Pandora’s box: design
An essay…
Recently I dealt with an unexpected interaction. It got me wondering how I misread the signals before? I am usually pretty good at gauging my students’ commitment level in my classes. It is a skill that gives me a good edge to motivate and push them. However, this one was different. Long story short, I pushed for more iterations on an average looking solution. The response was not just hesitant but, rather it felt a tad resentful.
I have probably mentioned before that after graduating with a bachelor degree in Art Education, I went back to college to study Graphic Design. Because my first round at college was less than stellar, during my second time at college, I vowed to do everything I could to excel. The reasons for that dip my first time around, are for another post.
My second time at college meant I was behind in the computer proficiency department. My younger classmates were familiar with how to use the computer and the software. Their finals submissions were the object of my envy in one too many occasions. Though we were still doing many of our projects by hand, other projects required a computer.
I had to capitalize on what I knew while I learned what I did not know. I knew research and sketching. Thus, there were not many projects where I was not willing to go deep and deeper if needed. I started to realize that design can be described as a two part process: ideation and production.
Ideation necessitates iteration. To learn to think like a designer, one needs to be willing to try things over and over and over again. Sometimes changing all the variables, sometimes changing few variables, and sometimes just changing one variable. Before a project is getting fine tuned to meet its deadline, the ideation process is full of possibilities and options. An idea can take an infinite amount of twists and turns. A twist can be the result of research or more reading. A turn can be that a typeface choice is disastrous once the printouts hang in the wall (in my classes always upside down). Or we can realize that the format needs to be reconsidered all together.
The ideation involves everything from brainstorming, researching to gain a better understanding, empathizing with the intended audience, sketching solutions and ideas, sketching some more, talking about the sketches, making connections, seeing what was not seen before, revising and revising, critiquing, giving feedback, letting those aha moments come and go, and then we do it all over again. Each part of the design process is almost a Pandora’s box. But in design this box is full of possibilities. And I absolutely love that.
When my student reacted hesitantly to my asking her to revise things and try at least three different options, it woke me up. It is true that some of us are in the design profession to only earn a living. Or to simply to have a job. But design is not all “businessy”. Design is a very alive and organic process that enables the creator to make interesting and unexpected connections in order to make a message visual to others. It is a rich and fertile ground for work to flourish.
There is a caveat of course. As much as design might be like a Pandora’s Box full of ideas and connections we did not know or realize, that box needs to be fed and it needs to be fed constantly. We feed it anyway without much effort. Our minds process a constant amount of visuals daily. We don’t realize it but we take a lot in, from the object we are looking, its texture, its placement, its weight, its height, its colors, and many other variables. What I am trying to say is that each particular object of visual interest possesses much more information in itself. It would then, stand to reason that we need to be intentional in feeding our brain with content, good content, be it literature, music, theater, walks, and even the occasional out of range source in order to come up with twists and turns worth pursuing. Otherwise, our box or our mind will spit out a recycling wave of what we have seen.
To design is to engage with ideas and keep a conversation with those ideas. To engage these ideas we need to be committed to the process. I would lie if I did not acknowledge that my box has been less open and aggressive in certain moments in my life. Of course we have ups and downs. But, to quote something an art teacher told me: if you don’t feed your talent, it goes away. I of course, did not believe it then. Until I found it hard to think creatively again.
One of my favorite TED talks is called Your Elusive Creative Genius by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, and Love. In it she recalls her meeting with American poet Ruth Stone describing how sometimes her poetry came to her in the field and she had to run to her house and write, almost grabbing the idea by its tail so it would not go away. Elizabeth remarks how her experience on the other hand, makes her feel like a mule. A mule that she had to painfully push with sweat and labor in order to produce an idea. While this contrast is dramatic for these two creatives, one thing is true: the ideas will go away to find another vessel through which it can make its way out into the world.
I want to be there for these ideas. I realize of course, that my description about the design process is not a scientific one. It is a practical one but sprinkled with a lot of my idealism about how design works. Yes, I believe in design. I believe it should be taught in elementary and secondary schools. I believe that though design has many valid solutions to a problem, unlike say a math problem, it is through its process that we find solutions that are fitting for the problem we might be engaged with. I believe it makes us more human.
My student’s hesitation saddened me because her/his potential is great. All I can offer is a taste and hope that the taste makes her/him hungry for more.