Chatting with Brad and Dan at the flat tonight, and the issue of teaching design came up.
Dan had a wonderful point - that more and more the designers role is to help identify and navigate different types and themes of information. Although this has always been true to some extent, digital media has made it much more so.
So rather than concentrate purely on the visual/layout (often not really even reading what youre designing), more attention needs to be paid to really understanding the content of ones work.
Dan and I developed a great little teaching excersise for this whilst we were walking around Chinatown later in the evening.
To gain a better understanding of designing with content top-of-mind, divide the class into groups of 3.
Each of them must write a piece of unformatted content (or you could use pieces of random content).
NEXT: They pass their content on to the next designer, who works at defining content types/possible linkages and grouping content according to meaning. They then write a design brief - not with directions such as placement but purely with the cues they have gathered on this content/meaning. This will help the designer articulate their thoughts, and understand what another designer might need to work from.
FINALLY: The 3rd designer actually lays out the piece (be it digital or otherwise) using the content brief.
They would be allowed to ask questions of the students further up the chain, but it would hopefully mean that during this excersise they would start thinking in a more intellegent way about the way they work.
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Saturday, May 12
Thursday, April 26
Kingdom of Fools
I've been hitting the speakers trail this week:
Firstly, attending the lasy day of the Wildfire - Flammable thinking event in Brick Lane...
secondly seeing Crab speak at an NMK event on the future of digital design...
and thirdly, Ale and I ran our 2nd She Says night this week.
A week of really interesting (and not so) thinking, and a real energiser for me in the development of She Says as something that will really help to change the industry.
So, to Wildfire, and Tom Savigar from The Future Laboratory.
He spoke about the "yoof" generation... pulsing through some really interesting insights coming from his recent research...
I won't recap everything in full here, just publish some of the cooler, more interesting and quirkier finds:
THE FUTURE IS NO CERTAIN PLACE - fear, uncertainty and doubt is normal and they live in a benchmarked culture where they are constantly measured. In fact, ranking can be seen in stores such as Tokyo's Ranking Ranqueen, which sells only the top-ranked products in a vast array of catagories... and in sites such as ethiscore.com where consumables are ranked according to their green creds.
They all equate creativity with real financial worth, and are hungry for creative careers... and they WILL TRY ANYTHING ONCE.
The coolest teen trend is a growing movement of teenagers dubbed the "Mad Hatters" with over 9000 members worldwide. Inspired by romantic stories of siting in cafés having real conversation and debate (think the original Avant Garde.) They collect through social networking sites to drink English Breakfast in bone china and chat over tea - in the real world. I tried to find them online, but I'm obviously just not under 20 anymore - I couldn't find a thing. The idea was so appealing though - completely what I would have been into at the (this) time! I found myself longing for floppy hair, art school and Artaud again...
The other comment that really hit me is something that I have often felt (and still feel myself) is the idea that people constantly re-invent/rework/resample themselves these days - tha change and mutation is the norm - the feeling he captured from the 20somethings he spoke to: "Can I just have some time off before I re-invent myself again?" Its something I feel myself periodically...
Finally, a great quote from someone's 5 year old daughter at a live football match, when she had to get up to go to the bathroom - "I need to go to the loo, can I pause it?"
It reminded me that there is a book about teenagers coming out in July by a girl called Jelly Ellie (often pulled out at the token teen by the BBC since about 2004) - "How Teenagers Think" . I hope this will prove just as insightful as today's research - and hopefully a good read too.
He wrapped up the final discussion with the comment that we are living in a right-brain world: a feminine world full of empathy, joy and fun, but I have a real issue with the event organisers on this point: if its SUCH a feminine-thinking world, WHERE ARE THE WOMEN ON STAGE? Man after man strutted their stuff, but as usual, there was hardly any female representation... one woman on the first day only. Surely, not all the industry's best brains have rampant nasal hair? OFFF festival last year was just the same, as was the NMK talk and most others I attend.
The other notable talk was by a Creative Social mate of mine from Anomaly in NYC, Johnny Vulkan (who agreed with me on the above point btw...)
One of his first points is that we haven't managed the debate around our own industry - we're seen as the bad guys.
Again, too much info to go into detail about here, save to say that apart from getting in a reference to GOLGAFRINCHAM his talk can be wrapped up in his final tips:
Make it easier for people to be good
Ask more questions
Expand your thinking/role/business
Help good companies grow, help bad ones change
Accept contradictions, learn, move on
Be good to your mother
Here are some interesting links from his talk:
www.janchipchase.com
www.core77.com
www.designcanchange.org
Unfortunately, the NMK discussion left me a little disappointed, though I must remember to use the quote "design has never been a profession where you have to wait for permission"... Crab had an interesting point about what happens to digital designers in a world where non-design or utalitarian design (eg. MySpace) is the norm... do we become the designers of the systems to allow people to publish rather than the publishers ourselves?
