Learning to be in the Design World

Today’s world of design goes in many direction. It includes designing the products themselves with full research. The research needs to include what is the competition doing? What does the consumer want? What does your product offer that others do not? Is it an environmentally considerate product?

Designers include many fields on the team: electronics, engineering, manufacturing, business analysts, and more. Marketing designers are web designers and technicians, interactive web designers, interactive brochure designers, packaging and print designers, promotional planners and more. Project management at each of the stages requires leaders familiar with the design skills and talents of their team. It is important to create a talent budget that knows where the strengths of the team can intertwine best to use time and funds efficiently as well as produce the product that most benefits the world it is entering.

Learning to be in the design world makes the designer responsible for their own education. We can attend classes and gain a degree. Does that make us a designer? No, it does not. Gaining the most possible from each class depends on the student’s attitude and degree of investment in gaining from the course even when it may not seem to be relevant. Beyond that, it is recognizing that no amount of classes can prepare students to be the fullest talent of  their individual potential.

The student takes responsibility to practice what they have learned, to go beyond what is taught in the classroom to seek out the greatest talents in their field. Read everything they have to offer, participate in their blogs and tutorials. Know what the experts are NOW doing with great success. Listen and learn. Practice and fine tune. Attend user groups, workshops and events where there is fertile ground to learn and grow and meet others in the field that have the same desire to learn and grow.

Learning includes discerning where time is best managed for the advancement in skills. Learning includes tuning in to the gut and noticing the lurch, which sometimes happens in “must” courses for the degree. Complaining and resisting prolongs the discomfort and sets the student up for missing the gems. Turn it into a gem. How can the assignments be creatively turned to the talent you want to hone?

Learning includes tuning in to when the heart sings. That is when enrichment happens, balancing that with the open-minded lurch to search for the treasure and plunging your arms in deep. Plunge deeply into the chest and stir the contents, touching all the gems and choosing the ones that make the heart sing; polish and refine.

Ways of Seeing Book Review

Ways of Seeing is a book that talks about attitudes and observations. Berger states “When an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art. Assumptions concerning: Beauty, Truth, Genius, Civilization, Form, Status, Taste, etc.” (pg 11) The observer’s experiences in life also color their view and interpretation of the art.

There were some explanations of attitudes that seemed assumptive and biased. There are several references to women enjoying being looked at, watched, therefore many nude painting have the woman looking out at her observer. Berger states “Thus she turns herself into an object…an object of vision: a sight.” (pg 47)There can be a natural beauty in paintings of nudes, and yet some of the attitudes described and shown by the paintings pictured seemed to discount that possibility.

It was interesting how much status figured into the paintings of much earlier times. Two paintings of people smiling are shown with the following paragraph.

“These people belong to the poor… Here the painted poor smile as they offer what they have for sale. (They smile showing their teeth, which the rich in pictures never do.) They smile at the better-off – to ingratiate themselves, but also at the prospect of a sale or a job. Such pictures assert two things: that the poor are happy, and that the better-off are a source of hope for the world.”(pg 104)

The last chapter of the book addresses publicity. The author speaks of it offering free choice for both purchaser and manufacturer, proposing that we transform ourselves. This is done with photographs and layouts of successfully transformed persons. Berger says “Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell…Being envied is a solitary for of reassurance.” (p132-133)

This book was first published in 1972 in Great Britain. Some of the attitudes seem narrow and heavy-handed in our day. So the name of the book seems appropriate. Ways of Seeing is the opinion of the author and how he sees the world of art.

