What is Design?

Function and Fashion

If you are thinking about graphic design, you are only part way there.  It turns out that design is everywhere. Good design might be visually appealing, but great design makes efficient use of resources as well. This applies to graphic design as much as the built environment.

We've seen lots of examples of advertisement that have to compensate with visually appealing imagery, or motor vehicles that look flashy but have very little under the hood. Instead, the balance should always be in the middle.

Aiming Higher

 I recently attended The Salazar Awards with keynote Speaker and fellow Canadian, Robert L. Peters of Circle Design Incorporated. In a short time, to an audience of mainly design students, Peters redefined what it means to be a designer and the importance of "Aiming Higher" in our work.

It's about recognizing some of the more challenging problems in our world, and solving them.  First comes the problem, then the design.  Problems like water and land usage and durable construction with fewer resources. Disciplines like industrial ecology are fundamental for this.

All of our built environments including architecture, computer systems, city planning, business and social models, and technology (now matter how primitive), have aspects of design. For example, the  LEED Building Rating System is all about solving problems around efficiency for energy and building materials. The challenge is to travel upstream so that design is involved in the initial planning stages of a project, long before graphic design comes into play.

Aim higher!

Vancouver: a mecca for design and creativity

It's clear that in a city like Vancouver, there are so many creative minds involved in design of many forms.

Creative Mornings Vancouver is one example. Every month or so, the creative community gathers for an hour and a half to share ideas on design and creativity. With keynotes speakers than range from Bif Naked, to Bob Kronbauer of Vancouver is Awesome, each event brings a unique exchange of ideas and inspiration. If you haven't been to one and are thinking of going you can watch previous events online.

This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Just this Friday, I was amazed at the positive and creative ideas swirling around at the Re: Think Housing Jam at The Hive in Vancouver. The Vancouver Design Nerds  and Gen Why Media Project organized the event to build a conversation about affordable housing solutions in Vancouver. Importantly, what could have been a dry, technical and bureaucratic discussion about zoning and rising housing prices turned out to be one of the most free flowing and productive discussions on housing this city has ever seen.

Events like these will foster excellent submissions to the Mayor's Task Force on Housing and Affordability –  something that we can all look forward to in this marvellous city.

Design as a way of life

Over the past few months I have seen a side of design I could never have learned in school alone.

With examples like these, it is encouraging to know that many of us can be involved in design just by showing up and taking an interest. It starts with one event, one conversation, one idea and grows from there.  

It opens up so many new possibilities to know that the practices of design apply to nearly all aspects of our life. 

What is too much social media? What works?

After signing up for a lot of different social media platforms, I still can't decide: what is too much social media?

For the past 5 years, I have posted all I can on Facebook and really started picking up twitter in the past year and a half thanks to @janniaragon and @BrittFhaugh.

I have been to a few social media/programming events in Vancouver and the way that groups are using twitter has opened up some new possibilities for me. For example, creating a hashtag for a specific event and asking people to tweet about the event using that hashtag.

In may cases, the result is that the hashtag starts trending while the event is happening and people consider that to be good press. Doing this is essentially free and it's because if people want to meet up or connect online after the event, they know where to find some of the event attendees by looking at the trend.

For facebook, the most solid advice I received so far was at @NetSquared Event a couple months ago. According to @dbarefoot the key is to set the expectations of your followers/audience so that they know in advance if they follow you, you will be posting one a day/week/hour – what ever the case may be.

That way, if people are concerned that you post to much or too little, you can emphasize that that is what your social media is designed for.

Also, the idea that you would only use your social media feeds for self promotion is a bad idea. People will often follow someone regularly not just because of what you can offer based on your own insights and services, but because of who you follow and other ideas you share. This is what it means to build a community, instead of simply following people to put only your own ideas out there.

Also on Facebook, posts with images do well in terms of 'likes'. This makes sense in a our increasingly visual society and the trick is to have images that make you think and/or convey a message clearly, with a couple sentences to help provide content.

I have recently been exploring tumblr, soundcloud, youtube and vimeo and I know there is a lot more to learn.

How do you use social media? What works?