Unfortunately it relly wasn't the environment for a real debate or discussion about this (I see Crab's point but have a lot that I wanted to add in favour of doing both) as the audience consisted mainly of traditional designers who were struggling to get digital in the first place - and I had to agree with Crab here that they just need to get on with it or miss the boat - you don't solve anything with inertia...
She Says Mark 2 was a great success... you can read more about it on our MySpace page, but we had about 35 women there for almost 3 hours of informative discussion and informal chat...
We called the meeting 'BECAUSE YOU'RE WORTH IT' as it was about how to take your career further and get what you want in terms of professional development.
The speakers were:
» Laura Ormerod - Creative Services Consultant - at Propel
» Tina Brazil - People Director at Profero
» Emma Witkowski from AKQA
» Rhiannon James - Graduating Creatives Manager at D&AD
Tina and Laura spoke about: 'How to choose an agency that is going to help with your professional development' and 'how to handle work reviews and get the most of out them'.
Rhiannon spoke about women in the industry and how find the right agency for you and engage with them - as well as a little about D&AD itself.
Finally, Emma covered 'Switching between disciplines inside an agency'
Tina's talk in aprticular garnered a lot of interest! Our next event will be (hopefullly) at glue, on the 30st or 31st May.
Firstly, attending the lasy day of the Wildfire - Flammable thinking event in Brick Lane...
secondly seeing Crab speak at an NMK event on the future of digital design...
and thirdly, Ale and I ran our 2nd She Says night this week.
A week of really interesting (and not so) thinking, and a real energiser for me in the development of She Says as something that will really help to change the industry.
So, to Wildfire, and Tom Savigar from The Future Laboratory.
He spoke about the "yoof" generation... pulsing through some really interesting insights coming from his recent research...
I won't recap everything in full here, just publish some of the cooler, more interesting and quirkier finds:
THE FUTURE IS NO CERTAIN PLACE - fear, uncertainty and doubt is normal and they live in a benchmarked culture where they are constantly measured. In fact, ranking can be seen in stores such as Tokyo's Ranking Ranqueen, which sells only the top-ranked products in a vast array of catagories... and in sites such as ethiscore.com where consumables are ranked according to their green creds.
They all equate creativity with real financial worth, and are hungry for creative careers... and they WILL TRY ANYTHING ONCE.
The coolest teen trend is a growing movement of teenagers dubbed the "Mad Hatters" with over 9000 members worldwide. Inspired by romantic stories of siting in cafés having real conversation and debate (think the original Avant Garde.) They collect through social networking sites to drink English Breakfast in bone china and chat over tea - in the real world. I tried to find them online, but I'm obviously just not under 20 anymore - I couldn't find a thing. The idea was so appealing though - completely what I would have been into at the (this) time! I found myself longing for floppy hair, art school and Artaud again...
The other comment that really hit me is something that I have often felt (and still feel myself) is the idea that people constantly re-invent/rework/resample themselves these days - tha change and mutation is the norm - the feeling he captured from the 20somethings he spoke to: "Can I just have some time off before I re-invent myself again?" Its something I feel myself periodically...
Finally, a great quote from someone's 5 year old daughter at a live football match, when she had to get up to go to the bathroom - "I need to go to the loo, can I pause it?"
It reminded me that there is a book about teenagers coming out in July by a girl called Jelly Ellie (often pulled out at the token teen by the BBC since about 2004) - "How Teenagers Think" . I hope this will prove just as insightful as today's research - and hopefully a good read too.
He wrapped up the final discussion with the comment that we are living in a right-brain world: a feminine world full of empathy, joy and fun, but I have a real issue with the event organisers on this point: if its SUCH a feminine-thinking world, WHERE ARE THE WOMEN ON STAGE? Man after man strutted their stuff, but as usual, there was hardly any female representation... one woman on the first day only. Surely, not all the industry's best brains have rampant nasal hair? OFFF festival last year was just the same, as was the NMK talk and most others I attend.
The other notable talk was by a Creative Social mate of mine from Anomaly in NYC, Johnny Vulkan (who agreed with me on the above point btw...)
One of his first points is that we haven't managed the debate around our own industry - we're seen as the bad guys.
Again, too much info to go into detail about here, save to say that apart from getting in a reference to GOLGAFRINCHAM his talk can be wrapped up in his final tips:
Make it easier for people to be good
Ask more questions
Expand your thinking/role/business
Help good companies grow, help bad ones change
Accept contradictions, learn, move on
Be good to your mother
Here are some interesting links from his talk:
www.janchipchase.com
www.core77.com
www.designcanchange.org
Unfortunately, the NMK discussion left me a little disappointed, though I must remember to use the quote "design has never been a profession where you have to wait for permission"... Crab had an interesting point about what happens to digital designers in a world where non-design or utalitarian design (eg. MySpace) is the norm... do we become the designers of the systems to allow people to publish rather than the publishers ourselves?
