EXPANDING THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF DESIGN EDUCATION & PRACTICE
Ricardo Gomes, Chair/Professor
San Francisco State University, Department of Design & Industry

Ricardo Gomes
Professor and Chair of the Department of Design and Industry at San Francisco State University and Executive Director of the Design Center for Global Needs; Member of the Industrial Designers Society of America; Fulbright Research Scholar in Kenya; former Program Coordinator of Design Projects in Developing Countries for a major design school in Paris, France; Design Consultant for an international health technology organization; and has practiced as a Senior Product Designer for a leading consumer product manufacturer. He received a M.F.A. in Industrial Design and a M.A. in Architectural Building Technology from UCLA, and a B.A. in Industrial Design from Massachusetts College of Art. He has also been a lecturer at UCLA, the University of Nairobi, Kenya and Les Ateliers in Paris, France.

Abstract

The predominance of industrialization, mass-production and the establishment of multi-national corporations, with their large-scale manufacturing and marketing geared to world-wide distribution, has resulted in the uniformity of many products. There is a great concern that the saturation of global marketplaces with this "global uniformity or identity" will stagnate the unique values in national products and leave no place for cultural variety.

Today, the incorporation of technology as an intrinsic element of culture, not just of design practice, and the determination of the universal character of its commitment is the primary problems common to designers everywhere. As a designer, communicator, imagemaker, visionary, we inevitably help shape and form the everyday images and objects of our contemporary community. Depending on the composition or diversity of our community, it may, or may not, reflect our cultural identity. As translators of technology, form and function, designers must be prepared to take on the role that will require them to seek design methods that will enhance a products accessibility. This must be achieved while simultaneously preserving and developing their respective cultural identities.

Within our respective cultures, we cannot tell what kind of a universal culture will emerge out of the present flux of "cultural re-organization." This mere fact should be sufficient to deter us from making absolute statements about the relationship between technological processes and cultural processes. Equally significant is the fact that because it is our life and way of living that are being organized we cannot be indifferent to our own person just because we are enamored with new processes. The new world order revolution is on and all are involved.

People within the many culture systems of the world today must themselves adapt design and technology to their modes of living in order to build into their own cultures' appropriateness to contemporary processes. They themselves must initiate progressive attitudes and ideas relevant to the new world order. They themselves must adapt their own world view to the projected realities of the twenty-first century.