Thirty Conversations on Design

Something I love about all of these videos is how broad of an interpretation the artists give to design. It’s easy to adopt a bit of tunnel vision when immersed in the graphic design world and it’s so important to step back and think about design from a wider perspective, encompassing everything from engineering to architecture.

So many of these videos were great but the three that stood out to me were Daniel Pink, Deborah Adler and Tina Roth Eisenberg. First, Daniel Pink won me over when talking about the eraser. It’s pretty much my favorite invention. He discussed the value in making mistakes and I’ve found that when you’re designing sometimes your best ideas develop out of the failure of others or the occasional happy accident. “If you can erase, you can create.” I couldn’t agree more. And also I hold my pencil really strangely and it creates a lot of lead smudges. The eraser is my best friend.

Deborah Adler’s video, “The Heart,” also stood out to me because I have always looked at design as a method of problem solving, which is something she addresses directly in the video. Deborah doesn’t define a designer’s strengths by their style or aesthetics, but instead looks at the inspiration and the heart of the design. I love the idea of solving problems through design in a very human way. It may be idealistic to hope to make an impact on the world through my next design position, but the end goal for me is to feel connected to other people through my designs and solve problems in unconventional ways.

Tina Roth Eisenberg’s video really blew me away. First, she started talking about firewood in Switzerland and how they have an internal need to arrange things meticulously and orderly. I would absolutely fit in there. She made a great point about how cultural differences influence design, and this is actually a huge area of interest for me, but right now mostly I just want to move to Switzerland with all the orderly firewood.  Then, of all the possible problems that design could solve, she started talking about safe drinking water! A field that I’ve been passionate about for years and hope to get involved in more deeply, starting with my Capstone project. She basically summarized my fascination with the water crisis, discussing how design combined with engineering can help solve the global drinking water problem. So perfect.

I’d also like to point out that I, of course, watched Jessica Hische’s video and she is as awesome as ever.