Lecture notes

Lecture one

Ethics in design
-Its in everything we do
-Working for free devalues design?
-Bad design work affects design and others?
-Think about Ethos,Values, Imposed Constraints
-Designers have responsibilities to clients,designers,fees,publicity and environment
-Clients expect experience and knowledge, strategic process, communications outcome and compensation.

In summary, make ethical choices. Professional standards of professional practice.

Lecture two

Paul Tobin -His career in design as a concept designer at Weta

A designer needs:
-Imagination
-Passion
-Tenacity (learn through failure to master difficult techniques)
-Technique (pull off your ideas well)

He believes that his childhood obsession of star wars drove his career. He also took a lot of inspirations from comic books and role play games.

He mentioned that he wasn't a great drawer to begin with. He originally studied archaeology and then went overseas, and learnt how to draw better. He then went on to study art as a graphic designer until then end to be a illustrator (making a concept design book).

Traveling abroad is good because you come back with lots of information that you can use to drive your career. Especially if you choose places to go that are relevant to your interests.

The knowledge from the archaeology helps him with designing concepts. So something that might not be thought of as useful became useful.

In terms of Research, he recommended pulling information from your favourite books to create designs or pulling conceptual thoughts from real things, actors, art movements etc. (pulling ideas from different parts of your brain)

Designers should keep learning, failing and experimenting. As soon as you stop it limits your creativity- is career suicide.

He says that as designers we experience high pressure environments, but we should always keep a good sense of humour. Examples were the weird drawings from co-workers or him in the different stages of dwarism or White cloud worlds.

When talking to clients. He did a lot of sketching and quick notes then went onto quick painted models and line ups. You should identify the problems early and think of questions to ask the client before. Offer options first not variations in order to cover different ideas. Variations come after the idea is solid.

He recommends that it is good to master one type of discipline such as illustration etc. to get a job. Pouring your energy into something that you are good at and love.

In the end, its good to be motivated and live creatively.