Keeping it on the Surface: design, surfaces and taste

This chapter is about surfaces. It will attempt to outline how surface relates to taste, and how both are important subjects in design. Surface and taste are big subjects that can be approached from many angles and in the context of many different disciplinary frameworks. Surface, for instance, involves consideration of materials, making, person-object interactions (including maintenance), as well as the huge fields of colour and pattern. Taste has an enormous literature in both sociology and philosophy. The aim is simply to explore the smaller field in which concern with surface, taste and design overlap: what do designers, or others interested in designed objects, need to know to start thinking about this subject?