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Struggling with design work, sketching, or managing academic pressure? Whether you're a student balancing deadlines with creativity or an educator seeking clarity in your teaching approach, this blog offers focused, practical support in Design & Technology — from visual communication to process thinking and digital fabrication. Since 2007, Design Journal SOS has helped readers overcome real classroom challenges with grounded strategies and insight. 💬 Have a topic you're curious about? Or found something here that helped you? I welcome your questions and reflections — they keep this space alive and evolving. 🔗 Follow for updates: Facebook /designjournalsos (Copyright © 2007–2025 Daniel Lim)

01 March 2022

‘Practical’ & ‘Luxury’ Innovative Design Directions

“What the heck is that?”

Never mind, I hear you.

I bet you have not heard of anyone talking about “Practical & Luxury” Innovation as Design Opportunities. There is no point presenting to you what every body can tell you. I’ll be nothing more than an echo chamber. 

However I do not purposely create these weird stuffs, so I have something different to tell you.

But they must have its purpose. I’ve consolidated two decades of thinking about this, and came to the conclusion that there may just be two broad categories of Design Opportunities you can think about. And decide which of them you wish to take on, for your Coursework.

Chat on Practical & Luxury Innovations

The former is your typical common good and meaningful value-added function project, combined to an existing product, to it’s primary function. To create an innovation.

The latter is a solution to an existing function; but the difference is that this innovation; “Luxury”, is luxury, because it is really not needed. It’s WANT, rather than NEED. It’s designed primarily for fun and entertainment. Not really enhancing or adding useful practical functionality. For the sake of being different or offering an alternative way of functionality. Nothing really wrong with that. It can be a very challenging design challenge. And very fun to work on. And it’s not an easy challenge compared to the ‘Practical’ innovation type of design. But this direction can be very fulfilling.

Hear more about this in the video.

The previous video I talked about earlier on in the chat here: https://youtu.be/b5wN6B5di-M

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