Design = Heart

This is the response to Carolyn McCarron Sienicki's article: Design = Heart?, Stefan Sagmeister asks students: Can design touch someone's heart?

There are multiple important points that Sienicki proposes in this article regarding Sagmeister's ideas. One that caught my attention was the idea that as designers we have power. Which just inmediately made me think: well, as artists, we ALL have power. I mean, who does not remember the controversy that aroused out of Picasso's cubist pieces at first when they first came about? Or those religious depictions (paintings) made out of urine? or fecal matter? What about Maya Lin's Vietnam Veteran's Memorial? There is no doubt that ALL artists, whichever area they are in can certainly create quite a bit of commotion. However, does that mean that the works touch our hearts? Obviously these and many other art works must in some way affect us personally, our emotions, to have such strong reactions to them... We connect or do not connect to the different views presented to us. Yet I guess I question even myself, whether we are only connecting or reacting to the aesthetics of the piece and we do not see beyond it, or we do not really know what "it is about" because, like Sagmeister proposes, we don't really "believe in anything", or at least we don't really do believe in anything strongly enough to CARE.

I want to say YES, I CARE! I BELIEVE IN SOMETHING! I believe in values, I believe in that design can change the world, I believe in what I do, in my work and its power to put a smile into people's face. If I do believe that design can in fact touch someone's heart (and thus change the world), then I think that the biggest question still remains, as was mentioned in class before, what is design for me? Even though I have a sort of definition of it, I think I still have can go far and wide with it, and I do have to focus and emphasize this question a lot more when it comes to defining my work, and in essence, defining me.

Another phrase that caught my attention in the article is: "When one's personal interest, strength and passion come into play, the design solution is stronger because the designer has more conviction." I am fully engaged by this idea, as many of you are too! If I show passion through what I do and I really am doing what I want to do, then not only will I be happy, but I will be true to myself and my work will reflect that honesty and that passion. Obviously, this along with a mixture of very hard work and spiced up with a tad of luck, will most likely provide for not ending up a poor or bankrupt artist. I mean, I know that I worry about being able to survive out in the world as a professional as I am sure many of you do too... So, call me a hopeless romantic for my views or perhaps naive to no end, but I truly believe, if you do what you love, you might not be rich, but you will be happy. And if you're a happy artist, if you're a happy human being other people will enjoy working with you, networking with you, having you as their employee. Right? I mean, this is almost a matter of logic for me... and I trust that maybe I will not gain millions with what I do but I will work thinking of the benefit of the people, and to "touch their heart" to quote the article itself.

Finally, the last point I wanted to make regarding the article is was this idea of "STYLE = FART". Style and good form have their place I think. Yes, sometimes it really doesn't matter whether you use a specific typeface for a design or another one, that's all about superficiality and all that... but I think that certain aesthetics do matter for certain kind of designs. I mean, as artists, let's not kid ourselves: we do care about aesthetics. Our views of how "pretty", "ugly" "deformed", "odd", "sweet", "cool", "disgusting", "spicy", "rambumcious", etc., etc. an art work can be are based completely on our personal views and aesthetics, yet I know at least I do value my own personal aesthetics. And thus, for me, style and form does matter. For example, in the article, there's Sue Walsh showing how she designed a way through which to support and thank the NYDS employees for their hard work all the time! And instead of putting up a billboard, or designing any flyers or things like that she went right to the source and took the decision to apply her designs to things like gloves, that these workers themselves could use and protect themselves. Not only was her visual design compelling and placing these workers on a higher light, but her decision to use gloves was part of that style. This is where style supported her idea: heightening even more that support for the NYDS hard workers. I guess what I'm trying to say is that yes, I want design to be 'good' to look at ("pretty", so to say) but just because it is pretty, it does not mean that the design's meaning has to suffer.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about the article for now. I think there are a lot more ideas that I can pull out and find very important out of this article. But I'm gonna stop there for now. Thanks for reading (if you made it this far that is). Thanks!