Method Designing by Jessica Helfand

This was really the only reading of the 3 that interested me, and thank the Lord that it was short, because God knows i don't have enough time to sit and read all 3 readings every week if they're each 10 pages long, and then expect to remember specific parts of them for a test every other week on top of all the other thing i have to read for other classes and things i have to remember between the time i read them and the test, not to mention that this course is only 0.25 of a credit...ridiculous, and this whole blog business...Lord have mercy, don't get me started on that, that's a completely different story.
But anyways, this reading by Jessica Helfand was about her concern with the way the students of design go about creating there work. Helfand was shocked at how unoriginal the work was and she blamed it on the "method design" which she complains "amplifies personal memory and replays it as objective truth" and states that it's " extremely subjective and extremely seductive". Helfand hopes that future designers will think for themselves.

I understand what Helfand is saying, but at the same time i see why student design turns out unoriginal, from an OCAD point of view. Here at OCAD research is not focused on at all until the 3rd year, which i guess is a little late. So up until and during 3rd year work is usually created from what we think will work rather than what we've discovered will work in terms of the problem we're trying to solve through our designs. And what we think will work is usually styles/methods we've seen on the internet, TV and other forms of media. Another issue is time, at OCAD, teachers are always handing out 3 to 6 projects per class and when you combined that with 5 or 6 courses during the semester including liberal studies courses, that's a lot of work. Sure the work will be handed in on time and may look visually appealing, but the quality of the design in terms of thought process is usually lacking because we are trying to pump out project after project like factory workers. There's just not enough time given to sit down and really think about what your designing.

CBC News Interview with Frank Gehry

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2008/11/13/gehry-ago.html

We finally decided on a topic for our group, researching the information design and wayfinding aspects of the A.G.O. and coming up with ways to improve on it.

I found this article from the CBC News website which had an interview with the designer Frank Gehry about what he was thinking when he designed the new A.G.O. I think it should pretty usefully to our group, not only does he talk about the design, but he talks about how the A.G.O. was before and all the problems there were and why it needing improving.