8.27.2013

VA: Reading Response - Week 1

Good Citizenship: Design as a Social and Political Force

Politics has always been a big interest of mine and I guess for the most part I always connected design as a social/political force. I grew up in a low income area and my father worked in construction mostly in high income residential area. When ever I would visit him at work I would always notice how these neighborhood always had nice street signs, parks had really ornamental signage, even the sidewalks and cool patterns. It always got me to wound if our neighborhood had nice things like this would things be different? I feel it does make a difference! Design has an effect on people, if it can get you to buy stuff you didn't really need then it can have an effect on you political standings and your social standings.



Design Thinking: A Useful Myth

This is a topic I encounter everyday from the non-design people I interact with. They see my work and they think I'm some sort of genius or something and while flattering i know very well that I'm no Einstein I'm just a really good listener. Design to me has been mostly about communication and the first part of that is listening to the content in order understand it. To me thats like 50% of the work! The rest is about relaying what you listened to in a visual format which comes pretty easy if you really understand the content. The article mentions how other fields of study have creative solutions that most people don't recognize as being "creative". We see it everyday from bridges to bicycles but for one reason or another those things don't get credit as being creative things but they are. So I would agree we don't have any creative superpowers the only skill we possess is having patience with not always compliant software and printers... 

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