Response 4: First Things First

In Response to Lecture 4:
12 February 2015
First Things First lecture by Adriana Eysler.

While this lecture hits us hard due to our profession as design students, or more likely to be called designers-to-be. I believe the gist of this lecture questions us back do we really believe in becoming successful in the style that we do our work, or producing more common designs that will please the others’ eyes.

What I like about this lecture is about talking our experiences with design. It feels like I can express how our identity and study of design over the years to non-designers in this post?

Design has evolved everyday, and Modernism, in the past, has been considered to hold a future for designers – a new look/ strategy that gathered people of the same passion and creating a community, to create good design, of course. This has then brought up a leading cultural design institute, the Bauhaus.

Due to the great influence it brought, I think it has then affected education, where design students are taught too much using “guides”, leading to more or less common designs, trying to please the eyes of the audience, or should I say the ones who taught them.

In this progress, however, is what people took advantage of. It seems that this has started since the past, and is ongoing.

According to Ewen, advertisements, or design even has been made too commercialized these days, till it is regarded little or no value. The images produced have been made to sell the product more, rather than looking at the design itself. Hence, design in this case becomes a secondary tool to the subject matter.

These designs, prominently, are meant to “SELL”. Even if it was a bad idea, or a bad design of the product or message that it is trying to say, designers, in reality are given the task to make these “bad” designs into something that looks much better. It is their job (well, they are paid) to manipulate their target audience despite the outcome, hiding the truth.

However, design is also not just to enhance things, design has then changed much to embracing an identity, so much so that everyone needs one now.

It can also be used as a weapon, somewhat, producing works/visual language to express animosity to the party they are against, to mock or diss them.

Design can be used in many ways, but finding what you like to do as a designer can be difficult, which is why learning to accept what others like, what you like and coming up with a certain style takes longer than what you think.