If the whole world followed you, would you be pleased with where you took it?
- Conversations With God
Some years ago, through pure frustration, I resolved to make a better wheelbarrow. And then a better vacuum cleaner. And then a better washing machine. My intention was to create products that served their purpose better than anything else available.
In that respect, I wanted to follow the path of my hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In 2004, BBC viewers voted Brunel the greatest Briton ever after Churchill, so I am not alone. Yet his profession - engineering - is not particularly highly regarded. Design used to mean bridges, railways, purpose. Personally, I don't see the difference between designers and engineers. They are one.
Most people only consider how something was designed if it doesn't work. Real design works. The best products evolve as part of a design process, in which the technology on the inside informs the way that they look on the outside. The success of companies such as JCB and Rolls-Royce Aerospace illustrates the importance of keeping technology and innovation at the heart of design. For the same reason, the Citroën DS, with its many technological patents, innovative suspension system and inimitable shape is inspired design and can stand shoulder to shoulder, or bumper to bumper, alongside cars designed today.
For me, design is about how something works, not how it looks. It's what's inside that counts. The best designs come from someone questioning everything. Designers, engineers look at the same things as everyone else. But they see something different. And they think what could be - and make it happen... even if it takes 5,127 prototypes to succeed.
- James Dyson, Contemporary Design Icons
