COMD3504 - Section OL02 - Fall 2021

Month: August 2021

My assignment 1b answers- from me Joseph Asimeng

Based on the readings of Helen Armstrong and Bruno Munari, and or my opinion, these are my answers:

  1. According to these authors, what role should design play in our society?- Design should play a big role in our society. In which, in some way, we gotta know the past to understand the present and the future. Even when Armstrong in her excerpt, started saying some things about going back to avant garde. She goes and i quote:” In the early 1900s avant-garde artists like El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Herbert Bayer, and László Moholy-Nagy viewed the authored work of the old art world as shamefully elitist and ego driven. In their minds, such bourgeois, subjective visions corrupted society.” Probably because of that: “As graphic design took shape as a profession, the ideal of objectivity replaced that of subjectivity.” As for the passage from munari, he said the analogy of: “the artist must step down from his pedestal and be prepared to make a sign for a butcher’s shop”. (if he knows how to do it).
  2. What distinguishes the field, or fields, of design from other creative occupations?-well when it comes to design or many of the fields within design deal with motion graphics, knowing what avant garde and neo abstract art is. You’ll also need to know what every other art style that exists or has ever existed. Which you might not find anywhere else. It’s something that being a doctor wont tell you. It’s something that being a lawyer won’t tell you. It’s something that someone with any profession that has nothing to do with design, will never tell you. Simply because design is not important for their chosen field. You don’t design anything by being a scientist, a mathematician or a broadcaster either. As a few examples.
  3. Why should designers concern themselves with unsolvable theoretical questions? They should concern themselves with those questions because maybe there can be different ways to create any design. There isn’t any one size fits all approach to this, so to speak.
  4. What role does technology play in shaping design? Technology has a role in shaping design, by this quote from Armstrong, in which it says: ” The technology through which designers today create and communicate has quietly thrust universality back into the foundation of our work.” Which could mean that design could have it’s own significant purpose in this world.
  5.  What are the most urgent problems facing designers today? The most urgent problems facing designers today could be how some of them may be unable to express themselves. In which whatever they imagined to design, in their heads doesn’t come out perfectly, on the paper, as a storyboard or a design blueprint. It wouldn’t come out the right way, on the computer. Many design bosses rejecting design ideas to their workers. Then the employers having to tell their employees make better designs. Following the creative brief instructions in the best ways possible. Since some designers don’t always follow that rule.
  6.  How, and why, is a designer responsible for solving these problems? They are responsible for these types of things because they’re the ones designing anything that the client wants. Also they should have the brain power to “tackle” these types of challenges to form them into solutions for any design task, that comes their way.

Assignment 1b for September 14

Our first reading assignment consists of a couple short texts. Please download them using the links below, (print if possible,) read, and respond. Your response should be 3-4 paragraphs, which can be typed directly into a post or handwritten in your research notebook. If you decide to hand-write please just post an image into a new post.

Here are the readings:
Helen Armstrong, “Introduction: Revisiting the Avant-Garde” from Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field (2009):

Bruno Munari, selected chapters from Design as Art (1966):

Here are the questions to which you should respond:
According to these authors, what role should design play in our society? What distinguishes the field, or fields, of design from other creative occupations? Why should designers concern themselves with unsolvable theoretical questions? What role does technology play in shaping design? What are the most urgent problems facing designers today? How, and why, is a designer responsible for solving these problems?

Please post your responses before class on the 14th. And please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or issues. You can send a message through OpenLab or email me: mlange@citytech.cuny.edu

Assignment 1a for September 14 – Video Intro

Our first objective (which is sort of just an extension of the first class session) will be to create a short video introduction.

While the remote classroom will keep us in separate spaces, the quality of our discussions will depend on our willingness to speak openly with one another. The goals for this exercise will be to tell the class a little bit about yourself, and meet everyone that you’ll be working with through the semester.

Please record a short video providing the following information:
– Your name and preferred name
– Where you are filming the video (Feel free to go somewhere interesting!)
– Your “relationship” to City Tech and COMD; meaning how far along you are in the program, your primary interests, and goals for the future
– The fashion item, accessory, or footwear that has been necessary in your life for the past 17 or 18 months
– A theory that you have, or have heard recently…it can be about anything, but should ideally be impossible to prove.

Video files tend to be large. You’ll need to upload to YouTube, Dropbox, Vimeo, etc., then embed the link into a New Post by clicking the + box, locating Video, then selecting “Link”. (We’ll review Posting instructions in our first class session.)

Finally, the most important part of the assignment: Watch all of your peers’ videos! You may need to check back a couple times if you upload yours right away.

Here is mine. Hope you enjoy: