Since a while, we (closest design friends and me) discuss about the current situation of design—design environment, community, design industry, work, clients, etc. To some extent, we think that design has become too serious. Yes, I know, I write a serious-approach-to-design blog, but this doesn’t mean that design does not have to be enjoyable and rewarding at the same time. We (designers) spend long hours working in our laptops (desiging, admin tasks, emails, etc.), doing and looking for challenging projects. Have designers had to be serious to be considered ‘good’ designers?
Last week we went to a Creative Design event at the Tate Britain. We didn’t know exactly what it was going to be about. Exhibitions, and digital and manual versions of Dadaism were the main activities of the event, and mostly students and new design graduates. At the beginning, when we (the senior serious designers!) were standing in front of lots of markers and intimidating white, big pieces of paper, our first thought was to stay as observers and not taking part of that ‘collective activity’. But, after a while, we left aside our ‘serious-hats’ and ended up drawing the rest of the evening.
Here some’masterpieces’ and funny moments of that event:
Co-drawing: three people had to draw a part of the body (head, body, feets) without knowing what the others were/had been drawing. Here the final piece. (Photos by Lubna Keawpanna)
Co-drawing: three people had to draw a part of the body (head, body, feets) without knowing what the others were/had been drawing. Here some final pieces. (Photos by Lubna Keawpanna)
Sometimes, I think that we, designers, should do this more often; just leave our serious-design hats at home, and get more fun as in the old university times. It’s good to do something purposeless, from time to time, isn’t it? Without meaning that design should be considered a less rigorous discipline.
Bridging Theory and Practice 