Design

We live in a world of designs.  It's quite easy to forget this or to overlook it, very easy in fact.  The main problem I have with people who denounce conspiracy theories is not whether or not they believe them but the fact that those who outright deny them almost always fall into one of two camps: those who deny them with plenty of evidence to back up that denial, and those who deny them with no other justification other than the often touted reply "No one could put that much effort into designing a plan that complex".  Therein lies the link between the title and the subject we discuss here.  Not conspiracy theories but simply Design.

This extends into almost every area of our lives and in an unsettling point of view, is reminiscent of many a totalitarian dream or nightmare whichever your outlook. 

The fact of the matter is that Design is often synonymous with control.  Further to this we live in a world that is designed.  Stop now and look at yourself.  The clothes you are wearing, the underwear the socks etc they were all designed by their manufacturers, their colours decided based on trends of that season, their shape decided either for function or for fashion.

You're reading my blog right now, the majority are on PC's running Windows or Mac, my omniscience allows me to know this even if you are part of the others using a mobile device or something else, the screen you are reading was designed, the keyboard, real or virtual was designed, the software you are using to view this web page was designed, those subscribing by email, your email client was designed.

As you can see the list goes on now we have to look into the detail, not just see but really take in what we see:

This

This is written in a Font, and if you have never developed Games or other memory intense programs for computers I would forgive your ignorance of what a font is or how it works.  Those 4 letters are not an image, they are not tiny images resized depending on the font size either.  Fonts are drawn to the screen.  A single letter although it may seem quite insignificant to you actually needs to be rendered tiny shape and line by tiny shape and line.  The processor time this takes up is a bitch and that's why in Games design we avoid rendering Fonts as much as possible and try and use images instead.

As you guessed it, this font and every font you've ever seen was designed too.

Going even deeper into out lives the very food we eat has been designed.  As natural as food may seem, at some point your supermarkets and suppliers will have designed the packaging, designed recipes for ready meals or for canned, or packaged food, the additives the ingredients etc.  Even something as simple as a Carrot will have elements of design.  The field it grew in would have been planned out, the food it was fed would have been selected, any plant steroids used to enhance and accelerate their growth [very common you would be surprised how many Tomatoes etc you are eating are full of steroids] all these things were chosen by design.  The Carrot itself will have been subjected to quality control procedures which decided if it was safe for sale - and in some cases if it 'looked good enough' or 'looked carrot enough' to be sold.

Lastly the drinking water, the purest most simplest thing we rely on is also subject to design, whether you buy bottled water which has had its packaging designed its name etc or if you drink tap water which in most developed countries contains additives the most common being fluoride and chlorine [yes, fluoride is added to tap water for 'health' reasons as well as levels of Chlorine as a cleaning agent] this is common in the UK and the USA.

We live in a World that was designed, right down to the T - literally!