Unfortunately it relly wasn't the environment for a real debate or discussion about this (I see Crab's point but have a lot that I wanted to add in favour of doing both) as the audience consisted mainly of traditional designers who were struggling to get digital in the first place - and I had to agree with Crab here that they just need to get on with it or miss the boat - you don't solve anything with inertia...
She Says Mark 2 was a great success... you can read more about it on our MySpace page, but we had about 35 women there for almost 3 hours of informative discussion and informal chat...
We called the meeting 'BECAUSE YOU'RE WORTH IT' as it was about how to take your career further and get what you want in terms of professional development.
The speakers were:
» Laura Ormerod - Creative Services Consultant - at Propel
» Tina Brazil - People Director at Profero
» Emma Witkowski from AKQA
» Rhiannon James - Graduating Creatives Manager at D&AD
Tina and Laura spoke about: 'How to choose an agency that is going to help with your professional development' and 'how to handle work reviews and get the most of out them'.
Rhiannon spoke about women in the industry and how find the right agency for you and engage with them - as well as a little about D&AD itself.
Finally, Emma covered 'Switching between disciplines inside an agency'
Tina's talk in aprticular garnered a lot of interest! Our next event will be (hopefullly) at glue, on the 30st or 31st May.
Sunday, April 22
Eulogies...
Thought I'd spare a few lines for two of my favourite old men, who have both died recently...
KURT VONNEGUT - died at 84 this week
Master of the time-travelling, fantasy, Sci-Fi universe (and the salacious Sci-Fi paperback under his pseudonym of Kilgore Trout), and author of the most compelling book about the bombing of Dresden - Slaughterhouse 5.
He was prolific, filthy, and a true post-linear thinker...
(Here he is, talking about when he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope - thanks to Melody for the quote)
"Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, I ask a woman what kind of dog that is.
And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore."
JEAN BAUDRILLARD - died at 77 a few weeks ago
I remember going to see him speak many years ago at Sydney University, with all the excitement of a long-awaited performance by a rockstar... Tickets were like golddust... I'm sure the irony wouldn't have been lost on him... I remember Pierre Stokx asking him a very provocative question about whether he really was a visionary, or just full of shit... He was more offended that I'd expected and I was vaguely disappointed that he hadn't come back with a poignant remark.
Here is a cutting from the obituary section in the local morning paper...
"Jean Baudrillard, who died in Paris aged 77 this week, was a marvellously batty theorist of the kind the French do well. His big idea, argued in a book called Simulacra and Simulation, was that what is real doesn't exist, compared with the "hyperreality" offered by the media, particularly TV.
To express that belief, he adorned his flat with 50 sets.
In 1991, he claimed "the Gulf War did not take place" and had merely been symbolic. Nevertheless Baudrillard's verbose perversity is sometimes very funny, like a latter-day Oscar Wilde. In 1998, he published a book about America which is a classic of culture clash. He was fascinated not only by such sights as joggers and people eating alone, but the "orgasmic elasticity" of American carpets. How sad that he has - really - died."
See you later Monsieur B xx
KURT VONNEGUT - died at 84 this week
Master of the time-travelling, fantasy, Sci-Fi universe (and the salacious Sci-Fi paperback under his pseudonym of Kilgore Trout), and author of the most compelling book about the bombing of Dresden - Slaughterhouse 5.
He was prolific, filthy, and a true post-linear thinker...
(Here he is, talking about when he tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope - thanks to Melody for the quote)
"Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, I ask a woman what kind of dog that is.
And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore."
JEAN BAUDRILLARD - died at 77 a few weeks ago
I remember going to see him speak many years ago at Sydney University, with all the excitement of a long-awaited performance by a rockstar... Tickets were like golddust... I'm sure the irony wouldn't have been lost on him... I remember Pierre Stokx asking him a very provocative question about whether he really was a visionary, or just full of shit... He was more offended that I'd expected and I was vaguely disappointed that he hadn't come back with a poignant remark.
Here is a cutting from the obituary section in the local morning paper...
"Jean Baudrillard, who died in Paris aged 77 this week, was a marvellously batty theorist of the kind the French do well. His big idea, argued in a book called Simulacra and Simulation, was that what is real doesn't exist, compared with the "hyperreality" offered by the media, particularly TV.
To express that belief, he adorned his flat with 50 sets.
In 1991, he claimed "the Gulf War did not take place" and had merely been symbolic. Nevertheless Baudrillard's verbose perversity is sometimes very funny, like a latter-day Oscar Wilde. In 1998, he published a book about America which is a classic of culture clash. He was fascinated not only by such sights as joggers and people eating alone, but the "orgasmic elasticity" of American carpets. How sad that he has - really - died."
See you later Monsieur B xx
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