Creative Technology 3
Week 8
"Ruined by Design" by Mike Monteiro
Quote 1"The platforms were doing exactly what they were designed to do: spread, sensationalize, and drive engagement. As teams across the major platforms attempted to eradicate the video from their services they found out how difficult it is to get a system to stop doing what it’s been designed to do."
This is definitely one of the most frightening things about the platforms on the internet. The fact that any data can be spread within a second and cannot be erased easily can be a huge problem. In Korea, we had a cyber sex trafficking issue where one user sold sexual exploitation videos on Telegram channels and groups. I remember reading that the video that’s been sold were still being reselling by the users who already bought from the original user. I'm concerning that the way people abuse the platform might evolve as well.
Quote 2“We have a skill-set that people need in order to get things made, and that skill-set includes an inquiring mind and a strong spine. We need to be more than a pair of hands. And we certainly can’t become the hands of unethical men.”
This quote reminds me of ‘Milton Glaser's Road to Hell in 12 Steps (https://dylanopet.medium.com/milton-glasers-road-to-hell-in-12-steps-c40f222e0f06)’ It was humorously described what kind of design tasks designers should not take. Although I do agree completely with everything the author suggested in terms of ethics in design, I also think that in the real-world sometimes there are moments where designers need to compromise and ignore certain things in order to keep their job. So in a way, I think what the author was arguing was too ideal.
Quote 3
Week 7
Critic Week
Week 6
Project: Rate My Setup (final)
Weightless tea ceremony process
Weightless tea ceremony final virtual camera version
Week 5
Project: Rate My Setup(workshop 2)
Reading: Petri Dish / "Design as the Machines Come to Life" Chapter 3 from Synthetic Aesthtics
Quote 1 from "Petri Dish"
“The combination of the dish and the agar made it possible to purify and clone bacterial colonies derived from single cells with the right heat conditions. This, in turn allowed scientists to identify bacteria responsible for disease, under a microscope.”
It’s amazing to see how small modification leads to greater achievements. And also I got to think how so many great discoveries can happen in form of co-invention not just in science but also in design and technology.
Week 4
Project: Rate My Setup(workshop 1)
Reading: " Thinking in Systems" by Donella H. Meadows
Quote 1 “When it comes to individuals, companies, cities, or economies, it can be heretical. The system, to a large extent, causes its own behavior! An outside event may unleash that behavior, but the same outside event applied to a different system is likely to produce a different result.” (Introduction)
It almost sounds to me the system itself has its own life force and it made me think how amazing it is that everything eventually ends up some form of system. This part also made me wonder how we should define the system.
Quote 2“Is there anything that is not a system? Yes—a conglomeration without any particular interconnections or function. Sand scattered on a road by happenstance is not, itself, a system. You can add sand or take away sand and you still have just sand on the road. Arbitrarily add or take away football players, or pieces of your digestive system, and you quickly no longer have the same system.”
The quote “conglomeration without any particular interconnection of function” as an example of not-system was Interesting because I think I have never thought the main attribute of a system is a function. This reminded me of the works of the photographer Andrea Gursky. He takes a lot of random-looking objects picture and as a whole, the photos seems like a giant system which is quite fascinating. I’ve always thought of his photos as some kind of representation of our systems but this quote made me rethink what system really mean.
Week 3
Project: The Web as a Rube Goldberg Machine (final)
Reading: "Note on Failure" by Joyce Carol Oates
Quote 1 “The artist, perhaps more than most people, inhabits failure, degree of failure and accommodation and compromise.”
It's funny to think that a lot of what artists do is inevitably an iteration of failures. Also, it leads me a further question what is failure exactly since the meaning of fail can be varied and subjective depending on what we focus on.
Quote 2“Yet it is perhaps not failure the writer loves, so much as the addictive nature of incompletion and risk. A work of art acquires, and then demands, its own singular “voice”; it insists upon its integrity.”
I wonder what it exactly means by “nature of incompletion and risk” in this context. I believe there are no artists who love to fail but by nature, the artist tends to pursue something better and perfect and that somehow leads them to accept the fact that they might fail most of the time. So in a way, it's the process of success.
Quote 3“Isn’t there a very literal advantage to failure?”
It was interesting to see how failure can produce another success through many writers’ examples. It almost gives sublime feelings on failure. I wonder if all the arguments that the author posed about failure could be applied to design area as well.
Week 2
Project: The Web as a Rube Goldberg Machine
Reading: "You look like a thing and I love you" by Janelle Shane
update soon
Week 1
Project: The Web as a Rube Goldberg Machine
Reading: "Programming Design Systems" by Rune Madsen
Quote 1 Introduction:
"We now spend a majority of our time looking at screens instead of paper, and this has created a great need for designers who understand how to design for digital devices. But a digital product is not the same as a printed product."
It is easy to see in graphic design world that a lot of designers think that the traditional method of design such as editorial design and typography is more fundamental and crucial than digital product design. However, I have always thought that the way we deal with graphic design should change, for we now live in a world where people don't consume as much paper as before. And like the author suggested, the way we define and teach graphic design should change as well.
Quote 2What is a design system?:
The MIT Media Lab design system
"This logo is an excellent example of how a design system can be used to give both a consistent look and a distinct style to an organization. The system is both simple and flexible, and it has room for an almost infinite number of designs.”
This reminded me of MIT Media Lab’s flexible design that was done in 2005 MIT Media Lab and I still remember how surprised I was knowing that a logo can have many different forms within certain rules. I was fascinated by its visual impact as well as the logic. I think this new logo system of MIT Media Lab had definitely got influenced by their first flexible identity. It’s also interesting to see how they used the grid in the new system because in some way it’s quite similar to how Korean letters being created. Korean Letters
Quote 3A short history of color theory: "Here, Itten’s personal preferences towards the color palette bleed into an unnecessarily strict generalization about color and subject. Who is to say that yellow stripes or blue polka-dots cannot be used effectively when designing food product labeling?"
I agree with the author on this argument. Although there might be some psychological theories or reasons that operate our preference of colors, I certainly do agree that making a generalization about color can be unnecessary. It's also the designer's job to make something more appealing and less common and in order to do that, often designers take approaches where they create differently including different choices of colors. So inevitably colors is another element that the designer's subjectivity involves and that's one of the fun parts of the design process as well.