ny times mag - design issue

not sure if it will be availble online for long but the annual design issue of ny times magazine is out.

lead article Inspiration: Where Does It Come From? talks about what makes a designer:

In reality, designers and artists aren't separated by so sharp a line. When a designer sets out to improve an existing product, or to create a product that fills a newly perceived (or fabricated) need, she does not usually call in a focus group. She thinks, she tinkers, she reassesses -- much like an artist. Indeed, rather than thinking of a designer as a kind of artist, it might be better to regard the artist as a designer manque. For, as Loewy said, the designer ''ought to have a background in both engineering and art history'' and ''to be open to an extraordinarily broad range of influences.'' The designer ought to be an artist, and more. The greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance -- Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Piero della Francesca -- were also engineers, architects, mathematicians, inventors. In short, they were designers.

on the iPod - The Guts of a New Machine:

It is, in short, an icon. A handful of familiar cliches have made the rounds to explain this -- it's about ease of use, it's about Apple's great sense of design. But what does that really mean? ''Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,'' says Steve Jobs, Apple's C.E.O. ''People think it's this veneer -- that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.''

Votegetters - politics lacks memorable imagery so they asked top designers to create a poster and button for some of today's presidential candidates.