The argument carried on in a sphere We need not allow ourselves to be abashed by any suggestion that the old metaphors are out of date and ought to be superseded. We have only to remember that they are, and always were, metaphors, and that they are still “living” metaphors so long as we use them to interpret direct experience. Metaphors only become dead when the metaphor is substituted for the experience, and the argument carried on in a sphere of abstraction without being at every point related to life. Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker metaphor
Only in terms of other things No legislation could prevent the making of verbal pictures: God walks in the garden, He stretches out His arm, His voice shakes the cedars, His eyelids try the children of men. To forbid the making of pictures about God would be to forbid thinking about God at all, for man is so made that he has no way to think except in pictures. But continually, throughout the history of the Jewish-Christian Church, the voice of warning has been raised against the power of the picture-makers: “God is a spirit”, “without body, parts or passions”; He is pure being, “I AM THAT I AM”. The fact is, that all language about everything is analogical; we think in a series of metaphors. We can explain nothing in terms of itself, but only in terms of other things. Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker Metaphors We Live ByYou only understand something relative to something you already understand metaphoranalogy
A renaming of the already named A true metaphor is a swift and violent twisting of language, A renaming of the already named. It's meant to expire in a sudden flash of light And to reveal—in that burst of illumination— A correspondence that must be literally accurate. Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing metaphornames
The door handle is the handshake of a building Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses What is this static modernism? metaphordoorsinteraction
The strange familiar and the familiar strange The problem solver, when confronted with a new and yet unsolved problem, overlays the structure of the unsolved problem with an apparently similar problem with which he or she is experienced. Making the strange familiar and the familiar strange are also principally based on the use of analogy. Peter G. Rowe, Design Thinking metaphoranalogy
An emblem of friendship Bridges make connections; they bring people together—a role that has made them a traditional emblem of friendship. Consider the town of Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina. When fighting between ethnic factions broke out there in the 1990s, nothing symbolized the social disintegration more clearly than the destruction of a sixteenth-century stone-arch bridge that had linked the two parts of the town on opposite banks of the Neretva River. And the emblem of efforts to heal the divisions is a rebuilt bridge, opened with fireworks and fanfare in July of 2004. Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape metaphorarchitectureengineering
Metaphors We Web By An Essay by Maggie Appleton maggieappleton.com As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson made clear in their touchstone book Metaphors We Live By, metaphors are the basis of all human thought and reasoning. The metaphors we use to speak about the web are not simply linguistic trivia – they determine how we understand it on a fundamental level. It determines what we think the web is capable of, what risks, opportunities, and challenges it poses. Which means the metaphors we use to think about the web profoundly influence what we think the web is, what we think we can do with it, and how we might change or evolve it. …Out of all of these metaphors [for the web], the two most enduring are paper and physical space. Metaphors We Live ByMenus, Metaphors and Materials: Milestones of User Interface Design metaphorwww
Websites are not living rooms and other lessons for information architecture An Essay by Sarah R. Barrett medium.com While there is a lot that IA can learn from actual architecture or city planning, websites aren’t buildings or cities, and they don’t have to work like them. Instead, they should be designed according to the same principles that people’s brains expect from physical experiences. informationsoftwaremetaphor
Negative Creativity An Article by Scott Alexander slatestarcodex.com Coming up with entirely novel ideas is really, really hard. Misinterpretation as inspirationSit Down And Think About It For Five Minutes ideascreativitymetaphor
Man in the Middle: The Designer A Book by C. Wright Mills www.carlosvieirareis.com The old unityDefining craftsmanshipThe central value for which they standThe star systemAs if it were an advertisement+3 More designsociety
The old unity The most fundamental splits in contemporary life occur because of the break-up of the old unity of design, production and enjoyment. life
Defining craftsmanship By craftsmanship I refer to a style of work and a way of life having the following characteristics: In craftsmanship there is no ulterior motive for work other than the product being made and the processes of its creation. In craftsmanship, plan and performance are unified, and in both, the craftsman is master of the activity and of himself in the process. The craftsman is free to begin his working according to his own plan, and during the work he is free to modify its shape and the manner of its shaping. Since he works freely, the craftsman is able to learn from his work, to develop as well as use his capacities. The craftsman’s way of livelihood determines and infuses his entire mode of living. For him there is no split of work and play, of work and culture. His work is the mainspring of his life; he does not flee from work into a separate sphere of leisure; he brings to his non-working hours the values and qualities developed and employed in his working time. craftwork
The central value for which they stand What I am suggesting to you is that designers ought to take the value of craftsmanship as the central value for which they stand; that in accordance with it they ought to do their work; and that they ought to use its norms in their social and economic and political visions of what society ought to become. designcraft
The star system The distributor is ascendant over many producers who become the rank-and-file workmen of the commercially established cultural apparatus. The star system of American culture – along with the commercial hacks – tend to kill off the chance of the cultural workman to be a worthy craftsman. work
As if it were an advertisement He designs the product itself as if it were an advertisement, for his aim and his task – acknowledged by the more forthright – is less to make better products than to make products sell better.
The Big Lie “We only give them what they want.” This is The Big Lie of mass culture and of debased art, and also it is the weak excuse for the cultural default of many designers. culture
The Fetish of human life To understand the case of America today, one must understand the economic trends and the selling mechanics of a capitalist world in which the mass production and the mass sale of goods has become The Fetish of human life, the pivot both of work and of leisure. Existing commodities must be worn out more quickly for as the market is saturated, the economy becomes increasingly dependent upon what is called replacement. It is then that obsolescence comes to be planned and the economic cycle deliberately shortened. economics
The big split The big split among designers and their frequent guilt; the enriched muddle of ideals they variously profess and the insecurity they often feel about the practice of their craft; their often great disgust and their crippling frustration. design