We Should Be Eating More Apples

Welcome to Bonsai – the second of my new miniature opinion pieces.

Apple should be the staple of every designers diet.

Us designers are an insecure lot – constantly seeking relevance and control in a world controlled by technocrats. While we are passionate about what we do and fervently promote ‘good design’, more often than not, no-one seems to listen.

Did you know that less than 10% of all buildings are designed by Architects?
As for us Landscape Architects, we spend far more time fighting for design control than actually designing.

However, just when we thought the pragmatists would wipe us out – along came Apple

Apple has singlehandedly and overwhelmingly demonstrated to the world that design can and indeed should come first. Apple shows us that engineering functionality is best driven by design. It matters what things look like, it matters how people experience them. Apple has in the single istroke, given the rest of us in the design community credibility and even more importantly – self belief. We are saved.

So, if you are a designer, you should eat as many Apples as you can because their grip on the future is undoubtedly tenuous. Steve is dead and that leaves Johnny. Price and function are worms that live inside the Apple, lying in wait. At the first sign of rot, the accountants and engineers will swoop in and give the Apple to Eve, – and we all know how that turned out.

Richard Alexander Bain