Tuesday November 20th, 2018

Wochenzettel 18/45
“You can’t not decide”

“Cheat sheets must have a good graphic design to really work.” We took this and much more with us from last week when we attended the lectures of the two-day symposium on the subject of “Designing. Learning. Create.”. were allowed to listen. Topics such as design pedagogy, where one of the issues was that design should already be brought closer at an elementary school level. Like creating learning spaces at universities where students can retreat and feel comfortable, but still work effectively. For this purpose, tests were carried out to see what demands the students had on the room. It turned out that we students are practically inclined! It is enough for us to have a seat, a table, a laptop/PC and a power outlet. Internet access would also be an advantage. We are just very frugal!

“The designer is the perpetrator,” said Dipl.-Des. Heike Raap in her lecture. What was meant, of course, was not that designers are criminals, but that they make decisions or don’t. “One can’t not decide”, Mrs. Raap explained. Even to elude a decision is, therefore, a decision. The similarity to Paul Watzlawick’s well-known saying “You can’t not communicate” was, according to Ms Raap, noticed by chance and only during the short discussion round directly after the lecture by a question from a listener.

Not only from the two days of the symposium did we take a lot with us. We learned that non-places are places of loneliness, anonymity and uprooting, according to Marc Augé. In other words, a place with a lack of identity, history and relation. No human interactions in the anthropological sense take place there. Places such as train stations, airports or supermarkets are included in this term. This made us ponder. Which places in our everyday life are actually non-places? Can non-places become places? Surely some of us will have given special thought to this when we were sitting on the train or getting on the bus or in the car on our way home. Am I now in a non-place or is it a place for one?

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s lecture on “Cézanne’s Doubt” brought us closer to phenomenology and how difficult it seems to exhibit viewing habits and actually paint only what is really in front of you. So Cézanne had just stared at the landscape for several hours, then did a brushstroke, and looked at the surroundings again for hours.

With the help of the so-called “golden circle” by Simon Sinek we prepared ourselves for the concept presentation of our master topics. This method allows us to develop a more fascinating presentation. The questions “What?”, “How?” and “Why?” are answered. At first, it sounds simple, but it doesn’t prove to be that easy. The biggest challenge here is the “Why?”, the part with which the vision of the master’s topic is to be handed down. In addition, the answers to the questions can also mix and are difficult to separate.

Now our thoughts and concentration are focused on the concept presentation that will take place in two weeks. Another hurdle to overcome. But we can do it!

Velvet Vogel