Category / Reading Responses

by Sabrina

Reading Response 5

What is the most effective way to design a lay out, whether it is with text on a page or designing a space?

When designing a space it is important to think about the people that will be engaging with the space. For example, how could you encourage a younger crowd of people to linger in a certain area, or stay away from a certain area? Think about how you would want people to walk, mingle, and exit. I agree with Erik Spiekermann when he says in the article, A Fine Balance, that things that appear symmetric can feel easy, boring, or overdone. Yet, when things are symmetric they tend to please the eye and give off a harmonious feeling. Asymmetric things can feel exciting, original, and can feel inviting, while symmetric things can feel just the opposite. In the article he says “Now take a look at the spaces that make us feel at home and make us want to spend time sitting in cafes and watching children play. They are all asymmetric.”

by Luna

Reading Response (Class 5)

Is web design really similar to designing a book? What are some issues with the idea of robots designing web pages?

 

The podcast compared the web design layout to the ways books are designed. On a superficial level this metaphor is useful but I think that the way web design can be viewed should be deeper than this.  The fact that our society is so interconnected with the way digitally is viewed and used should push us to stretch our minds in order to think of new ways to see digital spaces instead of neutralizing it.  The act of standardizing what websites look like implies there is a departure of web design from art as it becomes more about fitting the norm. This is also concerning when thinking of computers as opposed to humans creating websites which would ultimately yield to the end of intentional and thoughtful human interaction with digitally.  The design of digital spaces and websites does influence the content we view and I think as creators it is important to stay involved.

by Fernanda

Reading Response – Class 5

How important is symmetry when we talk about design?

On the reading “ A Fine Balance”, the author talks about how boring is symmetry, praising, on the other hand, the asymmetrical. However, in some way, there cannot be asymmetry without symmetry. To understand asymmetry one has to first understand what is symmetry. And, on the contrary to what the author states, making something symmetrical is not always an easy task. On the same note, making something asymmetrical is also hard. Nevertheless, there shouldn’t be a competition about which one of these is harder. Both designs have their own difficulties. It is challenging to create something symmetrical without being boring and square. At the same time, it takes some skill to make something asymmetrical, but not messy and overwhelming. Maybe the author was right when saying, “Pure symmetry will hardly ever do”, because perhaps, a good design has to have a balance between symmetrical and asymmetrical, and so, pure asymmetry will also hardly ever do.

Regarding a fragment of the talk “Inside the Lines”, it is interesting to notice what one of the people say about websites starting to look alike, nowadays. The person states that maybe it is a good thing that this is happening, just like books that are laid out all the same, because people get more concerned about the content itself. It can’t be known if this is an absolute truth, but perhaps designers are trying to find a way to make the design look seamless, that is, flowing well with the content, which makes sense, because a good design is indeed a seamless one.

by Allison

Response: Good Taste Doesn’t Matter

For my response to the article Good Taste Doesn’t Matter I chose to create a webpage. The webpage contains a summary and a drawn picture of a man riding an elephant. I chose to use this media because I thought it would be interesting to use my web design skills.

The orange color of the background is a warmer color and stands out against the black text. I chose the fonts of the headings from Google Fonts and the rest of the article is in Helvetica so it is simple and easy to read.I felt it added to the modern theme of the article. The drawing represents the metaphor the author describes in the article and I felt it was a key component to the reading.

file:///Users/AllisonPinz/Documents/Good%20Taste%20Doesn’t%20Matter.html

by Luna

Reading Response (Class 4)

Is “killing your idols” the end all be all in regards to the myth of objectivity?

In his piece, Kothary points the reader to Haidt’s research that posed reason as  an unstable concept with no possibility of being truth. Our natural inclination to find the truth often goes hand in hand with our desire to find reason and if reason is not a consistent truth than much of what we believe to be objective is created in the mind. His metaphor of the rider / elephant  can be seen in institutions like media and education where we are showed only what has been deemed as objective but as Kothary explains the insidious desire for objective truth affects taste as well.
In order to kill idols I think there is also a greater need to kill objectivity and our desire to see objectively. Killing what we have noticed before as being beautiful is important but I think there is also great value in continuously deconstructing what we see as “knowledge”, where it comes from  and who created it. If we see something as beautiful, it is definitely helpful to realize there is beauty and importance beyond that, but more important is the realization that the institution of beauty has been created in our society to maintain certain patterns of thinking.
by Jessica

reading | good taste doesn’t matter

Topics like objective beauty and the importance of taste make up a good portion of the worry in my head as an artist/designer. These might all be symptoms of trying to predict the future. And of course, this thought pattern is fueled heavily (if not exclusively) by ego.

I was notorious among my peers for discussing art, music, pop culture, whatever to a nauseating degree. I would voice my opinion on everything and would not sugarcoat it. Actually, the more harsh, offensive, attention-grabbing, the better. It was annoying and everyone was sick of it, but it got me plenty of attention. (See: my high school senior superlative)

my high school senior superlative

the other person who was deemed my counterpart for this title was the only dude that could tolerate/enjoy my bravely voiced opinions. I’ll give it to him, because he was equally if not more annoying.

