Heard Rick give a presentation this evening about design—or some trendy words that some people like to label design Design thinking and Critical design. It’s funny though, the crowd was very tight lipped about the whole thing. I guess Melbourne designers are much like the Canadian mentality—try not to disturb the peace. I think Rick raised an interesting issue that many (graphic) designers are not ready to deal with yet. He describes that possibly some (graphic) design needs to go back to its roots lets say and discover and accept visual aesthetics as viable communication methods. He states that it is necessary for graphic designers to reclaim their “input” and definition of design thinking towards something that is whole and human-centered. It sounds like a lot of practice based research to me. What I do agree with is how graphic designers, lately on the research band wagon seem to need to classify, label, structure everything and if it’s not within a classifiable research method it demeans what we do and are trying to communicate. The element of discovery+research+visualisation might just be lost in order to gain control of our practice. At what cost though?
