In this talk, the columnist and author Alice Rawsthorn illuminate how the rebel designers start inspiring design projects. She found one common thing: they began with a dream. 

She listed some examples.

1) 13-year-old boy became the king of a remote back to the year 300 BC. His name was Ying Zheng (嬴政). He dreamt of acquiring land, riches and power through military conquest. At that time, all weapons were made by hand. Ying Zheng solved the archer problem, as well as others, e.g. daggers, axes, spears, shields and so on. His formidably equipped army won batter after batter. Within 15 years, his kingdom had successes in conquering all neighbours to found the mighty Chinese Empire. 

She called him “the designer at that time”.  He used design unknowingly and instinctively but with tremendous ingenuity to achieve his ends. 

2) Edward Teach, better known as the British pirate, was born at the golden age of piracy. Colonial trade was flourishing, and piracy was highly profitable. He realised that they needed to attach their enemies so brutally to maximise their spoils. So he redesigned himself as Blackbeard by playing the part of a merciless brute. He wore heavy jackets and big hats to accentuate his height. He grew the bushy black beard that obscured his face. He slung braces of pistols on either shoulder. He even attached matches to the brim of his hat and set them alight, so they sizzled menacingly whenever his ship was poised to attack. He flew a flag that bore the macabre symbols of a human skull and a pair of crossed bones, because those motifs had signified death in so many cultures for centuries. 

3) A British nurse, Florence Nightingale, was born into a rather grand, very wealthy British family. Her families were horrified when she volunteered to work in military hospitals during the Crimean War. When she started there, she realized that more patients were dying of infection in the filthy, fetid wards, than they were of battle wounds. So she campaigned for cleaner, lighter, airier clinics to be designed and built. 

By the 20th century, there are many brilliant designer as well. Hungarian artist whose experiments with the impact of technology on daily life was so powerful that they still influence the design of the digital images we see on our phone and computer screens. 

Some of her favourite examples are in Africa, where a new generation of designers are developing incredible Internet of Things technologies to fulfill Florence Nightingale’s dream of improving healthcare in countries where more people now have access to cell phones than to clean, running water. 

Arthur Zang, a young Cameroonian design engineer, has a adapted a tablet computer into the Cardiopad, a mobile heart-monitoring device. It can be used to monitor the hearts of patients in remote, rural areas. 

There are many other inspiring and enterprising designers who are also pursuing extraordinary projects of their own. And everybody else stand to benefit. 

resourcefulness (足智多谋的) of its rebels and renegades