1. From my understanding of the readings and my thoughts on them I can honestly say that I am starting to change the way I think and approach design. Mau's focus was on trusting yourself to apply a "free-form" approach. Try to think outside the box, and when you think that you have gotten there then push it even farther and follow the paths that your creativity can take you. It may not always work, but you can often find great design concepts in your mistakes and accidents.

Davis' keynote on the other hand was more about teaching. with the advances of technology, many of the programs around this country can get stuck in an inbred way of thinking and applying learning criteria. "She believes standards must be overturned in place of better ones. She plays for and against the other articles, the throw back of the past refinement but also the turning over of sub par excellence, again in her case good is the enemy of best."

Blauvelt is a little easier to follow. He believes that the there are nor current design trends. I have a hard time believing in this one. It seems that design has always followed a trend. One thing to keep in mind about this reading is the point he makes that future design will be a hybrid of past designs. This could be a great time to be a designer if his point is in fact true.

The IDEO reading really puts the customer, consumer, person, community into play. Often designers will create something that looks good, but has no or little practical value to those it was designed for. By going to the source and obtaining all the information you can, you can start to get a sense for what is really needed. making sure that you utilize every means you have for a quality design that will actually do some good to those who need it. Myself, i like simple designs without much fluff. Simple and straight to the point. Unfortunately the program at PSU seems to frown on designs of that nature. Not always, but most of the time.

In the June

In the June 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review, there is a super article by IDEO’s Tim Brown on what it takes to bring innovation down to the execution. Tim’s solution: Design Thinking.

Tim tells us that Design Thinking is:

a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.

My design proccess is still a work in progress. I try to use things like Mau's "think outside the box" but I am still learning to trust myself to do it. I like to be simple and to the point. I try to put myself in the shoes of those who will see my work and ask myself what I would need to see to get my point across. Sometimes this works for me and sometimes it does not. But as we know, event the parts that do not work can come back in a different design with great success. I think that aving Luke as a teacher has helped me become more open to free thinking than I thought was possible. I really resisted not having an instructor that said exactly ehat he wanted us to do, but I know now that it was becaused he cared and wanted us to grow on our ways as designers.

Original Image of my nephew playing

Added a mask, and then played with levels to give it a grungier look. You can see that i have exposed or erased the mask over the eyes soy the are not affected by the blur I put on

Fixed color on background so they blend together. Notice the eyes are the only thing in focus

Added my message to the poster. Quick and to the point. I like to make my designs simple, but still get the point across. After talking to people at Outside In, I really appreciate the work they do. I hope that they may want to use my ad to get people to start thinking about those that have no choice in what happens to them.

kit comment

I think that the "kit" used for designing is a simple and effective tool. It really puts the customer, consume, person, community into play. Often designers will create something that looks good, but has no or little practical value to those it was designed for. By going to the source and obtaining all the information you can, you can start to get a sense for what is really needed. making sure that you utilize every means you have for a quality design that will actually do some good to those who need it. Myself, i like simple designs without much fluff. Simple and straight to the point. Unfortunately the program at PSU seems to frown on designs of that nature. Not always, but most of the time.

Project 2

I'd have to say that I am pretty happy with the idea and the concept that Logan and I came up with and executed. Our main focus was on the design first, and the content second. We felt that if we had the design in place, all we really needed to do was plug in the content. We knew that the purpose of the design would be to teach kids a few things about becoming homeless. When we first started kicking around ideas we wanted to make sure that we chose something that would grab peoples attention. It seems that today games are used more and more in an educational environment so it made sense to us. One thing I was not sure about was Lukas' feelings on our design and product. Maybe it was me, but I felt as if he did not like it, or did not really care. He never came over to really get a look at it, and it kind of made the whole thing feel like a waste to make. We could have shown a version on the computer and left it at that instead of taking time and money to print it out and make it. That being said, it was a prototype, and it was not until we made it and played with it that we could see what we needed to change to make it better. Lukas asked us what we would do if we were funded and what direction we would want to take the game. In class Logan and I had no answer. We never thought about past being a project for class. I guess that after reading our last reading assignment, I would want to use the "kit" to really get deeper into the minds and feelings of those we are trying to teach about. Maybe even pushing the product farther into the digital age would be an avenue that I would explore.

