The first of classes that this course reflection covers was a brief introduction to color theory and business/legal issues in design. For the color theory portion of the lecture we were introduced to tint (adding white to a hue), shade (adding black to a hue) and chroma (adding grey to a hue). We also discussed the various color systems, and how color is incredibly important in so many areas from marketing (branding) to psychology. This was perhaps the most intriguing part of the color theory lecture, that is the fact that there is an entire portion of psychology devoted entirely to colors and how they effect our mood. I am currently taking a class titled "Aesthetics of Appearance" and we also had an entire lecture devoted to discussion of color theory and how it affects not only the appearance of the garment on the person but also what kind of effects it has on the viewer. What is find most interesting is that we can characterize color into generalized categories that evoke unified responses from most people in the world. This is definitely from perspective but I expected color theory (in terms of responsiveness) to take into account culture, environment and personal experience...of course, I'm sure all of these things come into consideration since there is an entire specialization of psychology devoted to it. The second lecture was about the business and legal issues involved in design but was more of an introduction to the movie that we watched called Rip!: A Remix Manifesto. This movie focused mainly on a mash-up artist called Girl Talk (who I got to see live the weekend following this movie at Wittfest!) but was a documentary pointing out the complex legal issue of copyrights, patents and trademarks. It brought up many specific examples but made me ask the question, where do we draw the line? Where does using information that is someone's "intellectual property" turn from inspiration into stealing? I have taken a few English classes and one in particular I had a teacher who made us cite everything. If we had any kind of thought it had to be supported by something or it was one of two things; 1. worthless or 2. plagiarism. Now, I must say that when certain books are read over and over again people tend to read the same things from them, just because someone before me thought the same thing and wrote it down does it mean that me putting the same thought down in my own words is stealing because I did it after them? Again, where do we draw the line?
Next thing we did in class was listen to 2 speakers, the first a group from Design Circle and the second from Cobego design. Design circle is an OSU club that focuses on design and contains people from the 3 different OSU deign majors (industrial, visual communication, and interior spaces). The group talked briefly about Design Circle itself but then focused more on answering our questions about OSU's design department and the major. It was good to get a perspective on the different majors. The second group was Cobego design, a local industrial design firm founded by a group of students who were graduated from OSU's program. It was nice to see that people who came from such different backgrounds and traveled such different paths to get to where they are today. But what I found most interestting about this class was the video they showed about education. It was actually a TED talk adapted by RSA animates which focuses on educational reform, an issue very personal and close to my heart. Here is the link to the video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U. I loved this video because it brings up so many good issues on what is not only wrong with our educational systems but also with how we are trying to fix them. Coming from the perspective of someone who grew up in what Sir Ken Robinson describes as, "the most over-stimulating time in history," I can say that I have felt that everything he said was spot. I watched throughout my education as so many of my friends were medicated just so that they would sit down and "learn." That is learn to think in a way that is against their very patterns of thinking. I also come from a background where I was taught that I had to work my butt off to be as close to perfect (a definition of perfect also varied on the evaluator) in high school after which I would go off to college, get a degree (or a couple), and finally be a contributing member of society. Unfortunately, I was one of those kids who didn't necessarily know what they wanted to do, I thought I did but I didn't have the perspective I needed on life to truly understand what I wanted to do with mine, nor do I have the perspective now. My mother lives under the paradigm, "do what you love and success will follow." I believe in this too but my problem lies in educational systems telling people that they need to follow a very specific path, and now more than ever (thanks to technlogy) we are expected to do more than ever so we have no time to find what we really love. What's worse, when we do find what we really love we are discouraged from truly pursuing it because we a such a "success"-centered society where success is equated to money and power. What we "kids" need today is time to discover who we really are, flexibility to do what we want, and most important of all the support of not only our families but also educational systems.
No comments:
Post a Comment