Week 2 25/09/2009

It has taken me the best part of today and most of yesterday to figure out what exactly to do with this blog and how to get Twitter and Flickr up and running, but now I think I am starting to realise the importance of such sites to textile design. So far I have found that these sites provide quick easy access to a vast array of information and allow you to document you ideas, work and thoughts without too much stress!

One of the earlier points covered in the design studies lecture this week was that most verbal communication is redundant which I feel is very true. With an example given in the lecture of ‘I Tarzan, You Jane’ as a way of introducing yourself.

I think text messages highlight how much speech is redundant as often in texts many redundant words and letters are removed but sense can still be made of the message. However messages with high redundancy would be easier to understand and entropic information is less likely to be discarded. Before the lecture I never considered that in verbal communication many words were totally unnecessary. This would only be true if those communicating were fluent in the language being spoken, or even still could some sense be made of what was being said without all the redundant words?

How this applies to textiles I am not sure. I don’t have the answer but so far have had a few thoughts:

Perhaps not all of the redundant words would be necessary to understand product adverts or information on textile products such as t-shirts printed with a message, however the information will be better understood with the redundant words and information is less likely to be discarded. May be if a viewer didn’t understand initially though they would re-read the information to try and make sense of it? Therefore they may become more interested in your product for example and so spend more time analysing it?

Or may be the use of redundant words could be used simply to highlight areas you wanted the viewer to understand and remember, and removed from areas less important?

However this may all backfire and lead to confusion, lack of interest and understanding due to an unfamiliar lack of redundant words.

Week 1 18/09/2009

Today I found Design Studies a lot more interesting than I expected to. What particularly surprised me and made me think is that we were told the series of lectures would not actually be based on art. We won’t be advised to read design magazines or books and won’t be discussing designers or art history within the lectures. Instead we are to look at aspects within science, technology, maths, politics and current affairs for example.

At first this struck me as totally pointless and of no benefit to my studies at all. I thought surely we should be learning about and researching what is relevant to our studies and this is not? Although I have since began to realise that it is necessary to know about ‘everything else’ in order to design affectively. Designers need to be up to date and aware of other issues and problems if they are going to use their creative abilities to design solutions and so aid the current and/or future population. For this reason I do agree that designers are wasted if all they do is design all the time, they need to be far more, than just a designer.

I am beginning to think that these lectures are going to be very useful to my studies this semester, as this lecture has given me a lot to think about and research and to some extent it has opened my eyes to all the other aspects of design I never thought of. For example previous to this lecture I never considered the potential of sources such as The NewScientist or BBC radio 4. But even after only beginning to read The NewScientist magazine this afternoon I have not only learnt a lot but it has provoked lots of new ideas for my culture project and suggested new pathways that I intend to research.