Alice Rawsthorn on discovering design, her favourite designers and high heels Alice Rawsthorn, 54, the design critic of the International Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times, has contributed essays to books on design and culture, and written a biography of Yves Saint Laurent. Her latest book, Hello World: Where Design Meets Life (Hamish Hamilton), is about the changing role of design in our lives. A trustee of the Arts Council England, the Michael Clark dance company and the Whitechapel Gallery, London, she is also the chairman of the board of trustees of the Chisenhale Gallery in London, where she lives. Good design Our perception of good design changes over time because it is a constantly evolving concept and it tends to be about a combination of qualities. If I had to identify non-negotiable components of good design, I would say that whatever we are talking about absolutely has to fulfil its function. Another non-negotiable component of good design is that it has to be responsible, whether that is ethically or environmentally. It should also enliven our lives in some way - it might be by introducing us to a new activity that is particularly beguiling, or it might be because a design project fulfils its function by solving a serious problem in our lives. Irma Boom The Dutch designer Irma Boom designed my book Hello, World. Frankly, it is worth writing a book just to work with her. I have a collection of her books, and this one, which is a catalogue of the collection at the design museum in Zurich, is one of my favourites. I was thrilled when she said yes to working on my book, but she is not the kind of designer you give a brief to. For her it was a challenge, as my publisher didn't have as big a budget as she is accustomed to, but she has done a brilliant job. Photo: Ania Wawrzkowicz Shoes Fashion has given me huge pleasure over the years. When I was a little girl I was a tomboy, but even then I was very particular about the jeans and T-shirts I wore. I love Pierre Hardy's shoes - this pair [pictured], which I bought about six months ago, is one of my favourites. He is such a good designer and understands the physics of a shoe perfectly, so there is just enough support in the straps for you to be able to wear them without acute discomfort. Pierre is delightful; whenever I go to Paris I usually see him somewhere, generally holding forth at Café de Flore. New talent I am the chairman of the trustees of a local gallery, the Chisenhale in east London, which I have visited for many years. It opened in the 1980s, and during the very late 80s and early 90s had an incredible series of exhibitions, including Wolfgang Tillmans's first institutional show. He is one of my favourite artists, and I have several of his photographs. The last exhibition there was by Helen Marten, a young British artist. The Chisenhale has a tradition of showing the important artists of the future very early in their careers, and I am absolutely confident that Marten is among them. Vases These vases [pictured] are by the Dutch product designer Hella Jongerius, who is based in Berlin. I first met her in about 2000. At that point design had been a boys' club for a very long time, and Jongerius was really the first woman to become an A-list industrial designer. A lot of her work is about trying to imbue massmanufactured industrial products with the kind of intimacy and quirkiness that we associate with handcrafted objects or much-loved antiques. In these pieces she has achieved this through the contrast of glass and ceramic, which are materials not typically used together, and by using the optical illusion of tape that seems to mask a gap between the two. Soup spoon I love examples of design that show lateral thinking. This soup spoon [pictured] by Arne Jacobsen, the grandee of Scandinavian modernism, is an example of that. It is part of a cutlery collection he designed in 1959 for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, for which he had also designed the building. When the hotel opened, apparently the Danish media relentlessly poked fun at Jacobsen's cutlery. He designed the spoons for both left-handed and right-handed people by placing the handle on one or other side rather than in the middle. His reason for making them like this is that it means that if the spoon slips in your hand, it will naturally propel the soup away from you, into the bowl, it is hoped, and not all over your outfit or your Pierre Hardy shoes.