About Ralph Caplan: Ralph Caplan is a design consultant, writer, and public speaker.
A chair is the first thing you need when you don’t really need anything, and is therefore a peculiarly compelling symbol of civilization. For it is civilization, not survival, that requires design.
All our media are given over to things that are better left unsaid.
Designers shouldn’t design for museums any more than mummies should die for them.
Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous.
Attention must be paid’ is the cardinal rule of design discipline, for the designer is above all someone who pays attention to the situation at hand.
…no industrial designer worth his salt, or our attention, has been trained to work exclusively on any particular product, unless by accident. What he has been trained to do is practice a process called design, a process that includes esthetic choic...
We are … the un-proud non-possessors of objects whose chief substance is that of the transient symbol. Our Puritan fear of the love of things turns out to have been groundless after all, for we do not love things or even possess them: they pass thr...
