If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
Jason Kottke recently attended the AIGA Design Conference and had plenty of interesting stuff to share. One thing however caught my eye – “20 courses I didn’t take in design school”. Michael Beirut who hosted the session listed his choices:
- Semiotics
- Contemporary Performance Art
- Traffic Engineering
- The Changing Global Financial Marketplace
- Urban planning
- Sex Education
- Early Childhood Development
- Economics of Commerical Aviation
- Biography as History
- Introduction to Horticulture
- Sports Marketing in Modern Media
- Modern Architecture
- The 1960s: Culture and Conflict
- 20th Century American Theater
- Philanthropy and Social Progress
- Fashion Merchandising
- Studies in Popular Culture
- Building Systems Engineering
- Geopolitics, Military Conflict, and the Cultural Divide
- Political Science: Electoral Politics and the Crisis of Democracy
You might wonder why the heck you need to study Economics and Political
Science if you are studying design. His logic – “design is just one
part of the job. In order to do great work, you need to know what your
client does. How do you design for new moms if you don’t know anything
about raising children?” I agree; having been trained to be a designer,
I understand the need to know what all is out there. One of our
professors used to claim that architects/designers are jack of all
trades and master of design. Good design is almost always about
understanding your target audience, much like advertising. Creativity
and the actual grunt work on the board (now the computer) is only
application of your understanding or perception of the needs (or rather
your clients’ wants). In addition, as Jason also mentions, you get to
be the know-all snob that you hate in every party.
by Patrix | on Friday, October 7th, 2005 at 6:00 am | 
Art and Architecture . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
