Industrial design

Industrial design" has been enriched by new practices largely influenced by branding and digital technologies.

At the same time, global issues such as sustainable development, energy and the relocation of industries have led to new and sometimes contrasting professional developments.

Design activities have multiple realities, but we can extract the root by finding its fundamentals through :

• a brief history of the emergence of industrial design;

• an analysis of its characteristics and designers.

As design has evolved along with the company, it's interesting to look at the designer's relationship with the company and, in particular, with engineering sciences. Then we'll look at how the professional offer has adapted to unstable markets and reorganizing companies.

The designer, willingly functionalist, is evolving significantly in contact with other creative professions. Design management is being modified by brand strategies and commercial communication, between marketing and "emotional engineering".

Design is based on a body of knowledge and know-how. An examination of university teaching enables us to situate ourselves in relation to the training courses that meet the expectations of professionals. In terms of research, can design be integrated into academic research, and if so, is it necessary to work on a theoretical approach to design?

To understand how contemporary industrial design is experiencing these paradigmatic shifts, we need to study :

• the transformation of design tools through digital modeling and prototyping;

• acculturation to design engineering methods ;

• the disruption of creative strategies by major brands;

• the return in force of the decorative arts and the bubbling of creativity in all its forms;

• the emergence of a new material culture with Eco-Design, Service Design and Alter-Design;

• the revolution of shared data on the internet with co-creation networks ;

• the distribution of the power to innovate (People Hack) and the prefiguration of new modes of production (Fab Labs).

In a mutant society, all derivatives of Design are possible. But in every era, design reinvents itself while remaining itself.