For our final group of readings, the first one talked about specializations in the design industry. Specialization, in my mind, is so important for a designer trying to get a job, so what I’ve been told. Being able to have a skill in design that brings something new to the table is very important. The author starts out with a scenario that furthers their point. Reading this, I honestly wasn’t that impressed with this article. I guess it could be that I’m a senior already, but most of these concepts was already taught to me. The importance of honing a skill that you love that brings something new to the table was taught to me very early on in my college career.
The next article titled ‘The design school of the future is nothing like the one you went to’ was a little different though. This article, as the name suggest, talks about how the way we teach design is changing, and just from your graduation year, the new upcoming year of people are going to be taught differently. I really think this interesting because in my college career, I have also have seen in first hand how it is different. My freshman year, we where the first to take a new version of drawing 2 which is a core class that all designer must take, but this one was specifically tailored to up incoming graphic design majors. To this day, I feel that class was a fundamental class. It introduced me to many of the programs I used today, and many of the principles I learned from Kelly, my professor, are still engrained into the way I design. However, the classes above me have never taken that class before, so when we arrived to our first graphic design class, those of us who took that class was ahead of others who just started, but to continue. The author basically goes over the academic world of graphic design how new technology and trend coming out every year is going to rapidly change the academic landscape for designer. Again I believe that 100 percent because I have seen it I real time. Around the same time I was taking web design, we where building websites by had, coding nearly each and every line fo code. However, something new from Adobe came it. It is called Adobe Dreamweaver and it has completely change the way I do web design. Dreamweaver allows you to drag and drop shapes, photos, blocks of text, and everything and can make the code for you in real time. You don’t have to refresh and goes if the design is to your liking. It will be done automatically. Like I said, this fundamentally have changed the way I design for the web and this was just one program. Imagine what the future could hold. We could be looking at programs that makes animating on a 2 dimensional plane easier or modeling 3d shapes easier as well. Just like the author states that in order to tech the field, you will have to be aware if what is out there, because it’s going to change how we design.   

The week’s readings was wild. The first one was pretty eyeopening and very informative. The talk with from Liz Jackson was about the empathy and disability stigmas, and how designers can help. She talks about empathy, and how her and others like her struggle with it. She goes onto to explain a situating where she is at the dentist and the dentist poses a question,”If I see a blind woman crossing the street, do I help her and risk offending her, or do I let her cross the street and risk her getting hut?” That is a more dilemma, because you don’t know if the person needs help or not, and don’t want to cause problems or witness a problem that you could have changed. She then goes to talk about how the world sees the signs of a disabled persons, and says that that person is dibbled and needs help. That was pretty shaking to think about. She began to then talk about how as designers we are problem solvers, and that many designers see disabled people as a project or portfolio piece that is in need of fixing. I loved that analogy. She began talking about how disabled people hardly in positions of leadership, so it leads to misrepresentation and that disabled people are supposed to be thanking for the work for their behalf. She called this ‘design thanking.’ She then showed the example of A Nike ad that changed the way that I looked at it. Nike signed with the first every disabled athlete named Justin Gallegos, and she breaks it down piece by piece. The ad first starts off by stating,”Justin Gallegos suffers from Cerebral Palsy but dreams of braking the 3 hour barrier in the half marathon.” Soon after, an image of him smiling and happy is shown. She says,“Does this look like a man who is suffering to you?” Again moving forward, Nike continued to say that they were surprising him with this signing, while other sines with Nike is at a table with an audience. It is more professional, but it wasn’t professional for Justin, it was a ‘surprise.’ I though this was a very shaking thing to listen to. As a black man, I fully understand misrepresentation and not being treated as equal in the eyes of the media. She goes into talking about how designers can design for disabled people. We need to design for them, not for the beneficiaries. They are designing for the general audience to make the brand look better. These were not meant for disabled people. 

