As the boundary between public and private (space and information) dissolves, the degree to which design can be used to articulate any distinctions remains highly questionable and leads us to question our role in shaping culture within society.

In creating a dialogue about the shift from private to public space, we were able to explore to what extent messages acquire their meaning from the way they are represented and the context within which they appear. By engaging the public in a dialogue and making a private dialogue public we were able to analyse the changing values of the message dependant on its media. This investigates the extent to which messages can be imbued with external meaning and value. This exercise questions the traditional role of designer as cultural messenger and author. Just how does the democratisation of cultural authorship affect the design profession?

The responses from each individual and their interpretations helped us gain an understanding of the current relationship between design, new media, a current obsession with the ‘new’, and the effect of a shift between private and public.
We hope to engage our participants and audience (creative industries and wider community) in the creation of a dialogue around the role of the designer in modern society, and draw attention to the effect of media in shaping the audience’s perception of a message.

These core principles relate to the role of the designer as author, the shift in meaning between private and public, and the concept of cultural and technological progression, at all costs. By challenging the role of media in our society we are taking steps towards defining a framework for the ‘new’ design. By embracing creativity as the defeat of habit and revelling in its inability to be quantified, we reject the new media technological demise of our industry. We seek to address our role in re-shaping the boundaries between private and public, and maintaining our social responsibility.