Prepare discussion notes
Class discussion:
- What is a designer? Consider the personal, social, cultural and environmental dimensions that inform our practice.
- What do we do, why, who/what does it affect, how?
- What experiences have influenced you in your decision to become a designer, why?
- What does 'being a designer' mean?
- Cross, N. (1990). The nature and nurture of design ability. Design Studies, 11(3), 127–140.
What is a designer?
A designer “is not” an artist. However, they share the same toolbox.
A designer “is not” a scientist. Though we draw on their methodology.
A designer “is not” an engineer. Though we design structures.
A designer “is not” a Magical Creative”. Don’t buy the myth.
- Design thinking – tool kit for tackling new problems.
- Another form of human intelligence.
- Design is not just a tag line to sell a product, it is about “resolving conflict without compromise” in quality or function.
- Everything is designed.
- Design conscious is good for business.
Discussion of Assignments 1 & 2.
Tips for summarising sources and things to consider to achieve a clear and well structured essay. Refer to support materials for assignment writing under the 'Additional Resources & Readings' tab above. Identify working groups of around three people per group for Assignment 2, agree on a group pseudonym to develop your blog under.
Assessments
State and support a position for argument
Aim:
Write a well-structured and coherent essay that clearly states and outlines your position on what you think a designer is and what it means to be a designer.
Learn to find and think critically about relevant design literature. Determine what ideas you agree with, which you disagree with, and why. Think about how the themes relate to how you approach your design practice. Practice summarizing and citing sources accurately and consistently.
Objective:
Think critically about what you think encompasses a designed object and what design as a practice is. Identify how this way of thinking influences how you think about and approach your own design practice. Consider how you think of yourself as a designer and what is important to you and how you practice design. Present your position on what you think a designer is and what it means to be a designer. Support that position with evidence from the literature and your own practice where relevant.
Method:
Start by revisiting texts about design you have read to date and look at those that have been assigned in this course. Further your investigation by exploring and reading academic sources that you have identified on our own and consider to be relevant to your specific practice and design interests. The assigned reading for week 1 is a good starting point.
Think critically about what the authors are saying. Are their arguments similar or different? How? Determine whether you agree or disagree and why. Is there a particular author that you admire or identify with? Have the ideas presented by these authors influenced your practice in any way? How? Think about your social environment and how design influences the way you live and interact with others. Are you driven, influenced, or affected by design in any way (e.g. how you communicate with others, media you engage with, environments you find yourself in, etc.)? How does your personal experience align with the arguments presented by authors you have read?
Structure your essay initially using outlining. To do this you must write three sentence statements that form the key points of your argument. These should assert your opinion and be based on what you have read. The next part of your outline should then elaborate on why each of those three statements is true (according to your view) and must be supported (ie. quotations from) your reading sources. This initial outline plan should be no more than 1 page.
The remainder of the essay should work outwards from this outline. It must include an introduction that identifies what you assert and how you will argue your view. The main body of the essay should logically state, in your own words, the key reasons for your views, how they relate and support them with reference to your reading sources. How and why have the ideas you have read about influenced your thinking? Your conclusion needs to summarise your argument, bringing it into clear context with the question you began with. As you write, always check that your argument remains relevant to the question. Lengthy deviations can waste time and words and can confuse the reader. Remember to cite (reference) your sources correctly using an appropriate citation style, Chicago is preferred (see the section on 'Writing & Citing' for clarification.
Assessment:
Submit a 1000 word essay (minimum) + references and bibliography formatted in an appropriate and consistently applied referencing style of your choice (Chicago preferred). Use images as necessary. You must submit your file using the learnonline site as a Word (.doc or .docx) file only. An essay template is provided for you to download and use accordingly.
You must draw on at least 3 relevant sources and cite them correctly. Summarise and state why you deem these to be important and relevant. All sources must be credible academic peer-reviewed texts. You have been provided with an extensive course reading list of authors who meet this criteria.
This assignment is worth 20% of your course mark.
It will be submitted no later than 11pm on Wednesday 25th March via learn online only.
Emailed and hard copy submissions are not accepted.