Often upheld in history are the opinions of the academic, the intellectual, the professional, the connoisseur. Opinions that have been justified to be exceptionally significant.

Recently since our reading and writing skills have become widespread, it seems that those two things are all you need to get your opinion exposed to a community of millions. The next step: make a blog. Even better, maintain this blog for a long enough time —> ??? —> ????? —> become a fleeting ‘contributor’ to websites that publish glorified blog posts as bonafide ~*~articles~*~! Hundreds of people are now entertaining your thoughts. Your master-think-pieces.

It really is a beautifully powerful thing. This newfound accessibility and variety of opinions that have gained traction in the last decade is exciting. Rants, mock-arguments and criticisms are able to reach new depths of digesting entertainment.

However, before it’s all fun and games, there are usually some burns to tend to; stuff that cuts and jabs. Some arguments go to excruciatingly personal lengths to target those who might disagree. (See: Defending Kanye on the Internet)

It was a cool move of the author Nishant Kothary to make contrasting references – quoting both significant , published critics with those whose opinions are far less significant to the academic community, but are equally published nonetheless.

 

by isabela

Reading Response 4

Question: Is it possible to make something that is objectively beautiful?

“Beauty does lie in the eye of the beholder, but that some beholders are better able to identify that elusive, but existent true beauty.”

This is a good summary for most of the text. It’s basically a nicer way of saying that a person’s opinion is only valid if they have good taste. Being in the arts, I’m definitely guilty of feeling this way about people sometimes, especially if they’re critiquing my work. During my time at Parsons, i’ve noticed that no matter how amazed I am with a person’s work, there will always be another person who doesn’t like it as much, or has something to critique about it. However, I think that anyone can respect the amount of time someone put into their work, especially if the work is very intricate and is well done technically. Because of this, I think that it is somewhat possible for a work to objectively beautiful technically, but not conceptually.  It has to with aspects of personal taste, not exactly how refined a person’s taste are, but a matter of preference .

by Breeana

Reading Response 4

As a product designer, is the goal of the design to appeal to the audience?

It sounds like a stupid question, but I think there are different ways to answer it. Of course, as a designer one of the first things you do when planning a design brief is to look at your audience. Once you define your audience and shape your design with that information, the goal is to appeal in some sort of way.

This article raises and interesting point saying that taste is objective and depends on person to person. With that being said I feel like it’s quite impossible to please everyone with a design and that you can establish a goal outside of ‘pleasing the audience’. I often think the best designs are the ones that do the exact opposite to the audience because instead of catering to the audience they break some rules, and make the audience feel differently with their designs. It might be a smart move for a product designer to steer away from the traditional path. They’ll create interest and stand out from everything else. It’s risky, but may be worth it in the end.

by isabela

Week 3 Reading Response

Question: Is it better for information to be free or expensive?

I feel like this is a question that I have been conflicted about for a while now, and it’s a theme that I touched upon in one of the other readings that was assigned for this class. There was one passage within From Zero to One that really embodies this theme — “Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient.”

 

Before I started college, I had never experienced having to pay for a text book. I’m against the concept of paying for textbooks because I know for a fact that i’m only going to read them once, but at the same time I feel as though They’re one of the few texts that will actually make me learn something, and therefore the most important. It bothers me though that they are more expensive than other types of texts, but at the same time it makes sense, with the idea of classism and that a person must have a certain background and social awareness to be able to afford and comprehend a textbook. However, I don’t like this idea, because I feel that informative texts should be accessible to everyone, so that everyone learns, and therefore everyone has the academic background to be able to comprehend that information.

by Fernanda

Reading Response Week 3

As Derrida points out in the reading “From One to Zero”, is it correct to say that books are tools for us to forget?

In thinking more about the subject, I might say that Derrida’s opinion is understandable, due to the fact that, at that time, with the help of books to remember us of several stories that were before, stored in our minds, we allow ourselves to forget, because the book will remind us after all. All it takes is reading it. On the other hand, this could be true back then, however, with the amount of information that is out there nowadays, it may be impossible for us to remember everything without the help of a tool. And so, in this case, the book is a tool used to remember. If you think about it, now, not even books are being enough anymore to store the amount of information that we have. It got to a point that they took too much space, and the invention of the computer and later of e-books, that is, information compressed in one single device was a wonderful idea, some might say.

Moreover, as the reading “From Zero to One” said, these online libraries also made information to be spread much more easily and accessible to more people, once there wasn’t a limited amount of copies and it could be “accessed through an infinite number of web browsers”. Although, it is interesting to notice, in the end of the reading, that more and more each new version of the Kindle wants to look more book-like, that is, people still want the same feeling as when they are reading an actual book. However, they don’t want the constrains that come with a book.