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The New Designer: Rejecting Myths, Embracing Change
How to develop an ethical design practice and build a better world.
The choices made by designers have a significant effect on the world. Yet so much of the discourse on design focuses on aesthetics rather than ethics. In The New Designer , acclaimed author Manuel Lima aims to change this by challenging common myths and preconceptions about what comprises good design. He argues that designers must take responsibility for the personal, societal, cultural, and environmental impact of their work, rather than simply following a standard template.
As he covers fields ranging from graphic design to industrial design to user-experience design, Lima identifies the major steps that designers must take to be a force for good in the world. Rather than sticking to outmoded ideas about perfectionism and individual genius, designers must work together to tackle some of the most challenging questions of the twenty-first century. How do you make room for humanity, with all its wondrous variations, in a society increasingly driven by metrics, algorithms, and profit? How can ecologically responsible designers consider a product’s entire life cycle and look well into the future? And how can designers better respond to a community’s local needs while taking advantage of global networks?
Blending approaches derived from ethics, psychology, economics, and ecology, The New Designer is a vital, field-changing treatise that will appeal to any reader who seeks to understand design’s massive influence on the contemporary world.
The choices made by designers have a significant effect on the world. Yet so much of the discourse on design focuses on aesthetics rather than ethics. In The New Designer , acclaimed author Manuel Lima aims to change this by challenging common myths and preconceptions about what comprises good design. He argues that designers must take responsibility for the personal, societal, cultural, and environmental impact of their work, rather than simply following a standard template.
As he covers fields ranging from graphic design to industrial design to user-experience design, Lima identifies the major steps that designers must take to be a force for good in the world. Rather than sticking to outmoded ideas about perfectionism and individual genius, designers must work together to tackle some of the most challenging questions of the twenty-first century. How do you make room for humanity, with all its wondrous variations, in a society increasingly driven by metrics, algorithms, and profit? How can ecologically responsible designers consider a product’s entire life cycle and look well into the future? And how can designers better respond to a community’s local needs while taking advantage of global networks?
Blending approaches derived from ethics, psychology, economics, and ecology, The New Designer is a vital, field-changing treatise that will appeal to any reader who seeks to understand design’s massive influence on the contemporary world.
280 pages, Hardcover
Published May 2, 2023
20 people are currently reading
1495 people want to read
About the author
Manuel Lima
15 books64 followersA Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and nominated by Creativity magazine as “one of the 50 most creative and influential minds of 2009,” Manuel Lima is the founder of VisualComplexity.com, Design Lead at Google, and a regular teacher of data visualization at Parsons School of Design.
Manuel is a leading voice on information visualization and has spoken at numerous conferences, universities, and festivals around the world, including TED, Lift, OFFF, Eyeo, Ars Electronica, IxDA Interaction, Harvard, Yale, MIT, the Royal College of Art, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, ENSAD Paris, the University of Amsterdam, and MediaLab-Prado Madrid. He has also been featured in various magazines and newspapers, such as Wired, the New York Times, Science, Nature, Businessweek, Creative Review, Fast Company, Forbes, Grafik, SEED, étapes, and El País.
His first book, Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, has been translated into French, Chinese, and Japanese. His second, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, covers eight hundred years of human culture through the lens of the tree figure, from its entrenched roots in religious medieval exegesis to its contemporary, secular digital themes.
With more than twelve years of experience designing digital products, Manuel has worked for Codecademy, Microsoft, Nokia, R/GA, and Kontrapunkt. He holds a BFA in Industrial Design and a MFA in Design & Technology from Parsons School of Design. During the course of his MFA program, Manuel worked for Siemens Corporate Research Center, the American Museum of Moving Image, and Parsons Institute for Information Mapping in research projects for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Manuel is a leading voice on information visualization and has spoken at numerous conferences, universities, and festivals around the world, including TED, Lift, OFFF, Eyeo, Ars Electronica, IxDA Interaction, Harvard, Yale, MIT, the Royal College of Art, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, ENSAD Paris, the University of Amsterdam, and MediaLab-Prado Madrid. He has also been featured in various magazines and newspapers, such as Wired, the New York Times, Science, Nature, Businessweek, Creative Review, Fast Company, Forbes, Grafik, SEED, étapes, and El País.
