In the overflowing shelves of books about designing and the endless bytes of how-to on the internet there is one aspect of the subject which is overlooked - how to make design impossible, or at least, more scarce. In this short rant I will try to fill that gap.

The first step in preventing a design from being created is to pose the question "Is it really needed?" I don't mean "needed" in the sense of a company needing to fill its lineup of seasonal offerings. I mean needed by people in the way they need an essential of life. That will eliminate 99% of all design ab initio.

If the proposed design passes the first hurdle the next question is "Will the benefits of its production outweigh the harm?" This probes the environmental effect of introducing it into the world, or perhaps we should say, into the garbage dumps of the world. ("Environmental" includes both physical and psychological impact.) This will eliminate 99% of the 1% which survived the first question.

In a world operating under these standards, a person's design objects will be treasured and repaired with reverence - all five or six of them.