Shannaine Franklin
Professor Trofimova
Topics in Graphic Design
March 16, 2018
Assignment IV: TEDTalks & Creative Process
In class we watched three TED Talks that surrounded around the topic of design and the link between design and happiness. The first TED talk was from Stefan Sagmeister about what he learned so far in life. He talked about doing studies about what makes people happy in general. He said that happiness isn’t affected by gender, money, occupation, age or ethnicity. But is affected by relationships, friendships friends and decision making.
I don’t agree with that. Females tend to get the shorter end of the stick than males. Women make 80 cents or less to the men dollar. Which is connection to money. Money does buy happiness. It could be the difference between being able to pay out-of-the blue hospital or medical bills or paying rent. Those are things you have to think about. Occupation can affect that as well, most states don’t pay people a living wage. So people who are getting paid below minimum wage or minimum wage have harder times paying bills versus people who are getting way beyond that can afford those things and more. People that are young have less responsibilities than people that are older. Responsibilities could be downer or higher to somebody based on who they are. Also everyone knows that people of color have a harder time in the world than most.
I do agree that relationships, friendships and decision making do affect a person’s happiness. Relationships and friendships could be important to does that suffer from mental illness like depression, bipolar disorder and personality disorders. Having a supportive and strong system is important to that person wanting to be alive or that person wanting to be productive. Having relationships and friendships could also open people up to being more social, creating a network, achieving goals and traveling. Personal events are better than the internet. Decision making more in the sense of saying yes more than saying no. Unless that no is to protect you from being mentally or physically unhealthy.
Sagmeister also talks about what makes him happy in design is doing what you want to do, traveling, having healthy deadlines, having a wide range of creative techniques, doing what matters to you, making sure your project translates wells between printing and web, and what your projects visibility impact can be. I agree with these. I also think these could be foundations to being happy in life in general, not just in design. Keeping healthy deadlines on projects, traveling to see the world, project visibility and overall doing things that matter to you to important for your health and mental stability.
I do not think this video had that much impact on me and how I view my creative process because I do not know if I have definite creative process to begin with. This semester does not supply me with much time to think about things because I take six classes. And each one of these six classes demands about a project a week. I’m not complaining, I just feel like school really provides me with quality work. Mostly quality skills.