Response 04

RESPONSE 04

Taking DART 441 The Culture of Images Class improved my knowledge and skill of graphic design. I’m not a fan of open projects but one thing it made me realize is that I’m very interested in media and technology. Effectively communicating my themes for my projects was a fun challenge. I really enjoyed MP02 and all the struggles that came along with it. I put a lot of thought into it conceptually and applied what I’ve learnt in class.

I gained a strong understanding of semiotics and how to properly analyze an image. Semiotics is essentially the study and creation of signs and as a designer it’s absolutely crucial to understand how your creation whether a logo or an image can be interpreted by others. This is important to my practice because when communicating an idea through an image it has to be understandable to your audience. This varies depending on who your audience is, but in general your audience should understand the values and concept through your designs.

Culture appropriation in design was a topic I was not aware was an issue, maybe I just haven’t noticed to many terribly appropriated cultures in design. Now that I’m conscious of this I’m starting to notice it a lot, especially with native Indian culture. It’s great that I’m more aware of this as it could be easy for a designer to just not critically examine their own work in this manner and convey something that values riffing off other cultures. It is best to work in collaboration with someone from that culture to really understand what is right and not.

I enjoyed learning about visual identity and its categories (conceptual, tone, form). Being able to break down a logo and understand what it conveys helps me in my own practice. Your logo has to conceptually reflect the values, services, and audience of who or what you’re designing for. We learnt that the formal elements of a design work such as the typographic treatment or colors can communicate certain meanings as well.

In theory I would love to work in any application that lets me be creative. I would want to steer clear of the more technical graphic design jobs that require no creative integration. It might be good for experience but long term I think would get repetitive. Theoretically speaking I would like to create design work that is truthful where viewers can take something away from it and question certain things. I like the challenge of communicating an idea through a design where people have to puzzle together the links in order to figure out what is being conveyed.