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Attoma, Paris Media Catalyst
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Design has the power to
change reality.

Sebastiaan Vanhecke, Consultant Kite Consultants, Antwerp
  • PS:
    Why can designers help solve social problems?
  • SV:

    Good question! Not an easy thing to answer. I believe a designer is always to trying to do better or find a new way. Good businessmen try to steal and copy, good designers try to find that new solution or new thing. If you have a problem you don’t try to steal other solutions. I think designers are great at looking at details and finding new links from all the semi-solutions they try to create new and better solutions. I think designers just think differently to normal “analytical” thinkers.

  • PS:
    What is the next step for design?
  • SV:

    The Internet brings about new possibilities. Design is more open to everybody. The web gives people more access to design; 99designs is bringing good design to a wider audience. You see the same happening with other social problems, Google book scanning, reCaptcha, these Human Intelligent Tasks are great things. This is just the beginning for design.

    I believe design will start to become more open to the common man – that everyone will be able to call themselves designers. Normal people will be able to find new links and new connections. Designers will find this frightening, but the individual will be less important and collaborative input will become even more important than it is now.

I'm on an adventure - to explore the limits of design's ability to solve social problems, big and small. To do this I attempted to solve 50 problems in 50 days using design. I also spent time with 12 of Europe's top design firms.