Designer (n.) - the inability to sit still and accept things for the way they are, the compulsion to create and make and do, as well as that never ceasing itch to change the status quo towards a higher, nonexistent goal.
Image taken by @claudybee Claudia Bernett
This was one of several realizations taken away from the keynote presentation on the first day of the Industrial Design Society of America Northeast District Conference. The keynote, scheduled to be given by John Maeda, ironically put him in the key position of note-taker, as he invited eight students to the stage to speak on “Design4″ education. As one of the students on that panel, I had the pleasure of moderating the discussion and seeing where it led us. Meanwhile, on the giant screen behind us, John Maeda made a map of various key statements and phrases that arose throughout the conversation. As he typed new nodes at unparalleled typing speeds, Maeda also color coordinated them to their respective speakers and created over-arching themes.
Each student spoke to their own personal educational experience and how the actions or activities they participated in redesigned that experience. From planting sunflowers around Providence with a goal to inspire people to pay attention to nature like Mackenzie Younger, or speaking to thousands of people around the world via her own YouTube channel like Karen Kavett, each of us on the stage had taken our typical design education and had turned it into something else entirely. In co-founding this blog with Isaac Blankensmith, I spoke to the benefit of taking the wealth of knowledge accumulated with alumni outside of the department and bring it back in, and, conversely, taking the work being done here in the department of Industrial Design and releasing it back into our local and global community. Other students sitting on the panel included Jake Zien, Ian Storm Taylor, Greg Nemes, Jessica Herron, and Peter Simon.
Above is an image of the mindmap, which in the center reads ”A sampling of the 2400+ fine arts and design students at the Rhode Island School of Design. Eight of them spoke at the IDSANED conference on the future of education, notetaking by @johnmaeda.” Click here to download a PDF version of the map.
Posted by Carly Ayres | Date Posted: 11 April, 2011