🗓 January-March 2022
I studied graphic design at Rhode Island School of Design, a highly sought after art school in the United States. I decided to pursue graphic design because I saw it as a way to combine my passions for art and social sciences. I was interested in the ubiquitous and practical social implications of design and the artistic process of designing and making. My education at RISD was rooted in a modern Euro-centric design school; with examples from graphic icons such as Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, and the Bauhaus. Design was broken down into its foundational elements, which formed classes, and years of education: typography, color, contrast, form, function, and meaning. During this time, I discovered experimental art movements such as the Fluxus and DADA, and was inspired by the ways they used art as a platform in questioning what art is. These were my early influences which led me to practice and see design as a process of communicating and reflecting on the world.
In my practice as a designer in the industry, my role became more defined as a mediator. I graduated following the 2009 financial crisis and the growth of digital services. Graphic designers, who were once working on mediums for motion graphics, websites, and the world of user experiences. I never worked in tech, but tech-adjacent with many of my friends working for large tech companies and startups. The industry was moved by schools of thoughts like ‘design thinking’ and human-centered design from institutions like Stanford Design School and Apple. I also admired companies like IDEO, who were using design to make a positive social impact. During this time, I gained the perspective of design as a tool to mediate and elevate daily experiences and interaction. I was also becoming exhausted of the design and tech world and craved for a more tactile and present way of living and creative expression.
I started pottery classes because I wasn’t fulfilling my creative needs in my design career. At work, design became a very prescribed and linear process. From ideation, sketching, transferring this idea on the computer; each of these processes focused too heavily in the mind and ideas. There was little input with my the world and environment. Especially with the process of design being fully based on the computer–a device that is designed to do make precise pixel-perfect representations of anything we want–I began to feel restricted in my creativity. I longed to work for a tactile medium, one that wasn’t perfect and that responded to my touch with its own set of rules and challenged my ideas. I fell in love with pottery partly because I was not in control. I had to learn to work with different physical elements like speed, clay, water, and fire. Making, design, craft, became more of a conversation with the world than a linear and singular process that stems from my brain. Most importantly, working with pottery taught me a valuable lesson in life and as a designer; that I was not in control and creativity thrives when I am aware of this and working with the world and not trying to project my ideas into it.
From my experience, the design industry and education is designed in a way that human ideas are at the core of its value. I find this to be problematic because it promotes ego and greed, and leads to many of our design-centered problems in the world. As educated and experienced designers, we tend to have very strong opinions and principles on design and especially ‘good’ design. Surrounded by other like minded thinkers and professionals, our theories about our practice are confirmed and inflated. I have been to this place many times and have become a bit exhausted of it. Although I love the world of design, it can also be exclusive and elitist, leaving out large portions of the world and their experiences. I believe human ego and our attachment to ideas is the root of most of our problems, and design is not exempt from this.
In the most basic sense, I see design as a process of constructing connections. Up to this point, I spoke of design as an intelligent and purpose-driven visual (or non-visual) system created by humans. But design is also used to refer to systems in nature which are created in the absence of human hands–patterns in a shell, structure of a snowflake, systems of a human body–all of these have been touched ‘by design’. In this sense, design becomes a human projection of understanding occurrences in nature. It’s interesting that in this context we often don’t question who the designer is or what their intention might be. In this way, everything that exists in nature are designers and design is happening all the time and all around us. In Western theology, this invisible hand that designs in nature was seen to be the hand of God. And God was seen to be a figure whom man was created in the image of. So, again, this projection of design in nature comes back to decisions and ideas of the man. Is design a human concept invented to place random chaos into processes in which we can understand and make sense of?
Returning to design as a process of forming connections and translating them into a relevant tactile or visual form in the world… I believe the transformative power in design lies in its ability to form new ways of seeing and relating to the world; a transformation of values. I truly believe that design has the ability to transform, and transformation can improve the condition of shared lives on this planet. However, I’m not so confident that we, as designers, hold any power or control to guide the value of this transformation. In these past few months of the masters program, my understanding of design is not only a way to solve problems, but also problematic. I’m not so sure that our obsession with generating new ideas, constantly creating, and controlling, is serving us or the world in any way. And I’m not so sure that the world needs more things and new experiences. My relationship with design is transforming again.
During the course of this masters program, I discovered other definitions of what design could look like. Design as a tool for research, as a tool to reflect critically on the world, and as a tool to speculate into the future. I am becoming more interested in these approaches to design, as they feel more like conversations with the world rather than a process of projecting my ideas into the world through design. Having a decade of experience in industry, I am becoming less interested in making new things, but triggering conversation and reflection through design. Within the same line of thought, I have also become very interested in inclusive design and using design to work with, learn from, and expose the perspectives of others who are different from me.
