Designing the future

Having spent the semester asessing my view of the design world and developing my personal design theories, I can see that there is no way to encapsulate my thoughts and feelings on design in only one paper. Above all else, design is an element of change, the rhetoric we use and the concepts we create are extensions of our need to communicate and change the world around us.

In the last 49 blog entries I have come to understand the value of challenging others to think critically about the world they live in. Whether my designs accomplish this fact, I dont know, but having seen examples of how designers can incite change in the world, I hope that I can rise to the challenge.

Design Power

I think that theres an enormous opportunity for designers and design educators to promote social change. Creative for a cause is an organization that promotes social responsibility in design. There are a ton of links to 'role models' and case studies- people and design firms who are using their power to make change.

I think people are fundamentally decent, but I don't feel that we are naturally compatible with one another. With modern technology moving forward at such a pace, the ethics of interaction are not keeping up.

Living in a city as multicultural as Toronto has give me a strong sense of how people perceive one another through filters, only seeing what they perceive to be negative qualities. I am a strong supporter of what the Dalai Lama calls 'a need for a Secular System of Ethics' that is non-theistic in nature.

So, As a designer I hope to promote decency and respect between people and a shift from seeing the world from the inside out to seeing it from the outside in. Change can only occur within, thus we should use our considerable communication skills to share what we know and provoke others to do the same.

Creative Education

Creativity

I had an unusual childhood. Well, unusual by todays standards anyways. Both of my parents are still married, and my three siblings are happy and (relatively) well adjusted. To say we were difficult kids to manage would be a grand understatement, all four of us had some degree of attention deficit disorder. Think of a wild pack of savages, put them in white collar suburbia, and you'd have a reasonably accurate idea of how we behaved.

Needles to say, many of my talents were overshadowed by my inability to perform academically, and few teachers were able to identify what it was that I DID do well. I was a comic book junkie ever since I was a kid, probably collecting and trading cards was an outlet for my social nature and my appreciation of good art(many of my trades were not strategic but aesthetic).

It wasn't until high school that I started to see myself as creative. Almo, my bro from back home, spent all of his time inventing comic book series that never went anywhere. So we developed an endless cast of characters as our creative outlet. While my skills as an illustrator are beginning to fade due to a preference for digital art, my skills were definitely developed through the amount of drawing and conceptualization I did in high school.

Education

My experience as a designer is actually relatively short. I never focused on communications in high school partly because the school I studied in was poorly funded and archaic. My perception of design was linked to advertising which was unfortunately a negative connotation because no-one ever bothered to dispel the perception that all advertising is evil. Maybe chalk it up to bad career counseling or a lack of awareness of the booming advertising industry of design.

Rather than risk wasting a degree in fine arts, I decided to pursue Youth and Addictions Counselling as I have always been a calm, trustworthy and social person. I felt that if I could make a difference in someones life that I would be able to enjoy my job. Upon moving into Toronto to study at George Brown, I discovered that the program I chose was not an appropriate fit, but fortunately I met a student studying graphic design while I was there.

That was when realized that if I wanted to combine my skill with words and people with my passion for art, I would be able to do so as a designer because of the collaborative nature of Graphic Design.

Miniature Earth

I mentioned in class about a video that approximates what a global cross-section would look like if 100 people represented the entire world population.

This is an excellent video that you should all check out, It'll give you a real sense of how privelaged we truly are. Plus, I think the directing is remarkable.

Here are a few stills:

Apple vs. World, who will be the victor?

There is no arguing that Apple has been a dominating force in innovating new products and concepts. Having created the first PDA, refined portable computing, and even bringing graphical user interfaces to the world, they have certainly had a massive influence on the way people perceive technology.

Personally, I commend them on their efforts. While they have had rough patches in the past, I trust that they will remain a powerful force in producing electronics in the future. But I am at odds with the idea of crediting Apple as being responsible for 'changing the world'.

I am a firm believer in causality. Yes, Apple has released many new and innovative products, but progress is progress. In a world where people need faster and faster ways to accomplish tasks, someone will invariably step in with a bright idea.

Apple did have the bright idea to bring technology to the consumer, packaging it in a way that people saw how useful it could be. In my opinion, this has caused a consumer driven explosion of useless gadgetry, far from the innovation on which Apple rose to success.

People don't really seem to care anymore how useful the technology is, or even whether it will make their lives any better(or worse) just how much fun they can have showing off their new toys.

In truth, I don't really feel that Apple or anyone else deserves either blame or credit for how the world has changed, but one thing is for sure; For better or worse, I love my iLife.