His first book, Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, has been translated into French, Chinese, and Japanese. His second, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, covers eight hundred years of human culture through the lens of the tree figure, from its entrenched roots in religious medieval exegesis to its contemporary, secular digital themes.
With more than twelve years of experience designing digital products, Manuel has worked for Codecademy, Microsoft, Nokia, R/GA, and Kontrapunkt. He holds a BFA in Industrial Design and a MFA in Design & Technology from Parsons School of Design. During the course of his MFA program, Manuel worked for Siemens Corporate Research Center, the American Museum of Moving Image, and Parsons Institute for Information Mapping in research projects for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 11, 2024
P 95
"True innovation requires the adoption of a belief system that sometimes must prevail in the face of data metrics."
David Brooks: The Social Animal
Jonathan Haidt: The Happiness Hypothesis
P 98
Intuition is not based on baseless hunches but on insights gained from accumulated knowledge.
Cathy O'Neil: Weapons of Math Destruction
P 102
Algorithms ... Are nothing more than opinions embedded in code.
P 104
...why do we continue to rely so heavily on algorithms to make decisions? ... Why are we so eager to remove humans from all major decisions? ... Is it arrogance, ignorance, or simply shame about our own nature? Answering many of these questions requires a deep, self-evaluation as a species. And design can and should help drive the search for answers.
P 105
"Thick data" by consulting firm RED
"By outsourcing our thinking to Big Data, our ability to make sense of the world by careful observation begins to wither, just as you miss the feel and texture of a new city by navigating it only with the help of a GPS."
P 118
As Erika Hall points out, the business model has become design's new grid.
P 123
Martin Ryan "But our ethics only extend as far as our line of inquiry"
P 141
(Cathedral thinking) "Earth-centred design is a long game. ... It requires the adoption of deep ecology."
Data visualisation in society by Martin Engebretsen and Helen Rettberg
Manifesto for a moral revolution by Jacqueline Novogatz "when we reduce people to statistics, we tell ourselves there is nothing else to be done."
P 143
The resulting detachment from graphical abstraction is ultimately a design problem.
"Anthropographics" named by Italian researcher Enrico Bertini "visual strategies to make the connection between data and humans more direct and emphatic" by considering different levels of granularity, expressiveness, and realism in data portrayal.
P 147
...the five-stage Gartner hype framework of technologies - technology trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment, and plateau of productivity...
P 150
"The sustainability challenge is a design issue," says British writer John Thackara. "Eighty percent of a product, service, or system's environmental impact is determined at the design stage."
P 151
We must fight against "short-term ism" and "numbness" in any way we can. We are futurists. We have to plan it better and show others what it could be, based on what they do, buy, and support. ... "The thing is to be vocal about the type of future that you want to exist within ... You have to demand the type of future that you want to recognize."
P 157
We cannot afford more design solutions carelessly thrown into a vacuum of consequences.
Range: why generalists triumph in a specialized world by David Epstein
P 160
Combinatorial creativity
P 162
"The solution echo chamber can be further amplified by an excessive devotion to design tools, sometimes amounting to a fetishization. I find most discussions about tools to be a tremendous waste of energy."
The design production line
P 179
"...although the future cannot be predicted, we can help set in place today factors that will increase the probability of more desirable futures happening."
P 180
"When we spend more time asking "what if?"... We can spend less time asking "what now?"
Finding the right balance between being a generalist and a specialist will likely be a lifelong pursuit.
P 182
Design can help bring clarity and transparency to some of these convoluted domains, since it has the power to make the invisible visible. ... Design thinking should become synonymous with network thinking.
Green gold (documentary) by John D. Liu
An introduction to service design: designing the invisible by Lara Penin
P 193
The forefront of design can be an intimidating, mysterious place. But as is noted in chapter 1, life is too short to limit ourselves by fear. If you want to do anything meaningful in life, you must be uncomfortable, and you must be vulnerable.
P 204
Baseline shift: untold stories of women in graphic designe and history by Bahia Shehab
A history of Arab graphic design by Haytham Nawar
The black experience in design: identity, expression & reflection by Anne H Berry
"True innovation requires the adoption of a belief system that sometimes must prevail in the face of data metrics."