[thoughts on future]
Making Sense and Meaning
In order to explore the many different meanings that design has taken on for me, it is important to start with context. I believe our contexts shape our perspectives.I studied graphic design at Rhode Island School of Design, a highly sought after art school in the United States. I decided to pursue graphic design because I saw it as a way to combine my passions for art and social sciences. I was interested in the ubiquitous and practical social implications of design and the artistic process of designing and making. My education at RISD was rooted in a modern Euro-centric design school; with examples from graphic icons such as Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, and the Bauhaus. Design was broken down into its foundational elements, which formed classes, and years of education: typography, color, contrast, form, function, and meaning. During this time, I discovered experimental art movements such as the Fluxus and DADA, and was inspired by the ways they used art as a platform in questioning what art is. These were my early influences which led me to practice and see design as a process of communicating and reflecting on the world.
In my practice as a designer in the industry, my role became more defined as a mediator. I graduated following the 2009 financial crisis and the growth of digital services. Graphic designers, who were once working on mediums for motion graphics, websites, and the world of user experiences. I never worked in tech, but tech-adjacent with many of my friends working for large tech companies and startups. The industry was moved by schools of thoughts like ‘design thinking’ and human-centered design from institutions like Stanford Design School and Apple. I also admired companies like IDEO, who were using design to make a positive social impact. During this time, I gained the perspective of design as a tool to mediate and elevate daily experiences and interaction. I was also becoming exhausted of the design and tech world and craved for a more tactile and present way of living and creative expression.
I started pottery classes because I wasn’t fulfilling my creative needs in my design career. At work, design became a very prescribed and linear process. From ideation, sketching, transferring this idea on the computer; each of these processes focused too heavily in the mind and ideas. There was little input with my the world and environment. Especially with the process of design being fully based on the computer–a device that is designed to do make precise pixel-perfect representations of anything we want–I began to feel restricted in my creativity. I longed to work for a tactile medium, one that wasn’t perfect and that responded to my touch with its own set of rules and challenged my ideas. I fell in love with pottery partly because I was not in control. I had to learn to work with different physical elements like speed, clay, water, and fire. Making, design, craft, became more of a conversation with the world than a linear and singular process that stems from my brain. Most importantly, working with pottery taught me a valuable lesson in life and as a designer; that I was not in control and creativity thrives when I am aware of this and working with the world and not trying to project my ideas into it.
From my experience, the design industry and education is designed in a way that human ideas are at the core of its value. I find this to be problematic because it promotes ego and greed, and leads to many of our design-centered problems in the world. As educated and experienced designers, we tend to have very strong opinions and principles on design and especially ‘good’ design. Surrounded by other like minded thinkers and professionals, our theories about our practice are confirmed and inflated. I have been to this place many times and have become a bit exhausted of it. Although I love the world of design, it can also be exclusive and elitist, leaving out large portions of the world and their experiences. I believe human ego and our attachment to ideas is the root of most of our problems, and design is not exempt from this.
In the most basic sense, I see design as a process of constructing connections. Up to this point, I spoke of design as an intelligent and purpose-driven visual (or non-visual) system created by humans. But design is also used to refer to systems in nature which are created in the absence of human hands–patterns in a shell, structure of a snowflake, systems of a human body–all of these have been touched ‘by design’. In this sense, design becomes a human projection of understanding occurrences in nature. It’s interesting that in this context we often don’t question who the designer is or what their intention might be. In this way, everything that exists in nature are designers and design is happening all the time and all around us. In Western theology, this invisible hand that designs in nature was seen to be the hand of God. And God was seen to be a figure whom man was created in the image of. So, again, this projection of design in nature comes back to decisions and ideas of the man. Is design a human concept invented to place random chaos into processes in which we can understand and make sense of?
Returning to design as a process of forming connections and translating them into a relevant tactile or visual form in the world… I believe the transformative power in design lies in its ability to form new ways of seeing and relating to the world; a transformation of values. I truly believe that design has the ability to transform, and transformation can improve the condition of shared lives on this planet. However, I’m not so confident that we, as designers, hold any power or control to guide the value of this transformation. In these past few months of the masters program, my understanding of design is not only a way to solve problems, but also problematic. I’m not so sure that our obsession with generating new ideas, constantly creating, and controlling, is serving us or the world in any way. And I’m not so sure that the world needs more things and new experiences. My relationship with design is transforming again.
During the course of this masters program, I discovered other definitions of what design could look like. Design as a tool for research, as a tool to reflect critically on the world, and as a tool to speculate into the future. I am becoming more interested in these approaches to design, as they feel more like conversations with the world rather than a process of projecting my ideas into the world through design. Having a decade of experience in industry, I am becoming less interested in making new things, but triggering conversation and reflection through design. Within the same line of thought, I have also become very interested in inclusive design and using design to work with, learn from, and expose the perspectives of others who are different from me.
[thoughts on future]