Best Laid Plans: an introduction to design

Course Description

Summary

The word design is often associated with the standardized, and the mass produced. Pier Vittorio Aureli observes the emergence of the English word In the late sixteenth-century to describe “something more general than the graphic aspect of drawing (dessin)” and how the Italian disegno became “an ideological banner of a new class of practitioners eager to distinguish themselves from artisans.” In this introductory course, we will grapple with the changing meaning of the word, and the discipline, through practice. We will contend with the separation of (or impossibility of separating) manual and intellectual work. As we plan, project, and translate ideas into drawings, objects, and other things, we will ask ourselves when the impulse to measure, order, classify, and categorize turns compulsive.

Two things will happen in this course simultaneously: we will respond to a specific design brief, producing work to meet it, and we will read and discuss a variety of texts on design more generally, to get a better sense of the discipline, its scope, and its boundaries. During the course of the term, students will have the chance to experience various aspects of working in a collaborative environment as designers including research and development, formal and casual presentations, delegating and being delegated to, and projecting and meeting deadlines.