The first article that we had to read for this week’s reading is tilted ‘This is what I have learned’ by Milton Glaser. His first point was to only work for people that you like. I somewhat really agree with that statement. I you are working for someone that you don’t like, then your friably aren’t going to make good work for them. The next point that was a little more wild was that if you have a choice never ave a job. He said to not have a job because someone could take that away from you and every night you got to bed thinking,”How am I going to put bread on the table?” He also said that that feeling doesn’t go away in your old age. I think that is kinda of a nihilistic way of thinking. Yes, someone could take that job away from you, but ideally, you should be working in a field that you love and is passionate about. I know that this is not always the case, but if a job makes you happy, then you should love doing it either way. The next statement of advice id to stay away from toxic people. You are speaking to the choir! You should get away from people who are toxic, because they will never see fault with what they are doing. Even if they say that they will change, being toxic is a personality thing that needs to be unlearned. The next phrase of advice that was interesting to me was that professionalism in not enough or the good is the enemy of the great. I didn’t understand this one at first. He goes into how professionalism is somewhat fo a hinderance in our field which is something that I totally agree with. We are a group of creative people, but I must wear slacks and a button down to come to work, because I must keep a business casual appearance. In this section I think he is showing his nihilistic thoughts again. I’m not sure if that is me or not, but he seems to be very negative about some things. Less is not necessarily more is another on of his statements. 

I really like this one, because I feel that. I don’t think that less is more in most instances. I think if the design calls for it and it still works, then do more. If everything is needed, then showing it is important. Some more words of wisdom is that stye is not to be trusted. I was initially confused with that statement since I’ve worked with style before but I digress. Upon reading this part, I really agree with what he says. Even though you may be a well known and beloved designer, if you never change, then you’re goony yo fail. He used Cassandre as an example. How she was arguable the greatest graphic designer of the twentieth century, who couldn’t make a living at the end and unfortunately committed suicide. She had a style that never changed, and it lead to her career ding. 

For this week’s readings, we have the first article talking about automation coming to the design field and how that might effect the field as a whole. The is something that care about deeply but is not too worried about it. In my limited experience so far, I think there is some ways that automation have made things more accessible and easier for companies and businesses, but I think that a fully automated graphic design field is impossible. The first article talked about why automation will never full take over the field, because wicked problems prevent them from doing so. These problems are so large and systematic that it would take communication and collaboration to such a high degree to even solve them. I think this very true, but I also think about something less systemic. No matter what automated service or easy to make service is out there, it will start to look ‘samey’ when using those services. Think of WIX for example. On WIX, users are able to create website with the ease of editing a template and drag and drop the colors and picture. Yes, that is really innovative and is very user friendly, but the problem is that those website have a similar feel. Anyone who have seen a WIX website and has little knowledge about web, knows those site to be from the same place. The scrolling, the animations, most of the color choices, and etc. feel the same one every site. That’s why we, many of the design students, says,”Oh that looks like a WIX site.” We say this because they all have that same feel, and that is the problem. If you start taking out the people part of a designer, then your graphics are going to start feeling the same. Customers are not going to distinguish between your company and another company. I believe I saw a while back a service that offered people the chance to create logos from a selection of clipart like, pre-made graphics. I thought this was a ridiculous thought. When making a company, you want your graphics to feel unique. You want your brand to feel like it is a visual representation of what you stand for. Automating that and using remade graphics looks that individuality. It begins to feel like you are just a number in a system. Luckily, I don’t see many of those logos out there, but I just find is astonishing the amount of services that try to make things easier only looses the individuality of the company. 

For this week’s readings, the first article titled ‘Who Companies Question the Value of Design’ by Alan Cooper was and interesting read. This reading talked about how companies perceive designers. He goes into about how designers should start talking to companies on their level. Basically, he highlights rather than changing other’s minds about the value of your work, you short be aware of your work’s value. This is something that I agree with to some level. I understand that if I’m working for a company, then most likely, the people on top are much older than me. They grew up in a generation that sees graphic design as another form of art and don’t understand the importance. They may see our work as ‘just making it look pretty.’ So if we can try not to change their minds but just show them the power of good design, then that is how you reach this people. Jared Spool responds to this articling claiming that it was ‘harsh’ and ‘privileged’ which is something that I agree with as well. Allan Cooper is talking about this as a well establish, extremely experienced designer. He says that if you are with a company that doesn’t value your work or willfully doesn’t understand the importance of your design work, then you should just leave and work for a different company. Yes, I do believe that if a work place doesn’t value your work, then you should leave. However, Cooper fails to realize that not everyone is in his position to do that, As a young and upcoming designer, I don’t really have that luxury. When I get a job, I’m coming in as someone who has had very little experience and I’m basically a risk. They may look at me as taking a chance, while they could get a more established designer like him. Even if somewhere I was working at didn’t understand the importance of my job anon their company, but they were still paying me and using my stuff anyway, then they have some base level understand of it’s importance. I don’t need the CEOs of the company to personally tell me how good of a job I’m doing. They are already saying that by using my graphics. I think the article comes off a a little too prideful and doesn’t sit and think about the designer who are staring out. I’m not Bringherst getting a design job, I’m a newbie straight out to college and a job is a job. Maybe later I will be more picky with more experience, but for the time being, I cannot be.
Both authors go into how some dies doesn’t have value, like changing the color s or type to make it look pretty. I kinda really disagree with that. I think any changes, no matter how minuet, are still important. If they didn’t have value then why would it be changed. Even with the statement ’to make it look pretty,’ there is still value in that.  

