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Revisionist History?

In GR618-Visual Literacy, we tackle a project about timelines… and we ask the students (among other things) to look at the timeline a few different ways. This brings up questions: Why? Is this realistic? Can you really change history? What are we learning here?

While you can’t literally change history, you can change your point-of-view (POV) — and you can change how you tell the story; where you start and stop; what you focus on; and what you group together. So, yes, this is realistic and it’s an important point of learning about narrative structure.

For instance, the story of the antics in a kitchen is very different from the POV of a rat. A man’s daily ritual is interesting from the POV of his wristwatch. These are Hollywood storytelling tricks, but as designers we have ours… namely editing and streamlining.

How full is your bucket?

One of the things I’ve discovered over the years is that the educational culture of our students differs as greatly as the languages that they speak. However, when stepping into the classroom, we have the same expectations of our students regardless of background. This week, the topic of “how can you get the most out of your classroom experience?" came up, specifically in a critique-based class.

One way to approach this idea is by looking at the contents of a bucket… full of homework, questions, experiments, ideas, inspiration, etcetera. Depending on a student’s background, they may be accustomed to coming to class with either an empty or a full bucket. However, in a classroom on the 5th floor, where they start has a big impact on where they might end up.

Designer hats

Designers can wear many hats. Depending on the designer, one hat might fit a bit better than others — but, in general, we’ve become adept at sporting a good variety of headgear: that of a strategist, writer, researcher, photographer, illustrator, programmer, craftsman, aesthete, typographer, production manager, information-architect, etc.

However, knowing which hat to wear for which occasion can sometimes present a challenge. Because we’re so used to doing everything, when we need to interface with other team-members in very specific ways, collaboration can become challenging... or more specifically, identifying the type of collaboration needed can become challenging.

In his book, The Ten Faces of Innovation, Tom Kelley details the archetypes he’s run across in his life at IDEO. On design teams, we might add two more: The design collaborator and the collaborative designer. While they might seem similar, the role and result of each can be very different… and you might find yourself wearing different hats at different times and deciding which type of collaborator you need to be.

Production Thinking

We've all heard of Design Thinking and it's a great way to envision how designers see the world — and how we can help the world see itself. However, there's a practical side that we might call "Production Thinking" that's sometimes hard to teach in design school.

Recently in one of my classes, the topic of designing for production — especially when designing logos — came up.