General
Last week we had Jonny Goldstein come in and give us a two day workshop on visual thinking.
As we start winding down the semester (although some members of our studio don't even want those words uttered) we are finally getting to the points in our projects where we start making/doing/building things. After many weeks of research, interviews, and sifting through information to filtered analysis we are moving into the building/designing phase of our projects. This is the time when we implement our prototypes and start making changes to them based on what works.
On Monday, Jethro and Rob from The Action Mill came to speak to the 1st and 2nd year MID students about creating meaningful action, which they defined as “Instead of saying what you want, you do what you want.” The Action Mill is an organization that seeks to help their clients gain and keep people’s attention by several means, including designing tools like telephones and ballot boxes as well as organizing people to act and promote change.
Mapping seems to be a pretty interesting and useful idea. I know that may seem a bit silly at this point since it seems to be one of the founding ideas of this new order of designer and all, but hey, it's new to me!
During the last class we were shown a lot of examples of maps to try to give us an idea of the scope of information they could convey. We were also asked to produce a few maps oursleves for our class today drawing on our perspectives of the role of the designer and the information we've been developing within our group projects.
One great thing about this fall is our new lounge! Thanks to our director Jonas we now have a new creative space filled with beanbags, a carpet, and low tables. The first years are already making themselves at home as they get ready for their seminar class which is held here on Wednesdays.
What a weekend we first years had. It is hard to explain and I'm not even sure if I'm suppose to, but for me, it was very enlightening. We were assigned readings a week in advance, which discussed human nature and the development of group dynamics within the setting of a "small" group (less than 16 people).
The UArts Corzo Center just announced a great opportunity to connect with people for creative projects with a new resource called Superfluid. Have you ever had a project in mind but didn't have all the skills to make it happen?
