Annual investigation conference on Design which adopts the theme from Tomás Maldonado's classical essay The Projectual Hope, aiming to reflect about the performance of creativity in times of crisis. The event counts with a set of invited guests, together with the presentation of communications selected from a blind call for papers and destined to publication.

Presentation

The opportunity to reflect on the wide range of conceptual and operational problems placed by Design, considered as a project or as a product that accentuates the dialectics of the concrete, has been wasted. It is the conscience of this fault that generates the will to provide some systematization to the reflection, generating routines able to supply the sense of community of practice and to give visibility to this disciplinary corpus, both in itself and in its several specialized branches, from art to communication and industry.

Many of the themes discussed both by designers and culture critics and thinkers gravitate around the improvement of life conditions and of the aesthetical and economical value of the products, being them tangible or immaterial. This means the world of Design is intimately connected to society's concrete problems, although it is often taken as superfluous, mostly within the environments most resistant to the incorporation of projectual dynamics, or incapable of allocating creativity to certain ends.

The Projectual Hope (1970) came precisely to alert to the several dimensions of Design which, by their ethical, speculative and economical nature, besides the traditional technical and aesthetical dimensions, or even artistic, may place it in the joint between environment and society, where Utopia easily emerges.

In the field of Design, the phenomenological function appears connected to the semiotic one – the capacity to create joins the capacity to see -, whose dynamics influence the acquisition of analytical capacity about the interaction between the material and the human environment. In the consumption societies, Design also appears between politics and individuals, because of its intrinsic capacity of shaping desire or, in other words, of rationalizing the need and acculturate pleasure. Thus, being the government of things directly connected to the government of individuals, it's easier to understand not only the ambition of some artists to lead the “revolution” but also the appetite for power to “regulate” art.

Both in its visual and material side, nowadays Design deals with the apocalyptic forecasts resulting from the overproduction, the drain of resources and the increase of residues, worsened by the rapid obsolescence of goods, the necessary optimization of work and collateral energetic savings, incorporating the need to reach all audiences, including those less favoured. But if these problems accentuate the designer's social responsibility, they also have contributed to the development of innovation strategies capable of achieving balances and providing answers that legitimate the progressive de-materialization, the rationalization of consumption or even the established economic order. Most of the human landscape is inexorably determined by Design. Through Design, cities became objects and facts of communication, as well as products. The image of cities exposes the confrontation between signs and brand systems which arouse semiotic interpretations simultaneously able to contextualize and challenge the most common artistic ideology and will. This sort of popular art accentuated the demands of legibility and effectiveness. Being able to provoke and assault, it allows the actualization of codes and formal repertoires, increasing the complexity of communication processes.

The projectual praxis reveals that the overcoming of the stereotype elapses from the critical conscience before the designers's operational and existential field: the creation of reality. Reality which has been changing at considerable pace through the imposition of new media connected to the performative arts as much as to the production and communication media, and whose interfaces don't cease to reconfigure everyday experience.

Within this frame, this conference aims to answer two crucial questions. The first is to know if the field of Design (graphic, visual, multimedia, industrial or fashion) presents a common disciplinary or academic scope, bringing together a set of inter and transdisciplinary perspectives, allowing to continue to think Design in a broad sense. The second is to understand how may Design contribute to unblock transversal dead-locks to several fields of contemporary society, being them cultural, social or economical.

In this sense, we intend to congregate a mosaic of contributions directly derived from investigation not only in the fields of Design as well as its theory and technology, but also from aesthetics, semiotics, anthropology, sociology and culture in general. Therefore, all those interested in these matters are invited to present proposals within the following thematic panels: 1. Communication; 2. Product; 3. Theory; and 4. Fashion.

University of Beira Interior currently offers six degrees in Design, between 1st and 2nd cycles. It gathers excellent conditions to the development of reflection habits focused on their different domains. Through DESIGNA, it aims to open to the routine of mingling actors of ideas, aware that the dissemination of concepts is encouraged by collaborative and network efforts and that it very much depends on the convergence need and on the encounter of investigators in such fora.

Portugal needs Design! - Society as a whole profits directly from creative investment, and the survival of industry nowadays depends on the capacity to innovate on products and services. The formation of designers favours social well-being directly, answering to concrete problems and, indirectly, through the creation of value that reflects on the increase of competition.

Together with the scientific component, the conference DESIGNA 2011 looks precisely to raise awareness to the fact that the investment on talent may be seen as a factor of improvement on life quality and even an answer to the notorious crisis.