Our relationship with Moveable Type and The Renaissance

Moveable type was founded around 1041-1048 in China, the very early version of moveable types were made out of wood or clay for people to carve characters on to create texts, slowly it replaces handwritings. It is very limited in how many words a person is able to write by hand, so people being able to type creates a new chapter of the history. It give us opportunities to express, record, and deliver our learnings in a faster way. Moveable type provides an option to write stories, sharing knowledge in a form that can be easily recognized (whereas handwriting could be confusing to others), largely published, and stored.  Thanks to that we don’t have to vocally tell stories to our next generations, we can just have it printed in a book. The development of moveable type is also the beginning of type designers. People start to think creatively and experiment with different sizes and shapes of the letters. We as interaction designers, recognize how powerful design is; how one design could change the way people think and influences our behaviors. Followed up by the invention of moveable type is the Renaissance,  the revival of art and literature under the influence of classical models in the 14th-16th centuries.  “Renaissance Man” Leonardo di Vinci’s inspires us as interaction designers in so many ways: He believes that art is indisputably connected with science and nature and he uses this idea on everything he made, drew, and designed. I believe this could apply to design thinking as well. Art, science, and nature, how to balance them to make a great design is a question he left us to answer.