I intend to approach this class with the lens of ‘what skills can I learn from this class to help me with my major.’ Simply doing the work isn’t enough, I want to be actively acknowledging the ways in which I will use the skills I am learning in my career and other aspects of university. I want to be learning skills that will help me with my major. These skills may not always be apparent, thinking abstractly is critical to understanding how what I learn in this class will help me in the rest of my studies and interactions with the world and others. More specifically, I want to learn to use Adobe Illustrator, as I know that many UX designers (currently what I want to find a career as) use Illustrator. I’ve had experience using SketchApp but want to learn other tools for my design work.
Part of my expectations surrounding university is that the ways in which it will serve me will evolve and be more than simply getting me a job. I expect to not know the entirety of how this university experience will serve me. I believe that simply looking at design school as a channel to get a job at the end of four years is a narrow-minded viewpoint. I expect that here, I will learn to better interact with people and connect my design work to people. Design is meant to help people and something that bothers me is when I see design being used to make us lazier or when companies tell us we have problems that we simply do not. Is it really good design if it isn’t helping people?
This is the perfect environment to learn from others. Being able to work with others from different backgrounds, in terms of both art and design and in terms of personal identifiers (race, gender, birth place, etc.), provides us with the opportunity to constantly hear different perspectives that will broaden our knowledge and challenge our perceptions. We can learn from everyone around us and I will take every opportunity to collaborate that I get. Part of the reason why I chose Parsons was the interdisciplinary and collaborative work because I think design is multifaceted and the more forms of art and design we interact with, the more skilled we become.
Media: Photograph laser printed onto 11″ by 11″ wood
Work by Oscar Andrew
An example of interdisciplinary work
