Four Contemporary Designers

So far this semester we have looked at four contemporary designers: Marion Bantjes, Bruce Mau, Stefan Bucher and Stefan Sagmeister. The success of these designers can partially be attributed to come of the qualities they possess in common, and incorporating these qualities into everyday life would be beneficial to any student designer. One things I noticed is that they all derive inspiration from places outside of the computer screen. Many design students think that "finding inspiration" means looking at different websites and taking notes of design they like, but many successful designers draw inspiration from anywhere but a computer screen, such as Stefan Sagmeister's belief in taking sabbaticals in order to travel, or Marion Bantjes being inspired by old Christmas cards. All four of these designers had a frm belief that in order to attain real inspiration, one must remove themselves from the desk and go explore the real world, try to see things in a different way.
Another quality these four designers share is the tendency to avoid "safe" design while also designing for the sake of design. Many of the pieces we viewed by these designers were something they did because they truly wanted to. Even though these projects might have been used or inspired something else later that made them money, these projects began as designing for the sake of design, not for money. In fact some of them openly condemned designing purely to make money, insinuating that it leads to cold, uninspired design and ultimately an unhappy existence.
The final thing I noticed as being prevalent among these four designers was a written or mental manifesto or list of rules. It seems to me that learning from mistakes and documenting it, as well as laying out some ground rules based on firm beliefs leads one to understand their design process, their personal style and ultimately themselves on a higher level. Once you are more understanding of these things, you will have a better idea of what makes you work better, where you need to improve and what you are good at. This level of understanding is what I believes leads these designers to go above and beyond what is expected and into the realm of what is surprising when it comes to design.
I think a lot of design students see the design process as more of a structured, mechanical process because of the necessary time restrictions and limited resources. Learning about how successful designers such as these four work makes us understand that design should be experienced and explored as opposed to studied and emulated, that design is an organic entity, not a sterile practice.

A letter to Stefan Bücher

Dear Stefan Bücher,
Our class watched a video presentation of your conference talk, Make | Think and until I viewed it I am sorry to say I was unfamiliar with you as a designer, although I had seen your work with the daily monsters. I had seen them around and admired them, but knew nothing of the process which is in itself extremely interesting.
I found there were many things in your talk I was able to relate to as a student designer, such as your observation that ideas start out fun and supportive but become less so as the process begins. I find this all the time with myself, but unlike you I seldom possess that other voice inside my head that tells me it would be too hard and can't be done. Though this may sound great, I feel it hinders me as a student designer because quite often my ideas and determination outweigh my resources and abilities. Often this leads to a great idea that is very poorly executed, and being visual as all designers are, this leads to my originally great idea not being successfully communicated at all.
I very much identify with your idea of working as a balance of feeding and working the conscious mind while also allowing time for the unconscious mind to bring forth revelations, and generally I try to balance research and downtime in order to come up with an idea that is new and surprising. When it comes to approaching the execution, however, I envy your seemingly carefree approach. I tend to approach design analytically as if there is a problem to be solved every time, and my work would likely benefit from a less stringent approach.
All in all, I felt your presentation on your work and personal design style thoroughly informed me about you, but also brought me to realizations about my own personal working style and how I could improve upon it. It's always good to get a designer's perspective, and the ideas expressed really opened my eyes.

Regards,
Kristin French