Conversations on Design

The Heart: Deborah Adler

The Pieta by Michelangelo is her inspiration because it involves the viewer in a common sense of sorrow.  Emotion affects design.

I need to really use aspects of design to evoke emotion. That I have the ability and resources to do that is inspiring to me!

And as for a persons aesthetic, i feel that she was harsh on a designers sense of self.   We do not always need to be designing for an audience and that is where she went wrong.  Maybe in the professional world, we need to "have a love affair with our audience". But as for me, right now, I am learning design as a way of communicating a specific message.  Not to hope that my audience FEELS a certain way when looking at my work.


Get In Touch: Michael Lebowitz
Combining human intellect with technology to come up with the most effective and natural way of organizing the vast and rapid amounts of information that we encounter daily.

He uses ipad as an example and how his 3 year old son can already navigate its seemingly complex system of touch, when compared to a mouse and keyboard.

this is the first time that I have come across a designer/artist who praises the ipad or any extremely powerful form of technology that decreases human interaction on a physical level.  Even I normally frown on things that require less tangible forms of communication, but Michael takes an interesting view on the way technology should be natural.


Do More with Less: Emily Pilloton

The product is less important than the way it came about. Instruction and process are parts of design that are important to education and eventually design AS education.

I appreciate the way she describes design as a process to the system of education. the idea that students need to be creative and even selective along the way means more than just doing for a letter grade.  I have found that as an issue in my upbringing... I was always worried about learning it to look good on paper, rather than gaining knowledge that would stick, something to be passionate about.  That is where my previous education was lacking.

Tabula Rasa: Jake McCabe

Blank slate as an opportunity and as an object is his inspiration. It is a luxury.  He thinks, as a designer right now, we need to think about things that no one has asked us to think about yet.

In terms of sustainability, we should come up with solutions and problems that havent been evolved yet. I feel like this comes from the idea that, since we have been "eco-friendly" for so long now and nothing is making a dent on our "footprint" that we need to THINK more effectively.  Come up with our own ideas and ways of creating/designing truly unique ways of problem solving.