Throughout the past two weeks I think we kept coming back to one main point, especially as we discussed some of the more controversial (as in why is THAT one art?) pieces. Its easy to look at a simple piece and say, yeah sure, I could have made that! Questioning art is an important part of understanding it though, and the artists we have studied spent many years figuring out their own art, and there is a reason why they’ve become famous. Its not that they threw some lines on the canvas one time and sold it for millions, its a style that they developed and grappled with as artists.
As iMedia students, we are students of art and design. We are going to be professionals in a field where we are expecting to be experts on creating aesthetically pleasing work. Others will hire us to create content for them, and they will expect it to be aesthetically appealing.
In any field its important to keep up with current events, and the cutting edge. With horses I can tell you who is winning and what horses they’re riding. I know what their opinions are on controversies as well. The same needs to be true for design, without knowing and understanding the leaders on the cutting edge, we will be bound to play “catch-up” forever.
To stay up to date, we should each identify topics that are important to us, and seek out new information about it daily. One way to do that is to set google alerts with key search terms. Google then emails daily with news, new blog posts, and updated websites. This is a simple way to stay up to date with new things that come out on the internet without having to search google each day.