Design and Narration: Languages, structures and narrative models as matter for design

Abstract

Every design project is the history of a transformation occurring as an answer to a certain need or opportunity. The action of narrating is therefore implicitly (and in some cases also explicitly) present in every design process. The understanding and study of the constituent elements of narration can therefore represent an instrument of conscious appropriation of techniques and methods often enacted in a spontaneous, unconscious, habitual way. Unlike design, a young discipline whose methodological apparatuses still need to be constructed and perfected, narration has a long history. It has seen a rich and articulated decoding process, which has enriched itself from time to time by having crossed the most various fields - from visual art to music, from literature to multimedia. The aim of the present paper is to underline the potential of narrative languages, formal structures and content schemata in the design field, by putting in contact the perspective of the writer-scriptwriter (who deals with narrative design) and the perspective of the designer (who deals with design as narration and with the narration of design). As exemplifi cation of such potentialities, the paper presents some projects wittingly generated and examined with a narratological approach and some methodological remarks derived from direct experiences. The reported experiences intentionally belong to two very distant worlds, the field of the Cultural Assets and the one of the Commercial brands, to emphasize the versatility and richness of the approach.

Key words: design, narration, brand, cultural assets.