The Reality of Design, the Texture of the World

“There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them.”

This line comes from Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek, first published in 1971.

It took me many years to truly understand what it meant.

In university design buildings, the scene is familiar. We sit in front of screens, pushing lines, adjusting light, rendering forms. A shape can move from sketch to 3D model in a few hours. With the right prompts, AI can now do it in seconds. It reminds me of a childhood misunderstanding of the world: that if I wanted something badly enough, the world would become what I imagined.

The world on the screen is clean, obedient, and forgiving. It allows this illusion to last for a long time.

But industrial design is not a gentle discipline.

The first time I entered a workshop, I was struck by reality. Wood dust clung to my clothes. Machines vibrated so strongly that I stepped back without thinking. Metal rods rang faintly when they touched. Workers repeated precise movements, like an unspoken rhythm. When I tried to bend metal for the first time, the curve in my rendering was soft, almost fluid. The material answered with a sharp break.

A thought crossed my mind: Oh. It doesn’t want to.

That was the moment I understood that everything on the screen has no weight. From then on, the industrial world began to reveal its order. I learned that wood splits, clay collapses, fibers loosen. Materials respond to disregard with failure. Boundaries exist, whether we acknowledge them or not.

Over time, I realized that the struggle in industrial design education is not a lack of effort, but the structure of learning itself. We are often placed first in environments with little resistance. We can undo, revise, make things appear coherent. But once we leave the classroom, the world refuses us. Forms cannot be commanded. Structures cannot always be optimized. Materials resist. Processes fall silent.

The essence of industry is learning how to live with resistance. Surfaces are not smoothed by intention. Strength is not a number to be set. There are bodies, risks, habits, maintenance, misuse, sustainability, markets, costs, cultures. None of these have an undo button.

The reality of design answers a simple question: Can this exist in the world?

Sometimes I feel I will never fully learn design.

As an undergraduate, I faced chairs that could not stand. I believed art could be impulsive, narratives symbolic, visuals free and light. Grand concepts offered brief utopias for my imagination: fragile solutions wrapped in aesthetic stories. I exaggerated myself, ignored constraints, pretended not to see failure. I chased beauty and originality for their own sake—just to be different.

During my studies in Germany, the workshop felt like a rare privilege. I had a key, free access, little concern for time, budget, or space. Five years later, I knew every cleaner by name. They arrived at the metal workshop around four, moved room by room, and reached the product studio by six thirty. In that slow repetition, order accumulated. I learned that materials are not servants. They are collaborators. The slowness of the workshop is a long discipline.

My first private project with a brand involved designing recyclable packaging for a camera, intended for mass production. After the presentation, they asked about manufacturing methods, structural logic, cost, failure, responsibility. I don’t remember my answers. I remember they were insufficient.

Today, I no longer emphasize uniqueness or beauty alone. Design does require narrative and cultural meaning—trust in medical devices, emotional safety in car interiors, symbolism in brand objects. But industrial beauty also lies elsewhere: in the alignment between a handle and the hand’s force; in a button that responds to the lightest touch; in an interface found without thought. Beauty grows from inside the object, from its logic and its relationship to the body. It exists between “looking good” and “working well”—clear-eyed, neither decorative nor crude.

In professional life, I came to understand that systems engineering and digital processes also carry reality. Markets demand speed. Simulation reveals failure early. Parametric models embed constraints. 3D printing and CNC operate between screen and hand. They all serve the same purpose: to expose risk sooner, to make consequences visible earlier.

The clarity of industrial design lies in accepting the weight of reality. And clarity itself is a moral stance.

Real products are held, stepped on, forgotten, used for decades, passed on, sometimes harming the body. Perhaps we never conquer the world. Designers certainly do not. And so design requires slowness—a shift from what I want to make to what the world allows. Under harsh light, things show their true form.

In closing, I admire the so-called super heroes. Every era has people who combine resources, talent, and intelligence into lasting creativity. I have also felt disappointed by my own ordinariness. After years of study and work, I still introduce myself as a designer with hesitation, often with doubt. But I am grateful to live in a time that allows ordinary voices to be heard. It gave me just enough courage to write these words.

From the founder of DALANG