Andrew Blauvelt Refelection

I must admit that this article was more pleasing than the last one. The only thing is,,,,,, as I was reading it I kept running through something a past instructor said to me once. "Almost no design is original, It is just an extension of a copy of a copy of a copy. You can always go back and find that your design even if unintentional shares many qualities of other before it. The more I look around at "trendy" shops, the more I see a style reminiscent of previous decades. There has been a huge push for the "retro" look and with the success of Apple, the simple design seems to be the next movement. For me personally, I have always been drawn to the "simple" designs. I love Swiss posters which I know are not always simple, but they embody my belief to "Get the point across"

Thoughts on Davis

While I would have argued earlier against many of the ideas that Davis brought to the speech, my short time at PSU has me thinking otherwise. My previous design classes were all form over function. Very strict and very to the point. I felt like I was chocking and wanted to get out as fast as I can. Michelle helped me see that I had potential and not all design aspects need to be so minimalistic. I am still trying to learn how to look at "the big picture" and let my designs and processes flow not form because of guidelines. I am trying myself to look at my projects as a whole and not as just one project. I need to trust in myself that this will work in my designs. I think she also makes an excellent point about basic to complex. By doing the same level of work, how can one really believe that will be pushed to get better. I know this means a lot more work, but you are able to grow as the project does, than you should be ok. Also, I think it is ok to ask for help. i amusually too proud and try to figure out things on my own and often fall way behind. I need to utilize my peers and instrucotrs. After all, i am paying them for my education.

Process Follow-up

One thing I learned from this project is that it is easy to let others lead. Sometimes you are trying to avoid conflicts, and you let others take control as a courtesy even when your mind is telling you not too. Maybe it is a flaw that I have, but I seem to want to please everybody all the time. My biggest question is for myself. What did I do to push my design learning's farther. I think if I had more time, I would have been able to push, break, stretch and look at my designs further than I was able to. I will go back and work on it in my spare time to continue my growth as a student. The group worked well together when we were all there. Trying to coordinate everyone's schedules was hard to do and life seemed to get in the way for some of us. The communication stayed open and happened a lot through other other forms such as e-mails and texts. I think for our group we felt like we did not have the time to really negotiate. We came up with a tree design and kind of stopped it there. Maybe we felt like it was the best we could come up with, but like I said earlier, I plan on continuing to push the design further on my own.

Group Anarchy

This is really another process post, but I feel like some shady stuff has gone down. Some people in my group may feel that I did not do very much, but I would really beg to differ. Anyway, main part of my contribution to the project was the web design. After we all worked on logos and a name change for a couple of days our group split off into more direct tasks. I was to do the website and the antfarm logo, Jana was doing the posters and fliers, Liz was illustrating a different tree for us to use and Randi was doing the daybill. I think that we all put forward a great effort and helped out on each others projects and designs. I think that as a whole we worked well together. I dont really think that I had any inspiration other than not letting my groupmates down. The web site really took a long time to get it where I wanted it. I felt it was important to do it correctly and not fake a website like others have. It was good to have a diverse group like we did. Everyone had a really strong quality to contribute, and I think we all were able to mesh our skills together and make them a whole 1 project.

Project 1

Here is the website that I designed for the project. It was done in Dreamweaver and had rollover buttons and links and all. The frames are not in the actual website, but this is a screenshot of dreamweaver and I could not figure out how to remove them

Font Play

Some foliage ideas

Another variation of antfarm

Modified logo for the

The logo I modified for the web page design

Here is a antfarm logo that I made for our group. We all decided that that would be our design team name and i was put in charge of creating the logo

This is a tree that I had designed for passion for passion. It is actually 2 trees. The first one I made and one with the words passion for fashion layed in text.

Bruce Mau thoughts

This is a very interesting and enlightening manifesto. While I do not agree with everything that is said, the points that are made have the ingredients to make every project a success. This is a very minimalistic approach to finding and cultivating good designs. I do not agree that with the whole "go with the flow" attitude approached in the writing. There have been plenty of times that i have found my designs through mistakes, but i think that a little structure and setting time lines is needed when working as a group. Also, i do not think that everyone is a leader all the time. In work, school and social life i have come across many that do not show leadership qualities. I completely agree with “Love your experiments”, we should all be having fun with whatever we make! If you are not having fun, then how can you really make designs that show off your talents. That is why I am switching careers. I was not enjoying what I was doing, and wanted to push myself into something that I have always enjoyed doing.

Welcome

Well, it looks like another blog for another class. I have been a little under the weather and have fallen behind a bit but I should catch up by tonight.