Design by Nature: The How and Why of Meaning

Adapted from Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design (New Riders)

By Maggie Macnab

Anthropologists don’t know exactly how human beings originally came to make meaning through art, but at some point in prehistory our ancestors had the brilliant idea that a two-dimensional mark could conceptually represent a three-dimensional object without the necessity of its presence. This led to imagining events that hadn’t yet occurred by projecting a range of possibilities into the future. It was a crucial step to use nonlinear time as a key component of conceptual thought and symbolize ideas, things, or future scenarios. A circle could be the sun or a cycle; a spiral could express life in the form of a persistent plant tendril or be a series of connected, transitioning seasons that occur year after year. The highly simplified and abstracted nature of the symbol is exactly why its meaning is relatively stable anywhere and anytime. The power of a symbol is elegance at its most supreme. The human ability to make the intellectual connection between a two-dimensional mark on a surface and a three-dimensional object in reality—or in the imagination—changed everything. Design is based precisely on this ability. You must weave elements, structures, and imaginative ideas into the fundamental basis of the message you want to express in a way that at a minimum makes sense to most people, and at best inspires involvement or action.

Variable star V838 Monocerotis (Greek for “unicorn”), a nova-like variable star, and its unusual surrounding “light echo” lies near the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy about 20,000 light-years from the sun (left). Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI). An alchemical engraving of an ouroboros devouring its own tail from an engraving by Lucas Jennis in De Lapide Philosophico. Published 1635 CE (right). Source: Wikipedia, Ouroboros.

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