Gestalt

Definitions of Gestalt

1. A configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that it cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts
   wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
2. The theory of Kohler and others that reactions are not to separate stimuli, but to situations perceived as wholes.
   www.willdurant.com/glossary.htm
3. Gestalt is a general description for the concepts that make unity and variety possible in design. It is a German word that roughly translates as “whole” or “form.” Gestalt theory is involved with visual perception and the psychology of art among other things. It is concerned with the relationship between the parts and the whole of a composition. http://daphne.palomar.edu/design/gestalt.html

Gestalt Design

Closure the mind supplies the missing pieces in a composition

Continuance the eye continues in the direction it is going

Similarity what an items looks like and how that effects gestalt

Proximity where items are in relationship to each other and how that effects gestalt

Alignment lining up objects to organize and form groups

Definitions from http://daphne.palomar.edu/design/gestalt.html

Examples of Gestalt

Proximity

Similarity

Gestalt Overlap Proximity

Misty’s Aesthetic Statement

The unexpected creates mystery and a depth of contemplation that remains in the mind
because of its unique quality. Compositing, whether it be in PhotoShop, Illustrator or
After Effects builds the opportunity to find something within myself that wants out. It
is something that wants to be expressed. Reality stretches itself. The knowledge that
the observer has their own experience of the work creates the sense of satisfaction of
touching the soul.

Cultural Differences in Symbols and Color

As a technological community, we must now be aware of the cultural differences of our international audience. In the not so distant past, what we wrote or designed and what we distributed went into a limited segment of the population. Our consideration of the audience only had to include those in the tight-knit community we were familiar with. In recent years our population has become international even in the tight-knit community. With the wide use of the internet our work is easily distributed to an international audience. Even if that is not the intended audience, a writer and designer must keep in mind that a wide variety of cultures may access their work. My motion graphics and interactive documents will be published to the web where they will be viewed by an international audience and expected to influence people of diverse cultures to make decisions.

Errors in Marketing

A company advertised their glasses in Thailand by showing them being worn by cute little animals. Since animals are considered low life, no self-respecting Thai would be seen wearing something worn by animals.

One company printed the ok finger sign on all of its catalogs. Then they found out that this was an obscene gesture in some Latin American countries and lost 6 months because they had to reprint.

Color Differences

The greatest difference I am aware of in symbolism is the color white which is used for funerals in Eastern cultures and Black used for funerals in Western cultures. I recently watched a movie where an American girlfriend showed up at an East Indian funeral wearing all black while all of the guests were in white.  The contrast was stark but not commented on or discussed in the movie. I took this to imply that the creators of the movie were allowing the observer to choose their response, a good artistic choice in my opinion. Many Americans do not adhere to the wearing black anymore. Our own culture is changing toward celebrating and respecting the life of the person who has passed, rather than having an all black mood.

Symbols That Can Stir Controversy
This is a symbol that is meant to be moving and even patriotic. Not so long ago it would have been considered offensive to use the American flag in such a way by the American people themselves. Many other countries would never stand for having their national flag altered for display. Flags often symbolize hard fought-for principles. Culturally, changing the shape and representation of a flag can also change its meaning in ways that are unknowingly offensive…or even, in some cases, meant to be offensive. In creating my designs I would never want to step on another populations’ toes. The feeling of patriotism and emotion evoked by my example is intended to be positive and prideful, but it is a fine line to being offensive to a variety of cultures, even within our own country.

Major Controversy

Columbia Pictures created a situation that ended up getting them banned from Egypt. They produced a movie in Egypt, using Pakistani accents, Moroccan clothing and American behavior.  It seems arrogant that a group of artists would go into another country to produce a movie without studying and emulating the authenticity of the culture they are portraying. They should have had an adviser, every step of the way, that grew up in the culture and could guide them to accuracy. Most important that adviser should be taken very seriously when potential controversial behaviors occur that are not vital to the story line. In this case the president of the country was seen kissing his wife in public. This would not be vital to the scene and is a highly unacceptable behavior in Islam countries.

My design in motion graphics might be used to introduce such a movie with title, initial credits and foreshadowing of the mood of the movie. It would be disastrous to faux pas at that early point of presentation. Cross-cultural differences will always bring criticism and some controversy may be beneficial to a strong piece of artwork, but offensive, especially through ignorance and lack of research is poor workmanship.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/24798165/Cultural-Misunderstandings (pg 1)

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/24798165/Cultural-Misunderstandings (pg 4)