WEBVTT

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Design is a slippery
and elusive phenomenon,

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which has meant different
things at different times.

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But all truly inspiring design projects
have one thing in common:

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they began with a dream.

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And the bolder the dream,

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the greater the design feat
that will be required to achieve it.

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And this is why the greatest
designers are almost always

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the biggest dreamers
and rebels and renegades.

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This has been the case throughout history,

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all the way back to the year 300 BC,

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when a 13-year-old became the king

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of a remote, very poor
and very small Asian country.

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He dreamt of acquiring land,
riches and power

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through military conquest.

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And his design skills --

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improbable though it sounds --

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would be essential
in enabling him to do so.

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At the time,

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all weapons were made by hand
to different specifications.

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So if an archer ran out
of arrows during a battle,

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they wouldn't necessarily be able
to fire another archer's arrows

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from their bow.

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This of course meant that they would
be less effective in combat

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and very vulnerable, too.

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Ying solved this problem

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by insisting that all bows and arrows
were designed identically,

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so they were interchangeable.

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And he did the same for daggers,
axes, spears, shields

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and every other form of weaponry.

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His formidably equipped army
won batter after battle,

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and within 15 years,

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his tiny kingdom had
succeeded in conquering

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all its larger, richer,
more powerful neighbors,

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to found the mighty Chinese Empire.

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Now, no one, of course,

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would have thought of describing
Ying Zheng as a designer at the time --

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why would they?

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And yet he used design
unknowingly and instinctively

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but with tremendous ingenuity

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to achieve his ends.

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And so did another equally
improbable, accidental designer,

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who was also not above using
violence to get what he wanted.

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This was Edward Teach, better known
as the British pirate, Blackbeard.

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This was the golden age of piracy,

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where pirates like Teach
were terrorizing the high seas.

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Colonial trade was flourishing,

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and piracy was highly profitable.

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And the smarter pirates like him
realized that to maximize their spoils,

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they needed to attack
their enemies so brutally

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that they would surrender on sight.

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So in other words,

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they could take the ships
without wasting ammunition,

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or incurring casualties.

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So Edward Teach redesigned
himself as Blackbeard

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by playing the part of a merciless brute.

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He wore heavy jackets and big hats
to accentuate his height.

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He grew the bushy black beard
that obscured his face.

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He slung braces of pistols
on either shoulder.

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He even attached matches to the brim
of his hat and set them alight,

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so they sizzled menacingly
whenever his ship was poised to attack.

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And like many pirates of that era,

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he flew a flag that bore
the macabre symbols

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of a human skull
and a pair of crossed bones,

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because those motifs had signified death
in so many cultures for centuries,

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that their meaning
was instantly recognizable,

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even in the lawless, illiterate
world of the high seas:

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surrender or you'll suffer.

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So of course, all his sensible
victims surrendered on sight.

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Put like that,

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it's easy to see why Edward Teach
and his fellow pirates

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could be seen as pioneers
of modern communications design,

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and why their deadly symbol --

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(Laughter)

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there's more --

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why their deadly symbol
of the skull and crossbones

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was a precursor of today's logos,

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rather like the big red letters
standing behind me,

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but of course with a different message.

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(Laughter)

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Yet design was also used to nobler ends

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by an equally brilliant and equally
improbable designer,

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the 19th-century British nurse,
Florence Nightingale.

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Her mission was to provide
decent healthcare for everyone.

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Nightingale was born into a rather
grand, very wealthy British family,

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who were horrified when she volunteered
to work in military hospitals

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during the Crimean War.

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Once there, she swiftly realized

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that more patients were dying
of infections that they caught there,

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in the filthy, fetid wards,

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than they were of battle wounds.

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So she campaigned
for cleaner, lighter, airier clinics

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to be designed and built.

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Back in Britain,

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she mounted another campaign,

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this time for civilian hospitals,

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and insisted that the same design
principles were applied to them.

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The Nightingale ward, as it is called,

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dominated hospital design
for decades to come,

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and elements of it are still used today.

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But by then,

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design was seen as a tool
of the Industrial Age.

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It was formalized and professionalized,

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but it was restricted to specific roles

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and generally applied in pursuit
of commercial goals

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rather than being used intuitively,

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as Florence Nightingale, Blackbeard
and Ying Zheng had done.

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By the 20th century,

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this commercial ethos was so powerful,

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that any designers who deviated from it

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risked being seen as cranks
or subversives.

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Now among them is one
of my great design heroes,

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the brilliant László Moholy-Nagy.

