enhancing, although not always replacing, existing means of
conceptualization, representation, and specification. The use of
giant computer screens enabling work to be processed in enormous
detail, concurrently on several sites, together with virtual-reality
representations, is widely replacing older methods of renderings
and physical models as a means of developing concepts for
production. Yet at the same time, in a typical pattern of
juxtaposition, one of the most ancient means of exploring and
representing visual ideas, drawing, remains an irreplaceable skill
for any designer. Another procedure of enormous influence is the
refinement of rapid prototyping machines, capable of generating
from computer specifications three-dimensional forms of ever-
increasing size and complexity in ever-shorter periods of time.
Computers also provide the capability to combine and layer forms
from multiple sources – text, photographs, sound, and video – to
effect huge transformations in two-dimensional imagery. Design is
simultaneously becoming more specialized in some respects, with
more detailed skills in specific areas of application, and more
generalist ones in others, with hybrid forms of practice emerging
in parallel.
There are already sharp differences in the levels at which designers
function within organizations, which can be expected to widen.
Some are executants, carrying out ideas essentially determined by
others, and even here, their work can be differentiated between
routine variations in the features of products or the layouts of
communications, on the one hand, and highly original redefinitions
of function and form on the other. Accord-ing to the type of
business a company is in and the life-cycle phase of its products,
designers may variously be involved in imitation, the adaptation
of incremental features, major redefinitions of functions, or the
origination of profoundly new concepts. They are also increasingly
finding their way into executive functions of decision making at
strategic levels that fundamentally affect not just the future shape of
forms, but the future form of businesses in their entirety. Sony
Corporation, for example, has a Strategic Design Group, reporting
130
Design