Yesterday was the last class before finals. Class got out early again, but we talked about a few different things before it did. Jimmy gave us all a copy of the Journal of Business and design. I had never seen it before, but it contained some interesting articles. Lauren told us about the AIGA panel, and how the speakers there talked about internships, salaries, and a few other things. I wish I had gone, but I was not on campus at the time. After that, Jimmy talked to us about being proactive and entrepreneurial. We should be out own boss, even if we work for someone else, find work instead of waiting for it to come to us, and challenge yourself. I think that these are all helpful, and my parents have always told me to be proactive in my life. After this, we all gave pros and cons of things about the class that we did over the quarter. I learned a few different things from the class, although there were one or two projects that I did not like. I will be spending the rest of my weekend working on my final project video for the class.
Last wednesday, class was very short. Jimmy talked for a few minutes about things and then told us that we could leave. I stayed in the class for a while and wrote out some ideas for my video, and then ended up leaving to go visit the anthropology office. I liked having the free time, but wish that I would have known ahead of time that class was going to be so short.
So today we started off with a game. It was alright, but got a little annoying after playing for a long time. The gist of the game was saying "This is a what, a what? A what. Oh a what!, and then continuing on and asking each previous person, a what? When the person you were telling asked what it was. Its a little confusing at first, and gets even harder when you include two objects instead of just one. In fact, we could not successfully finish the game with two objects.
Once we gave up on the game, we watched a hammer lecture on Sir Ken Robinson. I really did not want to watch it at first, but I ended up liking it. He included some humor, and it kept me interested in watching more. He talked about how finding your element makes life fulfilling, and how most adults never find out where their true talents lie. I have heard this so many times in the past two months. One of the things that kept distracting me throughout the talk, was that from where I was sitting, his suit blended into the background and he looked like a disembodied head, hands and a strip of his chest. Not really relevant at all, but I found it amusing. Some of the other things he talked about were how there are two climate crisis's, one in national resources and one in personal resources. He also talked about how standardized testing is ruining our education system, and not helping people to discover their personal talents. According to him the economy needs three things; to think differently, communicate, and work in groups. I think that these are great idea. Not many people know how to communicate well anymore, because so many things are electronic. I know a lot of people who prefer to text, over speaking to people in real life. Technology is a great thing, but I don't think that people should prefer it over actual human interaction. Overall, he had a lot of good things to say, and it was a good way to spend class.
This week, I finally reached the last chapter in our book, about production. A designer has to be available at the stage of production in case any last minute problems arise. Production requires working with a production team. The chapter talks about the different values that a designer should have while working with them, such as respect, listening to opinions, motivating the team, diplomacy and good communication. I think that these are all great, and people should always try to get along as best as they can at work. The book also talks about being able to get feedback. I always love to get positive feedback about my work, but usually it is the negative feedback that is more useful. It points out the problems in my work so that I can go back and fix it, and make it the best that it can be. The book points out that a designer should not be pressured into making changes that they are not happy with.
The next part of production after meeting with a design team is to make a prototype of the design. In the prototype stage, a designer can experiment with different materials to see which one is the best for the final product. The book talks about throwaway prototyping, which I had never heard of before. It is when a designer tests out a certain aspect of the design that could potentially ruin it or work out great. Another type that I had never heard of was evolutionary prototyping. It is when a design needs further exploration to make it finished. I think that both of these are good ideas, and I will try them out in the future.
Another part of the production process is making decisions. Some things that have to be decided are budgets, scheduling, materials and sustainability. After learning about creative briefs in class, I would have thought that a few of those such as budget and scheduling, would be decided early on in the project, not in the production stage. The last thing that the chapter discusses is documenting your work. I would have thought that this did not even need a part in the book, as documenting my work is something that I always do. I always like to have a record or some kind of copy of my work that I can keep.
The perspective section in the book is about Palmi Einarsson, who is the design director of Ossur which is an international manufacturer. He discusses how there are five basic steps that designs go through at the company. They are, a brief introduction to the design, all of the numbers for the project are presented in detail (budget, target market, net value, etc...), the prototyping is done and the design is handed over to production. A set number of the product is then produced and are tested in the market for about two months. If a product reaches this point, then all of the information is reviewed again and any problems are fixed. If there are no problems, then the project is then closed. I would not have expected this to be the process for a large company, but it does make a lot of sense and seems to work really well. The rest of his story did not interest me as much as learning about the process did.
