October 10
15.00-17.00
Venue: Center Rog
Trubarjeva cesta 72, 1000 Ljubljana
Common Sense as Balance: Designing What Matters
Industrial design today operates within an extremely complex environment – between rapidly evolving technologies, fragmented global markets, mounting environmental pressures, and the constant pursuit of market differentiation. Amid this abundance of information, innovation, and expectations, we often forget one of the most basic yet most valuable forms of human judgment: common sense.
Common sense – understood as grounded, intuitive, and holistic decision-making – is based not only on professional expertise, but also on a sense of context, prudence, and the ability to distinguish the essential from the non-essential. It is a natural, not always articulated form of understanding that often transcends disciplinary boundaries, seeking what is meaningful, sustainable, and ethical – not merely what is new, spectacular, or commercially attractive.
This year’s conference, Common Sense in Industrial Design, opens space for reflection on this form of knowledge, which is often pushed aside in contemporary design practice. We ask what it means to design thoughtfully at a time when the pace of development often exceeds the capacity for critical reflection. How can we establish a balance between innovation and usability, between the desire for visual differentiation and the responsibility toward the end user as well as the wider social and ecological context?
At the conference, designers and entrepreneurs with a design vision will present their work as a holistic activity – a fusion of analysis, empathy, technical skill, and ethical responsibility. They will highlight practices in which common sense is not an obstacle to innovation but its foundation. We will show that thoughtful, grounded design – aware of consequences, longevity, and usability – can provide the strongest and most enduring responses to the challenges of our time.
The focus will not only be on products, but also on decision-making processes, the relationships between designer, user, and client, and the balance between creative freedom and real constraints. The conference aims to place design once again within a broader framework: as a cultural, social, and ecological activity that demands more than aesthetic or technical innovation – it requires holistic judgment, best embodied by common sense.
