Objects and Solutions (journal6)

Out of the conversations I listened to, there was ironically no mention of transportation; which was what I was expecting after watching the introduction. Before commenting on what I thought about the answers I heard, I must say how disappointed I with the footage these designers took of themselves. You would think that people who dealing with visual communication would at least take lighting into consideration, even just a little bit. I mean even for Pete Doctor, a screenwriter for Pixar, who chose to film his movie on the roof on his house, chose for the sun to be behind him. C'mon! you work for Pixar!

Alright no that that is off my chest, I would like to talk a little about the answers from Khoi Vinh, Ken Carbone, and Michael Lebowitz. Vinh said that he thought design should be applied to making things better in general. He specifically said that he thought that design should go into making useful and beautiful products, but people do that already. It may be done better in some cases than in others but no company that is producing a large amount of an object would choose not to hire an industrial designer. What I think he meant to imply was that designers should take a step away from selling things and start physically making a difference. That serves as a nice introduction to Carbone's answer: Education. He rose a very good point that designers, out of everyone, should know how to communicate to the masses and what better thing to make known than knowledge itself. That's a damn good point, I thought. Lebowitz was on a slightly different level, he suggested that the internet would essentially take over the world and designers should add some "humanity" to the coding guru's algorithmic mesh.

I'd agree with all of these in a way, and I really don't think they are that far off from one another. Only I don't really know anything about algorithms. So I suppose if there could be one that would choose the optimal design for any given situation, then I chose the wrong field. Basically, I agree that designers should start inhibiting their ability to communicate and start communicating the things that will make the biggest difference not the biggest paycheck, and I think the web is a great tool (and sure it may take over the world too, but I'll let my kids they need to worry about that one).

Ironically, I too want a decent paycheck, and so do Vinh, Carbone, and Lebowitz. And that's why they're not worrying about it unless they are asked. Carbone, I think it was, said that teachers should be paid more than lawyers. Ethically, sure they would. But that doesn't make sense in our society. Who has more money, big corporations getting sued or middle class undergrads? However, if you take into consideration the internet as a tool that has not yet reached its full potential, then some new opportunities arise.