Ian Lynam recently interviewed Kiyonori Muroga, the Editor in Chief of IDEA Magazine for the Japan Times.

An excerpt:

The increasing visual literacy of the public and the ubiquity of design software might suggest that now, more than ever, everyone is a designer. But Muroga disagrees.

“We have to remember that the basic cognitive ability of each human being is limited to the scale of a small tribal society,” he says. “You have to acquire reasoning power, knowledge and literacy to deal with a contemporary society empowered by technology and its invisible structure.”

When pressed further, Muroga says the claim that everyone is a designer can only be made “on a superficial level.”

“Mere familiarity with an application is not enough,” he says, “actual designers dwell in the realm of signs and signifiers. There is a meta-perspective that the layperson doesn’t have naturally that is necessary in order for design work to resonate culturally — it is something that is cultivated rather than innate.”

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