Art 220

Posted by Lindsay , Friday, April 1, 2011 5:15 PM

My textbook arrived in the mail yesterday. It is called The Design Process, by Karl Aspelund. It uses a lot of bright colors, and caught my attention easily. The book begins with a quote by Nietzsche, which I thought was an interesting choice. It says, "I shall join the creators, the harvesters, the celebrants: I shall show them the rainbow and all the steps…" I'm assuming that the quote will make more sense after I have read the book. I think it relates though because the book is supposed to teach the reader the different steps in the design process.

The preface begins with the author explaining how the design industry has changed, and how the design industry requires more skills than it did 20 years ago. It talks about how manufacturing methods have changed, and everything is more fast paced than it was. The author talks about his background in different fields, such as costumes, sets, couture, art direction of fashion layouts, etc… He relates this to the book by saying that it has "confirmed the similarities of their processes." He says that the goal of the book is to "guide designers through the stages in which they will find themselves and give them the cognitive tools and examples so they can move to each subsequent stage."

The preface goes on to talk about how the book is organized into the seven stages of design, which are:

-Inspiration

-Identification

-Conceptualization

-Exploration/Refinement

-Defenition/Modeling

-Communication

-Production

It goes on to give a short explanation for each one, and talks about how each step includes different parts. It says that the book is intended for design students, and can be used as an independent project or in a classroom. Apparently it will be beneficial, and it will be useful after I graduate. I hope that it will be, and so far it seems like it will be an interesting read. The preface ends with the different acknowledgments. There are a lot of them, and I found it interesting that the author had taught at the Reykjavik Technical College. I'm interested in reading the rest of the book now as the quarter goes on.