Notes
Next week you’ll be reading Csiksgentmihalyi “Enhancing Personal Creativity” which is an interesting, almost spiritual, understanding of human nature in relation to creativity and what we are capable of producing and why. And what limits may or may not be placed on our ability to think creatively. When you read this piece, really think about it in terms of your own practice and personal approach. For example, “some of us are exhausted by too many demands” or “easily distracted and have trouble learning how to protect and channel whatever energy we have.” (For me this would be YouTube or Netflix.) “Laziness, or lacking discipline for controlling the flow of energy” and “not knowing what to do with the energy we have.” This last one is particularly important—if we know what we love to do and why we do it, then we’re more likely to spend the creative and restless energy we have working towards something we love. So, what is it? What do you want to achieve?
Are there any authors you agree with? I love Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes who discuss photography and modern mythology and it gives me strength to continue creating art when I think I should stop. And, are there any ideas you truly disagree with—understanding what you don't like is sometimes as valuable in defining yourself as what you do. But, you need to figure out why you dislike them and respond to it. (Nikon versus Canon.)
Email through Note-taking template for students based on VSAR 1102 course curriculum.
Email through Note-taking template for students based on VSAR 1102 course curriculum.
Individual Case Study Weekly Blog
This assignment commences in week 1 and finishes in week 12. For it, you are asked to work in a group of three or four to maintain a written, critical account of your course material and what you are learning from it. This will be done online in the form of a weekly Blog which you can set up on any of the free blogging platforms - Google's Blogger service is good, as is WordPress. Each group member will require user name and password access. Please ensure your Blog's 'view setting' is set to public so that staff and peers can access your site. You should consider writing under a group pseudonym so as to keep your identity private. Once set it up, email the URL of your Blog to your tutor along with your chosen pseudonym and the full names of your group members by the beginning of week 2. Your tutor will monitor your progress. You may also like to share it with others in the class so that groups may follow each other.
See the sample below of how your Blog for this course might look:
The blog should be laid-out as 12 entries, as per the course structure. Each entry should be completed weekly through collaboration with your group and the whole Blog submitted for assessment at the end of week 12. This assignment is worth 40% of your course mark. To view the assessment criteria, go to the 'Assignments & Submissions' tab on the course page and click the Weekly Blog link to access the Feedback pro-forma file.
In your Blog you are expected to demonstrate the following:
- Organise the section headers of each of your pages to follow the weekly course structure.
- Within your tutorial groups review and summarise each weekly reading, what do you think it is trying to say and why? How does it apply to your experience of design?
- Take relevant notes from the video lectures and tutorials. Discuss what relationship these share with the course readings?
- What do you notice of today's visual culture, what examples of design relate to your weekly blog entries, how and why?
We suggest you organise the division of work as you see fit — you could each contribute to the Blog every week (about 120 words a week each) or take it in turns weekly to contribute all of the content. However this is done, you are all expected to individually complete the weekly reading and engage in tutorial discussion so as to generate your critical content. You can bring in images, artefacts and other articles that are of relevance to your discussions. Even consider making short video critiques together of examples of design that are relevant to the weekly topics. Your over all, personal contribution to the Blog should be around 1500 words.
What you write and reflect on here will inform the kind of designer you each become. Your aim is to develop skills in critical and collaborative thinking and writing. To do so, consider the ideas and issues that resonate with you and why? In what ways might the weekly readings, lectures and tutorials connect with each other? How do they relate to your own experience of design, culture and society? Compare, contrast and question what you notice—what ideas arise? What opinions do you form? How do the views of other designers and writers compare with yours? What evidence is there to support your views? How can they be argued?
Where relevant to your writing, you can include additional images and video links, and format your work in the way you prefer. Please practice writing in complete, coherent sentences rather than abbreviated notes or bullet-points alone.
Correct referencing is expected, please use either the Harvard or Chicago methods. We recommend the Chicago Manual of Style.
Minimum word count: 1500 words per student (ex. footnotes and bibliography and quotations)
.
This assignment is worth 40% of your course mark.
It will be submitted no later than 11pm on Friday 5th June via learn-online only.
Emailed and hard copy submissions are not accepted.
