On September 30, WIRED will host its first design conference. WIRED by Design will be held at Skywalker Sound in Marin County, California, and will feature today's top technologists, artists, and thinkers.

I started my college career studying mechanical engineering, but halfway through my sophomore year, I accidentally found my way into the world of design. I loved the problem-solving side of engineering—and the math—but I'll never forget the magnetic pull of a certain computer lab brimming with Macintoshes, each loaded with Illustrator, Photoshop, and PageMaker. My change of major felt like a seismic shift, and I worried that it meant I'd no longer be doing something “important,” but that's because back in 1996, I didn't understand what we at WIRED have come to realize: Design and technology just aren't that far apart. Yes, the core of my design coursework revolved around concepts like color theory and spatial systems, but all the while I was actually learning how to think critically and making the best use of—you guessed it—emergent technology.

Maybe you never thought about it this way, but designers touch and shape every single part of your day; they are a constant presence in your life. Your smartphone, glasses, activity tracker—someone made them, worrying over the details that turned those things into indispensable companions. From the x-height of the type on your car's in-dash display to the lumbar support of your new desk chair to that sacred moment every evening when you finally jettison your Flyknits, pretty much every experience has been lovingly crafted—one might even say engineered—by designers.

In fact, there's never been a better time to be a designer. Every day, powerful new tools and technologies put new opportunities at our fingertips. The designer's toolkit is ever-expanding, and contemporary advances in manufacturing, prototyping, and production have enabled nothing less than a modern renaissance in all forms of design, from industrial to graphic. Even better, I've been delighted to learn that the designer's quiver and the editor's quiver share more than a few arrows: We use systems and software as tools to unify, to improve function, and to beautify. Design is inextricably linked to innovation. The founders of this magazine understood this essential truth; as an organizing principle, the WIRED story has always centered on design.

You can see that manifest itself this month, across just about everything we do. You can see it in our third annual design issue. You can see it in the new edition of Design|Life, our yearly style manual for gadgets and gear. You can see it online at WIRED.com/design, which has become one of the most popular sections of our site under the visionary leadership of articles editor Cliff Kuang. And perhaps most excitingly, you'll see it at WIRED by Design, a live magazine event about how design and creativity are shaping a better future.

Cliff likes to say that design allows us to make sense of our technology, and he's right. That relationship has never been more important, particularly in the world we cover. It makes me happy that I chose to become a designer all those years ago—especially because it gave me the chance to explore these new frontiers with you.