Designline: Brief History and Development of the Design and Its Forms

So-called design research has come into being in recent years, particularly at international level. The designers speaking at congresses, symposia, workshops etc. try to present themselves as saviours of the world by tying in a wide range of diverse problems. It is indisputable that design must naturally be understood and practised in an inter-, multi-, cross- and even transdisciplinary way. However, what is specific about design and the global meaning of design is based on cultural interactions and manifests itself in its respective products.

Among all these endeavours it should be made especially clear what actually accounts for the lasting and increasing fascination with design: the design of things and thereby also their forms. At the beginning of the 20th century there was talk everywhere in the German-speaking world of "Formgestaltung" (putting the emphasis on the design of form), a term which in the meantime has become largely obsolete.

However, it is also undisputed that design undergoes a process of permanent change. The transition from the functional view of objects to their semantic interpretation is currently fashionable everywhere. However, discourses about objects must become still more precise.

"Designline" offers an indispensable basis for this: it enables the significance and even the aura of products to be seen and understood. In the interplay with graphic design, architecture and selected cultural and technical milestones, it becomes clear why products had their specific look at respective times. Seen in this way "Designline" is an important contribution to the formation of the discipline of design, which refreshingly stands out from the numerous garrulous texts which often enough only pretend to be concerned with design theory.

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