LEAP OF FAITH

As designers know, the whole process of making something centers on a certain leap of faith.  The challenge, the research, the insight, the plan, the construction...all of that has to work towards a realizable goal of course.  But behind it all as a kind of impetus is the belief that the design will work in the world just as well as it did in our imagination.

Design – any design from a logo to a starship – is therefore a leap into the unknown with only a concept to keep you aloft.  Designers get used to this and call it habit.  But we should never lose sight of the power of this kind of trust.

There is always that moment in which faith in the design has to overcome doubt that it will do what it should.

It is in that spirit that I nominate Abbas Ibn Firnas into a kind of Design Hall of Fame.  Not so much as a designer but more for the inspiration he provides in the crucial area of leaps.

Abbas Ibn Firnas is not a familiar name even though an airport in Iraq and a crater on the Moon are named for him.  But read on and see if you don’t agree that he represents something essential, even quintessential, in the dreams of all designers.

Abbas Ibn Firnas was a 9th century Berber inventor and scientist who lived in the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba in Al-Andalus, an area that is now part of Spain.  By the early 820s, a new Caliph named Abd al-Rahman II, like any enlightened monarch, had begun to draw a talented group of thinkers and dreamers to his court.  Among them were an innovative and influential Iraqi musician called Ziryab who fostered the development of the sciences and sponsored the young astronomer and poet Abbas Ibn Firnas.

Like Ziryab – like Da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin – Ibn Firnas explored a vast variety of projects in chemistry, physics, astronomy.  He designed star tables, built a planetarium, and invented a chain of rings that could be used to display the motions of the planets and stars.  He wrote poetry.  He designed his own highly accurate water clock, devised a way to make glass from sand, and invented a process for cutting rock crystal that allowed quartz to be cut more cheaply in Spain rather than being sent abroad.

In other words, like Da Vinci or Franklin, Ibn Firnas was one of those amazing makers and doers who inspire designers to apply their skills to the whole wide world and all of its fascinations.

But the capstone of this career did not occur until the year 875 when, at the ripe age of 65, Ibn Firnas designed, built, and tested his own flying machine.  Shades of Da Vinci again...but keep in mind that this was 600 years before the Renaissance. 

The device that Ibn Firnas built was really just a simple glider with little relationship to the graceful birds he so admired and studied.  Yet, and here is the Hall of Fame part, Ibn Firnas had enough faith in it that he promptly launched himself from a mountain to a large crowd and great fanfare.  Like any great designer, Ibn Firnas knew a thing or two about self-promotion as well. 

The flight was largely successful except, that is, for the landing part.  He injured his back so badly that many scholars think it may have affected his health and led to his eventual death 12 years later.  Historians who have studied accounts of the flight think that he probably did not pay enough attention to the way birds use their tails to adjust their landings.  His glider apparently had no tail and this accounted for the bumpy touchdown. 

Design may be about trust in the making of things, but don’t forget to sweat the details.

Nonetheless, it is really the inspiration, the attempt, the hope that remains with us.   It is his leap of faith that we should keep in mind as we present our sketches, introduce our projects, or even jump off our own creative mountains.