For this week’s readings, we had to read an article titled ‘Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving.’ For starters I was very interested in this set of articles. The term ‘wicked problems’ were brought up in the last set of readings, but I didn’t really understand what they were. So I was excited to get an answer to what they are. To start, the author, Jon Kollo, explains what a wicked problem is. A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as man as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, an the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems. The example that Jon Kollo put is poverty, and I think that is an excellent example. I personally have Benn lucky and privileged enough that I haven’t personally experienced this, but I do understand it. In order to ‘fix’ this problem, you would need to do many, many reforms on many things. Changing the minimum wages across the country, make sure that everyone has access to healthcare, make it that people can receive a higher education, incentivizing people to get a GED or high school diploma, and so much more. Each of those changes are very large systematic changes that need to go through many different government officials, meeting, and voting that it could take 4 years just to pass a single one of these things. The author then goes into taking about Horst Rittel and his ten characteristic of a wicked problem. These 10 characteristic seems to break it down really well. The author then explains what are large scale distractions.
Basically, a large scale distraction is a way to try to shift focus off that problem and focus on something else. This is down by the elite and the powerful. I really fell out of love with this article, because it felt I was reading information that we all knew but was spiced up to make it seem different. I’m not sure.
After that one, the next video was ‘Design a Force for Social Impact’ by Doug Powell. This is again something that I’m not, because I love the designing for social impact class with Eve. This is something that we touched on lightly and was very eyeopening and informative. I thought it was interesting when he talked about when his wife was diagnosed with diabetes and received a multitude of informative documents, but they were all so hard to read and comprehend. They where not designed in a way for the person affected to really understand the material, it was just a bunch of medical documents. He and his wife saw that sane issue across all facets of the medical field and decided to make a company named healthsimple to fix it. The redesigned those take at home papers, and added color, pictures, typography and more. They saw a problem and took the steps to fix it, which started a chain of fixing a larger scale problem with the medical industry. 

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. 

At the beginning of this reading, we read an article titled ‘Is there too much to know to be an effective designer?’ I very much already have an opinion on this one. I believe that yes, we do need to learn so much to be a effective designer, and I believe that a four year degree is not enough time for us ti effectively learn everything, unless we, like myself, were given the opportunity  to intern somewhere or given a apprenticeship opportunity. As a designer we need to be, pretty outgoing, a peoples’ person, someone that people feel that they could easily talk to, a writer, someone who is excellent on picking up social cues, being able to take change very well, and that is not even scratching the surface of what designers need to be. Along with that, we need to be up to date with the current trends, software, lingo and more! Also, if you have the ability to do something more specialized, then you better practice it and try to incorporated it into your design as much as possible. In my limited experience as a graphic designer, it almost feels like we need to be a combination of a artist who is never happy with his works and always looking to improve, a social butterfly that never falters, and a car sales person who is trying to persuade you into buying a used car that you personally put back together. We need to be excellent in so many skills, in to some, it can be too much to handle, and I feel that the feel is also very unforgiving because of that. For instance, I use to have a friend in the graphic design major who was extremely anxious. They couldn’t do some things, because they got extremely nervous and would throw up form the anxiety. Unfortunately, they dropped out of the major soon after, but because they could handle a part of design that is important, they couldn’t be an effective designer. The kinda goes in line of the next article I’m going to mention, and it’s the article titled ‘The Fundamental Job of Design is Not Great Design’ by Karl Fast.
As the name of the article suggest, this article talks about the job scene for graphic designers and how those jobs are not places that foster great design. I must say, the title sounds like clickbait, but I digress. The author’s first point is that organizations have embraces design to further their mission, but in order to make great design, it doesn’t just stand alone. The author says that the design is like an organ that helps function the body as a whole, I very much agree with this because, even though you might make a bomb social media campaign, if there is drop off in another part of the company like the manufacturing or marketing, then the product as a whole fails. It doesn’t matter that the social media campaign looks good, if the customer doesn’t approve of the product due to other means. 

The readings this week was about the different design principles. Before we get started, I was initially pretty blown away, because I didn’t know that there were this any different design principles. I knew the term graphic design was a pretty broad term, but I did not know, when it comes down to the specifics, how broad it truly is. There is information architecture, UI and UX design, speculative design, interaction design, and so much more. What I found he most entertaining to read about are the UX design and the information architecture. When I heard the term UI/UX design, I thought that this was one thing but no. UI and UX are both different design principles. They go together but are different. Information architecture is a different story. I have never heard of this design principle. Information architecture  or IA design is a blueprint of the design structure which can be generated into wireframes and sitemaps go the project. I didn’t know that was a design principle on own. I thought that was just part of UX design. Speaking of that, the job of a UX designer is to use the information gathered by the IA designer and use that as a starting point. So that they could plan out the navigation system. I thought that this was very fascinating. I took the web and screen and the advance web and screen class with Kofi, and I never knew about this. The reading makes it this that these design principles are different designers doing each job, but in web and screen we were every part. We were the UI, UX, IA and the back end developer which is the nature of being a student I suppose.
Something else that I found interesting is the article by Robert Fabricant ‘Why Does Interaction Design Matter? Let’s Look at the Evolving Subway Experience’ For starters, of course interaction design is important. Not really knowing much about what all encompasses interaction design, I assume that these designer work with designing graphics that the public or a group of people will be interacting with. This is very important, because designers that focus in on this, to my knowledge, are very in tune to their audience. When reading the article, there were some very notable points that helped me better understand interaction deign. I very much liked the quote,“We still live with conventions born with the printing press.” What does the author mean by that? Well, the author is talking about feedback. Feedback, as it is stated in the article, is an integral and central part of interaction design. This is a callback or form of industrial design. Whenever any environmental signage goes out, the public will react to it. The interaction designers take that feedback and further better the experience for the user, like the ever evolving subway systems. Initially, the subways needed people, which clogged up the system, so over time, it became more and more automated which began to make the process a lot more efficient. 

For the readings this week, these reading were all about leadership and how it relates with design and design principles. The first article talks about clients and their relationship with designers. In the article ‘Leadership is The Strategic Issue,’ the author goes over how the design designs are made by the client even though the client don’t typically know anything about design. The client instead is focused on the business aspect, which can typically go against what the designer has in mind. I think this accurately describes some clientele. Sometimes, just like the author was stating, there is a disconnect with the wishes of the designer and the wishes of the clientele. I personally had an experience when the clientele wanted more and more added to the logo, but I was telling the client that adding more would make it too much. However at the end of the day, it is the designer’s job to make the client happy. All we can do is jus dissuade them and show them better options, but to continue with the readings. The article also talked a little about the relationship of a CEO of a company and the company’s graphic design team. The article goes into that the designers would need to stop trying to educate CEOs about how designers see the world and instead try to educate themselves about how a CEO sees the world.
I think this is interesting, but rather strange concept. I think most, if not all CEO’s and company leaders see the importance of their design team. Yes, the creators/inventors are the one for the creator of the product, and the manufactures are the ones responsible for making that product on mass. BUT the designers are the ones responsible for giving that brand an identity. They are the ones who make the packaging, make the brand logo, make the marketing campaigns, and so much more. Yes, there is always going to be some disconnect with the people up top and the people who work under them, but that’s why we have managers and directors. Their job is to make sure that the people like the CEOs are happy and shows them why the progress that was made is important to the company. This is why a lot of those leaders have financial meetings or annual reports. These are done to show the progress that was made and to show its importance, but this is something that the net part of the reading talk about.
Maria Giudice talks about the difference between a leadership role and a managerial role. Se states,“The only requirement for being a leader is to have followers. Managers need to be prompted, but leaders emerge.” I believe this to be very true. The reason why a lot of people don’t like their managers is truly because  lot of them have this power trip. They believe that they are better than you, and like to have someone to boss around. The only reason why you do it, is because you have no choice. You can’t say no or you run the risk of being fired. There is a certain level of fear which doesn’t foster a good working environment. Now a leader comes up because someone said,“We need to work together, and I’m willing to keep us together and on track.” Leaders can come up and chosen by the people, which gives them a certain level of respect. In my experience I haven’t had a manager or head figure of shorts that I didn’t respect. Most of the time, the managers that I worked with have always been quote on quote ‘normal employees’ at some point and worked their way up to that leadership position. Yes, the people didn’t chose them, but they have earned that position through time and dedication.