Our son is now 17 and the last few years has been trying to identify what are the chances of overlapping the things he has a passion for with the things he has skill in that might then be the basis for study at university and an eventual career.

Over the years he has turned out to have many of the skills that you would look for in a good designer. He can draw, is very aware of the visual environment around him and likes architecture, car design and everything Apple.

More than that, he is critical, impatient, not happy to put up with things that are wrong and immediately able to see what would improve the things around him. All of which would make him potentially a great designer.

But over the last couple of years it has been pretty obvious that I was heavily putting him off design. This was a surprise to me, if not him. After all, wouldn’t it be every design Mum or Dad’s dream to have their offspring succeed in their field, parent to child rivalry aside?

And now it looks like it’s a done deal; having spent the last few weeks visiting those universities of England which have Politics courses and then spending a few weeks with our local MP, in constituency and Parliament, including a lunch with Tony Blair, his route will not be that of design.

And of course I now feel bad. Isn’t someone like this exactly the type of person who should be entering the design profession? Ripe for an education that starts with the learning of skills (that must initially seem reminiscent of the school woodwork class) to understand materials and how they can be formed, solve problems and have attraction? That then encompasses creative processes, problem solving, communication, social science and art and architecture. That produces, at it’s best, visual design superstars like Jonathan Ive or innovators and service designers who are enhance both enterprise profitability or public service effectiveness. People who embrace environmental and inclusive design and believe they can save the world. He would be brilliant at that!

So why didn’t I want him to be a designer?

On reason is the amount of luck required to make it. My own career has hinged on moments of such huge luck that it is frightening. I thought the only outlet for my desire to combine art and making was in urban art sculpture until an identified visiting tutor from a local art college mentioned the “d” word to me. I had told her I thought that people in factories would enjoy their work more if their machinery was more like a one arm bandit (I’m writing this whilst waiting for a delayed plane in Las Vegas coincidentally).

I got into Central School of Art and Design (as it used to be called) for 3 reasons:
• I had to go to my Grandfathers funeral and met someone on the train who was having more fun in London than I was in Loughborough.
• I had a portfolio because my Dad gave me his old draughting table and set square and liked to draw chairs in elevation.
• An unidentified student from Hong Kong didn’t turn up at Central so after 8 weeks of waiting they eventually let my pestering self in.

And then my tutor was Hedda Beese who ran Bill Moggridge’s design studio in Kentish Town and for some reason she liked me, and Martin Darbyshire too.

So Danny De Iuliis made it to San Francisco and Apple, Paul Priestman and Nigel Goode made their fabulously successful company , Martin and I started Tangerine, and there was a lot more luck along that route too.

And more than that, I’ve gone from designing a stapler, car radios and a fizzy drink machine to designing technology services for our ageing population, strategies for helping Yemen fishermen catch better fish and help young Arabs get jobs, people open a bank account over a video screen and customers of Las Vegas Casinos know where they’re going, have a good time and book a show.

But I did have that luck, so, despite the hugely greater numbers of people who now study and expect a career in design, there would still be a place for someone if they were any good, wouldn’t there? He could have a ball doing that and do it better than me, no problem.

But at the end of the day he’s doing the more important thing. He understands design, he gets it. And he’ll take that into politics, or government or a local authority or what ever he does. And that’s so much better.

It’s not just designers we need. It’s people who get it and can act on that understanding and use the tools it brings in real situations where the “design” of the world actually takes place, by accident, unconsciously and with little regard for the users, customers, citizens who have to put up with the consequences.

We designers, and I am the worst, think design is terribly important, the answer to all problems and demanding an awareness much greater than an admiration of Jonathan Ive.

But what others do is so much more important than “design”. So he will do what he wants. My son, the greatest designer who will never be. And I won’t feel guilty about it.