On Overlooking Glance

Since my first Art History class, I’ve soaked up all I can from these classes in order to gain a better understanding for this world that I love and am submerged, intrigued that I have learned so much more about history in these courses than I have learned cumulatively in any History class I’ve ever taken. I signed up for this class expecting a traditional Art History lecture course, with linear timelines of events, accompanied by the usual slide shows. I was eager to finally learn about the major I’ve elected to pursue. However, as we have all discovered, this class is definitely of the unconventional and Industrial Design is not something that can simply be tracked on one linear timeline.

Albeit a surprise and harder thing to grasp, the essence of this course taught us to ask questions with questions and thoroughly explore the concepts which revolve around Design and innovative thought. Though some things really can be taken at face value in the world of Art and Design, for the pure sake of beautiful aesthetic, as Industrial Designers we have been pushed to ask the why and where and how of products and concepts and environments, etc. With these explorations, we have been equipped to design better-informed and higher-quality products (when I say products, I use this noun to encompass all that is possible to design whether its cars to systems to instruments).

Addressing some of the most important issues like responsibilities of Green Design and Humanitarian Aids, we’ve raised awareness among the class of real problem-solving issues we face in today’s world. We have been trained to trace products like chairs and historical movements Modernism and the Bauhaus in order to find purpose and pattern. I now see with more clarity how interweaved the worlds of Design and Fine Art and Architecture can all be, all areas than overlaps and affect one another. Sometimes Design ends up running so many circles within itself it becomes convoluted with so many questions, and sometimes ultimately ends up losing meaning. Since the very first lecture of glowing, genetically-altered bunnies to the eyebrow-raising histories of vibrators, this course has definitely demonstrated that Industrial Design spans a vast array of subjects and conversations that are really not limited by much. We skipped right over the book-definitions and delved right into the more intangible concepts of Art and Design. There were plenty of times many of us went home asking ourselves, “Wait, what exactly did we learn today?”

This course has left me with more questions than answers, but I guess that’s when you learn the most. If you had all the answers, isn’t that when learning ends? This is, of course, an on-going search, a continuous exploration, as should our approaches in Design. Amidst the course, I already saw that it was one where you would get back as much as you put in. Even with as minimal effort I feel I’ve put forth, I’ve been given a new dynamic perspective on critically seeing things in this colorful world (past and present) of Design and Art, as well as a million new resources of names and companies and organizations galore to further enlighten my knowledge base. Still, I would like a traditional, boring, slide-lecture course on Industrial Design, you know, to have my bases covered.