Task8.2 Ten things I have learned

1. Designers need enthusiasm and passion.
Education at the university cannot teach you about design, it will only be able to guide you in the right direction, the rest is up to yourself in your approach towards learning and discovering what design is about, and what it is capable of. The more interests you show and time spent on self-study the more rewarding it will be. Enthusiasm, curiosity, passion and conviction are the key components in becoming a good designer.

2. Time management is crucial for a designer.
In an ideal world, work should be organised and completed well in advance of the deadline, but this is not an idea world so the best you can do is to manage your time in the best possible way to complete the work at hand on time. Using a plan and following it through will benefit both yourself as a designer and your clients. You can start new projects and work as soon as you have completed the previous project so this will save yourself some valuable time. Lagging and dragging your feet will help no-one so always plan and prepare.

3. The importance of self-study.
It is not the job of the lecturers or the university to teach the students they are there to guide them, but the job of the students themselves. You can only learn so much from another person, if you ever want to understand and improve your skills, your knowledge, or your abilities you will only succeed through self-teachings. There are numerous ways to teach yourself a new skill but it all comes down to self-perseverance, commitment, and hard work.

4. Designers need to take more social responsibility
In the new age of design, designers have a greater responsibility towards social, political, ethical and psychological issues. This was never the case before, but now it is becoming apparent designers have the responsibility in what they are broadcasting through their work, what kind of messages are they communicating to the people. If the work you are undertaking has implications of being misleading, or falsification then as a designer you should speak up and change, alter, or even scrap the design. Basically if it has a negative effect on our society then designer should think hard about what to do to reverse those effects. If it means sacrificing the work completely then so be it.  

5. Take people as the foremost
What is good design for the market?
After learning about critical reflection I believe design is not about new techniques or expanding the market but rather about peoples’ values. Seldom do designers begins a project by thinking about the people first about their needs or their desires. So by placing people first when you are designing will give you a more intimate and accurate account of what people really seeks in life. Therefore putting people first I believe is the most important factor when designing.

6. Communication, communication, communication…
The purpose of graphic design and visual communications (terms that are interchangeable) is to make it as quick and easy as possible for people to receive that information. With everyone in such a hurry, you have only fractions of a second to grab someone’s attention and get your message across. Knowing how to do this effectively is what makes graphic design so important and exciting. It is important because fortunes are made and lost on effective or ineffective graphic design. It is exciting because your design could be the one that grabs everyone’s attention.

7. Stay calm
When you are learning about critical reflection, there will always be times you will stray from your target. So at that difficult moment you need to stay calm and refocus on your primary objective. Look into the problem to find the key, and then you can reapply yourself and complete your task.

8. Design must be creative and plausible
Good designs should have many features but a great design should be creative and full of imagination yet still possible to make it into reality. There is no point in thinking up the wildest and most wonderful designs but if it is impossible to complete then it becomes a useless design.

9. Sharing experiences and success.
Sharing our work as designers will help each other into raising our own standards. If I were to share some techniques with another designer that can help him to understand a little more about design then it will make me happy.

10. Move with the times.
Designers should not be sitting in an office trying to draw pictures and posters, designers have to embrace their surroundings and society and the flow of the world. After learning about critical reflection I began to move into areas I have previously untouched, such as motion graphics and trends, way findings, CSR and so on . I believe designers need to be out in the open world and experience what the people are doing things that can impact their lives directly and indirectly. If the designer can do this and learn from these experiences it will for sure improve their views on designing and their understanding of trends and possibly the future.