David Brooks: The Social Animal
Jonathan Haidt: The Happiness Hypothesis
P 98
Intuition is not based on baseless hunches but on insights gained from accumulated knowledge.
Cathy O'Neil: Weapons of Math Destruction
P 102
Algorithms ... Are nothing more than opinions embedded in code.
P 104
...why do we continue to rely so heavily on algorithms to make decisions? ... Why are we so eager to remove humans from all major decisions? ... Is it arrogance, ignorance, or simply shame about our own nature? Answering many of these questions requires a deep, self-evaluation as a species. And design can and should help drive the search for answers.
P 105
"Thick data" by consulting firm RED
"By outsourcing our thinking to Big Data, our ability to make sense of the world by careful observation begins to wither, just as you miss the feel and texture of a new city by navigating it only with the help of a GPS."
P 118
As Erika Hall points out, the business model has become design's new grid.
P 123
Martin Ryan "But our ethics only extend as far as our line of inquiry"
P 141
(Cathedral thinking) "Earth-centred design is a long game. ... It requires the adoption of deep ecology."
Data visualisation in society by Martin Engebretsen and Helen Rettberg
Manifesto for a moral revolution by Jacqueline Novogatz "when we reduce people to statistics, we tell ourselves there is nothing else to be done."
P 143
The resulting detachment from graphical abstraction is ultimately a design problem.
"Anthropographics" named by Italian researcher Enrico Bertini "visual strategies to make the connection between data and humans more direct and emphatic" by considering different levels of granularity, expressiveness, and realism in data portrayal.
P 147
...the five-stage Gartner hype framework of technologies - technology trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment, and plateau of productivity...
P 150
"The sustainability challenge is a design issue," says British writer John Thackara. "Eighty percent of a product, service, or system's environmental impact is determined at the design stage."
P 151
We must fight against "short-term ism" and "numbness" in any way we can. We are futurists. We have to plan it better and show others what it could be, based on what they do, buy, and support. ... "The thing is to be vocal about the type of future that you want to exist within ... You have to demand the type of future that you want to recognize."
P 157
We cannot afford more design solutions carelessly thrown into a vacuum of consequences.
Range: why generalists triumph in a specialized world by David Epstein
P 160
Combinatorial creativity
P 162
"The solution echo chamber can be further amplified by an excessive devotion to design tools, sometimes amounting to a fetishization. I find most discussions about tools to be a tremendous waste of energy."
The design production line
P 179
"...although the future cannot be predicted, we can help set in place today factors that will increase the probability of more desirable futures happening."
P 180
"When we spend more time asking "what if?"... We can spend less time asking "what now?"
Finding the right balance between being a generalist and a specialist will likely be a lifelong pursuit.
P 182
Design can help bring clarity and transparency to some of these convoluted domains, since it has the power to make the invisible visible. ... Design thinking should become synonymous with network thinking.
Green gold (documentary) by John D. Liu
An introduction to service design: designing the invisible by Lara Penin
P 193
The forefront of design can be an intimidating, mysterious place. But as is noted in chapter 1, life is too short to limit ourselves by fear. If you want to do anything meaningful in life, you must be uncomfortable, and you must be vulnerable.
P 204
Baseline shift: untold stories of women in graphic designe and history by Bahia Shehab
A history of Arab graphic design by Haytham Nawar
The black experience in design: identity, expression & reflection by Anne H Berry
November 22, 2022
The New Designer should be required reading for aspiring designers. While I have encountered much of the content of this book over the course of a design-adjacent career, I would have certainly benefited from having a resource like this available to me as I was getting started. Even now in a well-established career, the author gave me plenty to consider about how I should approach my work.
I appreciated the structure of the book, gradually increasing the scope of the topics being discussed, and using a consistent format from chapter to chapter, breaking down common design myths and concluding each chapter with actionable advice.
The material is well resourced, drawing on a vast amount of writing and research from other sources, as well as the occassional anecdote from the author’s own career. My only criticism of the book, in fact, is that it does not present much in terms of novel ideas. Most of the times that I would highlight something I found particularly insightful, it was a quote from another source. That being said, the author succeeds in weaving these references together in a cohesive and useful way that provides plenty of opportunity for the reader to add to their reading list and pursue deeper insight on topics of particular interest.