Posted by
Lindsay
12:03 AM
In class on wednesday, Jimmy started off by splitting the class into two groups, of the women against the men. He wrote a pattern on the board, which was
1
10
11
100
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We were supposed to come up with an answer and all agree on it. Astrid and I came up with the same answer of 111. I had noticed almost immediately that there was a pattern of adding an extra one and an extra zero each time. Astrid had come to this conclusion in a similar way, so we used that as our explanation. The mens team had come up with a different answer using the binary system, but I do not know the binary system. Our team explained it pretty well, while their team had to have three different speakers to explain it correctly. Overall, I enjoyed having a group project to do during class.
In class yesterday, we watched Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. It was a very strange movie, and I personally didn't like it very much. I recognized the first story about the legend of the foxes, and found it to be interesting. The movie was a series of eight stories that were supposed to be different dreams. None of the stories really had a set ending, and left off at odd points, much like dreams do. We were supposed to think about how inspiration, creation, conceptualization and ideation relate to dreams and sleep. I have personally had several dreams that have led to ideas to stories and to drawings. Often times though, I won't remember the dream unless it was really vivid or memorable. I might remember it right when I wake up, but forget it as a little bit of time passes. I have always considered the possibility of keeping a notepad next to my bed to write down ideas, but never have. A lot of times while we sleep, we think of things that would be impossible in real life, and are generally more creative. We are free to think of anything while we sleep.
The next chapter in our book contains information about communication. This is something that Jimmy has talked to us several times about, since we need to be able to communicate well in our careers. The section begins with the book breaking down communication into three parts, encoding, the message itself, and decoding. I think that it would be helpful to keep these parts in mind, while constructing a project. It also says that as a designer, we have to tell our client what they need, which could be different from what they want. This was a point that was brought up by Seth Johnson, at the beginning of the quarter. There are several people that a designer has to work with, and consider them as an audience. There is the client, the corporation, manufacturing, and associates. A designer will not always have to work with all of them, but it is important to consider each one as they apply to the project.
I think that the next section of the book was very helpful. It broke down the information stages into statement, concept, detail and planning. I normally do this, but not as in detail. I think that it would help me communicate my ideas more clearly if i tried to work with these stages. Another section that I found to be helpful was the one on organization and quality. It talks about determining the relevancy of the information, determining the immediacy of what the client needs to know, and the scope of the information. A lot of times I include unnecessary information in my projects, and I need to work on compressing it into the important details.
Presentation of information is also very important to communication. A project will not go well, if the presentation does not communicate the idea clearly. The book re-visits the idea of setting aside plenty of time for a project. Time management is something that I constantly struggle with, but have gotten better at in more recent years. The next few sections compare the basic patterns of presentation to classical music terms. Having played the flute for around nine years, I am quite familiar with the terms so they made a lot of sense to me. Another important part of presentation is choosing the illustration technique. A designer can utilize various medias such as pencil, color pencil, pens and inks, markers, pastels and crayons, watercolors, photoshop, CAD programs, web pages, powerpoint, books and boards, CD's and models. I have been working with different medias, and trying to gain better experience with them, so that I can utilize them more in the future.
The last section before the perspective, the author compares a designer preparing to give a presentation to an actor preparing for his role. I have never been wonderful at public speaking, and I hope that these will be helpful in the future. The books talks about knowing your lines, knowing your props and setting, knowing the direction you are headed in, and knowing your motivation. It is hard to present anything without being motivated to do it. The perspective section in this chapter is about Mark Zeff, a designer and architect. I am very interested in architecture, so I was interested in reading about what he had to say. He starts off with saying that the most important ability, is to be able to communicate with a client. A project can not be run well if there is not a great understanding between the designer and client. Zeff says that they developed a series of processes to take their clients through to weed out any problems. He talks about how a way they do this, is through design briefs. Our class just spent a few class periods working on talking about how to make a good design brief. The next thing Zeff talks about is how when he is looking to hire people, he looks for people who are good at communication, and who are tenacious and brave. One final point that he brought up, is something that I really like and is something I hear a lot. He talked about how his personal interests are what inspires him in his work and helps him when he is creating things. I am always finding things in my life that inspire different works, and they always come out the best because I am passionate about them. Zeff's perspective section reiterated a lot of the ideas from the chapter, and has confirmed the idea that communication is one of the most important things.
Art 220