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He was the Hungarian artist and designer

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whose experiments with the impact
of technology on daily life

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were so powerful

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that they still influence
the design of the digital images

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we see on our phone and computer screens.

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He radicalized the Bauhaus Design
School in 1920s Germany,

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and yet some of his former
colleagues shunned him

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when he struggled to open a new
Bauhaus in Chicago years later.

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Moholy's ideas were as bold
and incisive as ever,

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but his approach to design
was too experimental,

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as was his insistence
on seeing it, as he put it,

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as an attitude, not a profession
to be in tune with the times.

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And sadly, the same applied

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to another design maverick:
Richard Buckminster Fuller.

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He was yet another
brilliant design visionary

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and design activist,

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who was completely committed
to designing a sustainable society

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in such a forward-thinking way

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that he started talking about
the importance of environmentalism

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in design in the 1920s.

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Now he, despite his efforts,

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was routinely mocked as a crank
by many in the design establishment,

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and admittedly,

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some of his experiments failed,

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like the flying car
that never got off the ground.

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And yet, the geodesic dome,

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his design formula to build
an emergency shelter

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from scraps of wood, metal, plastic,

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bits of tree, old blankets,
plastic sheeting --

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just about anything
that's available at the time --

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is one of the greatest feats
of humanitarian design,

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and has provided sorely needed refuge

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to many, many people
in desperate circumstances

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ever since.

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Now, it was the courage
and verve of radical designers

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like Bucky and Moholy

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that drew me to design.

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I began my career as a news journalist
and foreign correspondent.

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I wrote about politics, economics
and corporate affairs,

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and I could have chosen
to specialize in any of those fields.

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But I picked design,

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because I believe it's one of the most
powerful tools at our disposal

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to improve our quality of life.

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Thank you, fellow TED design buffs.

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(Applause)

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And greatly as I admire the achievements
of professional designers,

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which have been extraordinary and immense,

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I also believe

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that design benefits hugely
from the originality,

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the lateral thinking

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and the resourcefulness
of its rebels and renegades.

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And we're living at a remarkable
moment in design,

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because this is a time when the two camps
are coming closer together.

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Because even very basic advances
in digital technology

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have enabled them to operate
increasingly independently,

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in or out of a commercial context,

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to pursue ever more ambitious
and eclectic objectives.

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So in theory,

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basic platforms like crowdfunding,
cloud computing, social media

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are giving greater freedom
to professional designers

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and giving more resources
for the improvisational ones,

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and hopefully,

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a more receptive response to their ideas.

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Now, some of my favorite
examples of this are in Africa,

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where a new generation of designers

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are developing incredible
Internet of Things technologies

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to fulfill Florence Nightingale's dream
of improving healthcare

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in countries where more people
now have access to cell phones

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than to clean, running water.

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And among them is Arthur Zang.

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He's a young, Cameroonian design engineer

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who has a adapted a tablet
computer into the Cardiopad,

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a mobile heart-monitoring device.

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It can be used to monitor the hearts
of patients in remote, rural areas.

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The data is then sent
on a cellular network

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to well-equipped hospitals
hundreds of miles away

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for analysis.

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And if any problems are spotted
by the specialists there,

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a suitable course of treatment
is recommended.

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And this of course saves many patients

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from making long, arduous, expensive
and often pointless journeys

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to those hospitals,

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and makes it much, much likelier

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that their hearts
will actually be checked.

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Arthur Zang started working
on the Cardiopad eight years ago,

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in his final year at university.

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But he failed to persuade
any conventional sources

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to give him investment to get
the project off the ground.

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He posted the idea on Facebook,

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where a Cameroonian
government official saw it

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and managed to secure
a government grant for him.

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He's now developing
not only the Cardiopad,

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but other mobile medical devices
to treat different conditions.

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And he isn't alone,

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because there are many other
inspiring and enterprising designers

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who are also pursuing
extraordinary projects of their own.

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And I'm going to finish
by looking at just a few of them.

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One is Peek Vision.

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This is a group of doctors
and designers in Kenya,

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who've developed an Internet of Things
technology of their own,

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as a portable eye examination kit.

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Then there's Gabriel Maher,

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who is developing a new design language

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to enable us to articulate the subtleties
of our changing gender identities,

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without recourse
to traditional stereotypes.

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All of these designers and many more
are pursuing their dreams,

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by the making the most
of their newfound freedom,

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with the discipline
of professional designers

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and the resourcefulness
of rebels and renegades.

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And we all stand to benefit.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)