Design is a universal language
It is wrong to think that design is just a way of “wrapping” a product. It is not that simple. SA sees the design as the ability of the product to function in the real world. When we realise that it is the acoustics in most living rooms that is the biggest hindrance to obtain good sound, it is the design in our loudspeakers that makes them less sensitive to the acoustics of the living room than conventional speakers. It is an electro-acoustic design, but it is still design.
If we were not interested in electro-acoustic design, we would just expect you to change your living room when you buy loudspeakers. It is also design when we think of the way the loudspeaker co-operates with the amplifier, and makes the loudspeaker a so-called “easy load”. SA does not produce amplifiers so who could accuse us if we said that it is the amplifier producers’ responsibility to adjust their products to our loudspeakers? Because we do not want to require that you buy a new hi-fi system, when you buy new loudspeakers.
Design is to think of how the product functions in the best possible way. And SA sees it as a task that includes all the technical disciplines at the same time as form and colours.
This makes our idea of design incontrovertible and universal as you cannot discuss whether a loudspeaker should function in the acoustics of a room, because it must. Or if the loudspeaker has to co-operate with an amplifier, because it must. You cannot either talk about whether a loudspeaker sounds better, when it is placed visibly in the living room or as a central piece of furniture, because it does.
This is the task: to make the loudspeaker beautiful enough to deserve a placement among the other furniture. In other words you cannot help designing a product, but you can make it difficult for the product to function in the real world, and this is poor design. Design is a language. It is not spoken by those who do not have anything on their minds