Response 5

The first Ted Talk of the many readings/videos today is ‘Teaching design for change’ by Emily Pilloton. Emily first talked about something she calls Project H, a nonprofit design program, and how it benefits Bertie County, North Carolina. When listening to her Ted Talk, One of the things that she put a massive emphasis on is thats the program strives to design with, not for. She means that her and her designers puts a huge emphasis on making sure the client is closely involved in the design process. I really like this motto, but I don’t believe that it could work with every client situation. What works about this for her and her team, they work together with communities, so it makes complete sense why the motto with, not for works. They are working to build something for a community, so they need to get closure to get a better understanding of the community’s problem that they are trying to solve. The only problem is that that doesn’t work for all clientele. I a more corporate sense, designer have to work in a system. Possible, most of the designers don’t actually speak with the client, rather someone may skew to them on their behalf and spread that information to the team. There is always going to be some disconnect in a corporate sense, however in a freelancing position, I think this is an excellent motto. Your goal as a freelance designer just like a corporate designer is to make the client or clientele happy, however, in a freelance position, you more freedom and more at stake. Because you are one single designer, your integrity as an individual is on the line with every customer. If you work for a firm that is doing non consumer friendly business practices, it is harder to put your face t that problem, however as a freelance, your are the face to your business. People can automatically trace you back to any problems, so building an excellent relationship is beyond important. That’s why Emily’s motto of with, not for works extremely well here. If every client you encountered was so involved like that, then it would build a stronger connection to your client. I believe firms and other corporate graphic designers could do that, but when you start working with a larger and larger team, it become extremely hard to manage and keep everyone in on it. These are some points that Emily also brings up.
Another talk that we were assigned to watch is the Haiyan Zhang talk about design and diversity. This is an interest of mine, because I am going into this field as a black man. Unfortunately, there isn’t many Black or people of color in the field, so integrating more diversity in a seemingly white centric field peaks my interest. Upon listening to her talk, I found some things that seemed unrealistic or I found myself questioning some things. She talked about how many people are open to volunteering their time to help solve some difficult challenges, however, some seem to be a little bit too broad for one single fix. For example, when she was talking about larger more systematic changes to big social problem being fixed or solved by one person. Unless you had the power to change the way people think over night, that is an impossibility.