A friend recently pointed me to a film from 2003, My Architect (clip showing above), which tells a kind of “finding my father” story by the son of the late architect Louis Kahn. While watching it, I had a flashback to a movie that came out last year on the typeface Helvetica by director Gary Hustwit. The two films gave me a general context for the depth of interest that can be generated by the creative professions. Also, given popular society’s fascination with the creative challenges of fashion design as in the reality TV show Project Runway and even geek culture’s gravitation to technofashion, it is clear that we are entering a new age where making things matters increasingly as an expression of things to come.

Other trends like DIY or craft culture as exhibited by the incredible success of Etsy and associated moves towards “open source sewing” platforms all point to the general phenomenon of democratizing design. The challenge looking ahead of course is not whether every person in the world will become a designer, but whether great designs will continue to emerge in this century. What are the necessary conditions in society and education to ensure that we will always be raising the bar of creativity higher and higher in this world?