Ultimately, The New Designer provides both useful career advice and a strong philosophy around design ethics that practitioners ought to give greater consideration.
This review is based on a pre-release copy of the book provided without charge by the publisher and NetGalley.
I appreciated the structure of the book, gradually increasing the scope of the topics being discussed, and using a consistent format from chapter to chapter, breaking down common design myths and concluding each chapter with actionable advice.
The material is well resourced, drawing on a vast amount of writing and research from other sources, as well as the occassional anecdote from the author’s own career. My only criticism of the book, in fact, is that it does not present much in terms of novel ideas. Most of the times that I would highlight something I found particularly insightful, it was a quote from another source. That being said, the author succeeds in weaving these references together in a cohesive and useful way that provides plenty of opportunity for the reader to add to their reading list and pursue deeper insight on topics of particular interest.
Ultimately, The New Designer provides both useful career advice and a strong philosophy around design ethics that practitioners ought to give greater consideration.
This review is based on a pre-release copy of the book provided without charge by the publisher and NetGalley.
March 10, 2024
Essential read for every practicing and aspiring designer!
As designers, we are making decisions that are going to influence hundreds if not thousands of people's lives, as well as the natural environment. And while it is important to design these products aesthetically and easy to use (the topics we usually talk about), the discussion needs to move beyond the how to design to what to design. What is the point in designing a product that is easy to use, but harms the user (and society at large) by creating addictive behavior? What is the responsibility of designers working on such products?
In the book, Manuel breaks down the different ways design decisions impact stakeholders beyond the immediate user experience.
My copy is full of post-its, underlined sections, notes on the margin.
Thought-provoking and timely topic. Go read it and make a difference with your work!
As designers, we are making decisions that are going to influence hundreds if not thousands of people's lives, as well as the natural environment. And while it is important to design these products aesthetically and easy to use (the topics we usually talk about), the discussion needs to move beyond the how to design to what to design. What is the point in designing a product that is easy to use, but harms the user (and society at large) by creating addictive behavior? What is the responsibility of designers working on such products?
In the book, Manuel breaks down the different ways design decisions impact stakeholders beyond the immediate user experience.
My copy is full of post-its, underlined sections, notes on the margin.
Thought-provoking and timely topic. Go read it and make a difference with your work!
February 14, 2024
Honestly, I was hoping for a more insightful book, but what I read was mostly either experiences from the author's point of view or their summary of other leadership books with much of the conclusions presented unfounded from an academic point of view.
Much of content has been well-known for anyone whom has kept up reading modern design literature from the mid 2000's onward.
Overall, I was clearly not the target audience for the book, but I can see how someone whom has no design experience whatsoever could benefit from a read.
Much of content has been well-known for anyone whom has kept up reading modern design literature from the mid 2000's onward.
Overall, I was clearly not the target audience for the book, but I can see how someone whom has no design experience whatsoever could benefit from a read.
April 19, 2024
A fantastic overview of the design process and pitfalls that is helpful for people in several lines of work. As a teacher, I use several of the aspects covered in this book and there are great insights I plan to put into action with my students. A great read for anyone who has to problem solve or plan projects in their career (isn't this just about anyone?).
December 20, 2024
all of it
I usually down grade ratings when the author refers to other authors multiple times but in this instance you want that as it will produce a lengthy next reads list. The author provides a great overview of not just the design concept, but also suggests a design ethics. Very interesting.
I usually down grade ratings when the author refers to other authors multiple times but in this instance you want that as it will produce a lengthy next reads list. The author provides a great overview of not just the design concept, but also suggests a design ethics. Very interesting.
August 18, 2023
This level of design discourse reminded me of my time in graduate school. Lima is a master with his pulse on contemporary topics in design. I’d consider this required reading for any recent graduates.
October 30, 2024
don’t think i was the target audience for this—ideas covered are quite basic, feels geared towards someone completely new to the space. still, a decent introduction to the ethical dimensions of design as a discipline
Want to read
January 15, 2023Whether new the design or further along in your career, this is a MUST READ if you have a career in the field of design.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews