These brief clips were really interesting. The first clip that I watched was of Tony Hawk. Obviously being familiar with Tony Hawk, I was interested in why he was considered a designer. I know that the has a clothing brand that is sold at Kohls but beyond that I’m not sure what else he has done. It is really interesting to me, however, that someone who can be so successful at something like skateboarding for over 20 years can be regarded also as a designer later in life. He is an ex professional skater, a designer, a business-man, and an actor. Something that I’ve always struggled with is the desire to not box myself in by having to choose one specific thing to be good at for the rest of my life. Tony Hawks is obviously a good role model for this idea.
The one piece of design that inspired him was Apple’s products. This speaks to itself as I think Apples products are inspiring in general. At this point it is probably almost cliche to say that you’re inspired by Apple’s products but the one way that you know they are truly great is that people continue to talk about them constantly anyway. They are clean, beautiful, and elegant with amazing and innovative user interfaces. Beyond this, the mind behind the products, the late Steve Jobs is an inspiration all on his own.
Next I watched a clip from Pete Docter who is an animator, screenwriter, and director at Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar has always been one of the companies I would dream of working at if I could wave a magic wand and have any amount of talent possible. I wanted to be an animator as a child but unfortunately didn’t stick with it long enough to develop my skills the way they would have needed to be developed to work as an animator somewhere like that. I love Pixar’s films and am always touched by the stories they tell and the characters they make us care about.
Not surprisingly, Docter is inspired by “Story.” After combining all of my talents and interests, one of the few ways I’ve found to effectively describe myself is that I am a storyteller. I’ve been in love with a good story since day one. My goal in the iMedia program is to discover new and interesting ways to tell stories (and hopefully ways that allow me to be creatively satisfied and make a decent living in the process).
The final video I watched was from Emily Pilloton. As of this video, she is actually a high-school teacher in one of the poorest counties in North Carolina. She is passionate about making creativity and design education accessible to students in the public school system. This is an extremely amiable goal.
She explained that she was inspired from a young age by McGyver, which was also her first childhood crush. This is hilarious to me but makes sense once she started to explain it. What she envies about McGyver is his ability to take nothing and turn it into something that is beautiful and functional. I don’t know if I would consider most of McGyvers contraptions beautiful, but I certainly see where she’s coming from. She’s more interested in process than in the final product of a design and appreciates the ability to do the basics well.
Design is something that inspires me. I think that I have an eye for design, which I hope is a good start, though I am constantly frustrated by my inability to pull off ideas that feel as though I am looking at them through a fogged up mirror. It’s like trying to remember a dream. I have an idea in my head enough to know that it’s beautiful and makes sense but for some reason the process of getting it to look as good in reality is always much more difficult. I get the sense that if you have an eye for design, that practice is the only thing that will help, but part of me feels simply less creative than others. Whereas many designers utilize other peoples ideas as sources of inspiration, my conscience always makes me feel as though I’m ripping someone off. I can only hope that this is something every creative person struggles with as they try to find themselves.