Notes
Mark down quotes and ideas as you complete each reading and then respond to these quotes and ideas with your own words, bringing in examples from your personal life and environment. Linking the ideas you find in your readings with real-world examples relevant to you will improve your ability to think critically and apply theory in practice. Write in whole sentences in order to learn how to form and structure your ideas so that you can communicate them to other people. Dot points are useful for providing and collating information but they are not persuasive in argument.
When providing some of your own thoughts and opinions, include images and video to illustrate your points. It's not uncommon for us to quickly pull out a phone to search for an image to support and idea in conversation, provide this for the blog. You may provide your own images too, if you're inspired to create something in response to what you've read.
Complete each blog entry weekly. It is easy to fall behind and forget what to cover while also placing additional pressure on you towards the end of the semester when you'll want to focus on studio or computer practice. I'll be checking your progress weekly to make sure you're up to date.
It is up to you how you share group work but I'd recommend that you contribute something of your own each week. It may be that you agree to quickly meet and update your blog before or after each lesson. Quickly discuss what you'd like to include.
Reading
Cross, N. (1990). The nature and nurture of design ability. Design Studies, 11(3), 127–140
Is drawing an important part of the design process and why?Denys Lasdun:
drawing seems to clarify my thoughts.”
“thinking with a pencil” — also take notes and make notes. Demonstrate thinking and record ideas in words as well as images.
Design ‘implies the action of intentional intelligence’.
Intuition or experience?
Jack Howe:
“I believe in intuition. I think that's the difference between
a designer and an engineer.”
How do you develop a strong sense of intuition when designing? Perhaps its an innate ability or perhaps its something you can develop and nurture by creating and acting. For example, riding a motorcycle or taking a photograph. At first you must be conscious of the action you take but over time the actions become muscle memory.
Give the client what they need, not what they want.
Learn how to better define the problem WHILE searching for solutions.
Darkes:
“The greatest variety reduction or narrowing down of the range of solutions occurs early on in the design process, with a conjecture or conceptualization of a possible solution. Further understanding of the problem is gained by testing this conjectured solution.”
Akin:
“One of the unique aspects of design behaviour is the constant generation of new task goals and redefinition of task constraints.”
What examples can you think of where you’ve redefined the constraints of the brief on your own terms?
It is only be creating and testing hypothesis and new designs that you can begin to define the real issue you’re facing and find better solutions.
“The reliance in design upon the media of sketching, drawing and modelling as aids to the generation of solutions and to the very processes of thinking about the problem and its solution. The process involves what Schon has called ‘a reflective conversation with hesitation’. From this observations of the way design tutors work, Schon commented that, through sketches, [The designer] shapes the situation, in accordance with his initial appreciation of it; the situation ‘talks back’, and he responds to the back-talk.”
In other words, you can only find the best solution by generating as many possible solutions as possible. Each new iteration provides the opportunity to improve and hone in on a better option.
Try and try again. There is no perfect solution but there is always a better solution.
Designers
- resolve ill-defined problems
- adopt solution-focussing strategies
- employ abductive/productive/appositional thinking
- use non-verbal, graphic/spatial modelling media
Design ability is found in all people and not all people refer are called “designers” who might be using design-thinking. For example, “craft-based societies craftspeople make objects that are not only highly practical but often also very beautiful.”
There are also cases where art and beauty can be found simply in an attempt to solve a problem, such as the movie posters from Ghana used to sell cinema seats. These posters are often hand painted and based on the film itself, though often events were imagined if the film was too boring.
- https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/ghana-film-posters/index.html
- https://designyoutrust.com/2018/04/a-collection-of-hand-painted-movie-posters-from-africa/
- https://www.boredpanda.com/hand-painted-bootleg-movie-posters-from-africa
This is also a cultural
Design doesn’t have to relate to industry.
Six examples of “human intellectual competences.”
• linguistics
• logical-mathematical
• spatial
• musical
• bodily-kinaesthetic
• personal
Agree or disagree?
Modern education owes to the Bauhaus 1920/30s
Encouraged movement such as dance and physical exercise into daily lesson routine. Also forced collage and other assembly from found junk
Perhaps consider it a holistic approach to arts education
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