Designing Topics

There are, undoubtedly, women who are weak and silly, and simple, and who are taken advantage of by designing men. Until we have such systems of education as will tend to prevent women from being weak, simple, and silly, it is undoubtedly right to have laws punishing seduction with the utmost severity; but we have also ... ninnies among men, and ought we not, therefore, to have laws for their protection? An Act of the Legislature entitled “An Act for the Protection of Ninnies against designing Women” would be refreshing.
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)

In the planning and designing of new communities, housing projects, and urban renewal, the planners both public and private, need to give explicit consideration to the kind of world that is being created for the children who will be growing up in these settings. Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children with persons both older and younger than themselves.
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)

[During the 1930s] ... they put Ming the Merciless in charge of designing California gas stations. Favoring the architecture of his native Mongo, he cruised up and down the coast erecting raygun emplacements in white stucco. Lots of them featured superfluous central towers ringed with those strange radiator flanges that were a signature motif of the style, and made them look as though they might generate potent bursts of raw technological enthusiasm, if you could only find the switch to turn them on.
—William Gibson (b. 1948)