial strategists studying the Japanese design of business structure  to adapt them to American corporate culture.
    Clearly, good designs can result in many different benefits to more than one group of people: improving business models and thus increasing salaries and material comforts, providing satisfaction to an adult trying to keep up with the latest trends, or giving comfort to a child. Good design is much more than a pretty dress or a print, often times being a valuable indicator of the societal trends or needs of the time.