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From Core77's Hack2School: The Ultimate Design Student Guide.

I have a few friends that are tragic slaves to fashion. But for me, it's more sad to see how many industrial designers are trained to be slaves to function. While both extremes may be tragic, I've always wondered why the fashion designers seem to have all the fun. Why has fashion managed to tell so many stories, and industrial design so few?

Design today is not neutral. It is biased and targeted at specific audiences based on emotional triggers that have a specific form. Don't be timid about it.

Well that may be changing as more product designers see the value of storytelling as a tool for creating form and delivering new product experiences. 'Designer as Author' is an emerging concept in education that seeks to fill this cultural void--where products are not slaves to function, where sometimes Form follows Art, where products can be ideas first and utility second, where new stories lead the market--not follow it, and where design proposals introduce alternative social values into pop culture.

Think you might have that mutant design author gene in your DNA? Then you may need some new tools. Here's six introductory tips for getting the story into the form.

Play with Words
Wordsmiths have long been able to deliver complex ideas about the human condition with simple emotional stories. Language is the starting point for any design process; words define your goals and often determine the results. Inventive keywords can help you reposition the product to breach new categories. Literature is full of theoretical tools like deconstruction for the designer who learns to play with language to build meaningful forms, intellectual positions, and experiences.

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See more tips, tricks, and lifehacks for design students at core77.com/hack2school