The
book Design Research Through
Practice—From the Lab, Field, and Showroom by Ilpo Koskinen, John
Zimmerman, Thomas Binder, Johan Redstrom, and Stephan Wesveen, fundamentally
and comprehensively discusses about the design in a contemporary context and a structivism
manner. The background of this book is that “design” has dramatically become a
critical academic field for years. Authors of this book are intended to bring
more tolerance from non-designers. They are recognizing “design” in a more fundamental
and yet general aspect. “Design” has been a crucial field within educational
institutions and society.
The
book itself demonstrates the basic research methods of design in the beginning.
“Constructive Design Research” is specifically introduced to readers. It is a
type of design research that originates from constructivists’ perspectives on
understanding knowledge and society. Developing on the discussion of
“constructive design research”, they argue the importance of the emerging human-centered
design as well. “Design” is no longer a simple human approach, but also
requires a complex knowledge and experimentations which are related to higher
education, prototyping, laboratory, probes, field explorations, art, and
others. It is a significant filed that strongly correlate with knowledge of
methodology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, engineering, etc. “Design”,
in the contemporary context, is not a simple word or term any longer.
Being
a graduate graphic design student at ArtCenter College of Design, my personal
responses on this book and its related topics focus on my own definition of
“design” & “graphic design”, personal commentary on the pedagogy of
graduate graphic design, and basic thoughts about graphic design in the next
ten years.
In
today’s context, the word “design” is not simply describing human approaches on
aesthetically creating certain things that serve for the larger audience. It has a
broader and almost vague meaning in many situations. People can use the word
“design” for “She can design a tremendous poster.” And people may also often
hear things like “The company is designing a new banking service and
structure.” It seems that “design” has become a word which is about “creating
and optimizing things”. “Design”, in my opinions, is a humanistic behavior that
creates and optimizes the communication and interaction among people, animals,
nature, merchandise, infrastructure, architecture, and even outer space. It is
like an automotive lubricant and the society is the engine. The expanding on the
meaning and function of “design” can be set into the situation that global
society has been generating and normalizing human resource, information and knowledge
over the time. The existences of “Uber”, “Lyft”, “Yelp”, “WeWork”, and Bitcoin
all share the similar backgrounds. Within this big picture of “design”, “graphic
design” is not limited as simple visual communication. It is communicating more
complex information and stories today. The “graphic design” has been
transforming into a field that using aesthetic to create visual as foundations
while communicate with audience through contents and multi-medias. The approach
itself carries more complicated visuals through more touchpoints to people, such
as prints, books, packaging, banners, digital screen, cellphones, sounds, etc.
With
those understanding of “design” and “graphic design”, it is truly grateful to
have graduate courses like “Design Research”, “Grad Seminar”, and “Leadership”.
It
breaks the common sense and limits on students’ thoughts about graphic design. It
is telling them creating decent visuals and deliverables are just beginnings. What
students, especially graduate students shall understand that there is always a
systematic and yet long progress of graphic design from the beginning to the
end. The beginning starts when people approach to designers and the end will
stop at the products along with stories are delivered to audience. The
“designing” is only one link in this long process. If we see the society as a
giant ecosystem, after reading the book and visiting Eames House, students
shall realize that as part of this ecosystem, graphic design is somehow
non-stopping. Every single element in this ecosystem is operating and keeping
floating. In contrast, due to various non-design impacts, students normally
fall into the misunderstanding that the due date or deadline represents the end
of a design process. However, in various types of design fields, deadline seems
to be less important than design’s degree of completion and functions. It is
common to see that the duration of designing a typeface, product, and
architecture would take dramatic amount of time. The unchangeable of institutional
schedules should not indicate students to think that due dates are the end of
designing. Similarly, the graduation certainly does not represent the end of
learning and gaining.
As
the global environmental issues are getting severe and Millennials generations
are growing into the nucleus of the society. The future of graphic design will
become more diverse in terms of visual. But more notions of conscience and
social responsibilities must be involved into the pedagogy and training of
graphic design. It is due to the increasing of global population and the
decrease of natural resources will indirectly curate more intense competitions
among graphic designers. To achieve social survival and success may or may not
cost one’s more sacrifices and strength than the past. In the near future, it is
significant to unifying graphic designers and educate them with basic ethic,
conscience and sense of social responsibility.
A book report/commentary from the Design Reserach course at ArtCenter College of Design MGx in Spring 2019.
Designer: Yi Mao
Instructor: Chris Hacker
