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.