A mapping of my mind (low-level)

So in the last post, I summarized all of the goals that I would like to accomplish by the age of 30. Taking only the headings and put them into a list looks like this:

1 — Enjoying working
1.1 — Designing everything
1.2 — Working collaboratively
1.3 — Learning by designing
1.4 — Sharing the concept of design
1.5 — Experimenting with typography

2 — Establishing a base
2.1 — Defining where to live
2.2 — Eating healthy
2.3 — Building a home library

3 — Developing rich relationships
3.1 — Finding design (but not limited to) peers
3.2 — Being a mentor to somebody

It was very curious for me to realize these items on the list look very similar to the famous Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

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1 — Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

This image was taken from google search.

So above, there is a diagram of the Hierarchy of Needs.

Adapted from the original diagram

I personally modified this content into a format that is suitable for what I was doing: trying to figure out lower-level or actionable goals in order to achieve those higher-level goals that I summarized last time.

A series of diagrams that I am going to use for this exercise is not really optimized for viewing on the web. I put the link to the pdf version of this diagrams at the beginning and end of this blog post. So please feel free to download and review it.

There are three major types of needs: Basic, psychological, and fulfillment. The lower level needs essentially support the existences of those higher level needs by removing any concerns regarding those basic needs from a person’s mind.

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2 — My Hierarchy of Needs

Applied my goals into the framework.

 

By replacing the types of needs goes under the three major need types and their descriptions with the list I made in the last post, I was able to visualize how I am perceiving my goals psychologically.

I intentionally kept the list numbers that I used in the last post. Notice that the order of the higher-level goals does not quite much with Maslow’s diagram, suggesting that there is a different prioritizing rules in my mind. Apparently, self-fulfillment need, which is to enjoy working, ranks the highest priority, while basic needs and psychological needs are the second and third highest respectively.

This analysis implies that no matter how satisfied I may be with basic and psychological needs in the future, it is impossible for me to just be 100% happy with my life without fulfilling the self-actualization necessities.

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3 — My Hierarchy of Needs in Timeline

Rotated 90 degree to the right.

 

This is where things get interesting. I was seeking a way to figure out which of the high level goals I should be focusing on first because what Maslow’s diagram suggests to me is that without satisfying the lower, basic needs of my own, it is unlikely that I will be able to concentrate on the higher level needs or goals.

By rotating the diagram of my hierarchy of needs 90 degrees towards right, it, in fact, became a timeline! 

By refining the layout and typography of this new time-based model slightly, it looks like this:

Enter a caption

 

I was attempting to proportionally scale the timeline in this one. This is mainly because there are only 7 years until I become 30, but with this overall gestalt of the diagram,  it could imply that I may be spending my first few years on satisfying only basic and psychological necessities, which can possibly be true, but not totally accurate.

Different lengths of the lines indicate the differences in their time span.

Going back to the original diagram by Maslow, the boundaries between each level of needs are actually more ambiguous and loose than clear and rigid, which essentially means that those hierarchical needs often overlap and interact with each other. They concurrently coexist, but their individual time span differ.

So the point here is that this framework that I completely made up is very useful in determining priorities among many personal goals and a general timeframe for achieving them. However, it is not as helpful in figuring out details steps necessary for those high level goals by itself. Although I mentioned the crucial limitation of this exercise, I found it okay because there is not much practical value planning step by step actions that will be carried out in the future.

No one knows what exactly would happen in the future anyway.

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4 — A new summary of my high level (+ low level) goals

Now that I have discovered which of the high level goals should be named first. I briefly went over the summary and added some low level tasks and actions that may be required by the high level goals. The new summary should look like this:

1 (2) — Establishing a base
1.1 (2.1) — Defining where to live
1.1.1 — Moving back to Japan 
1.1.2 — Defining which city or prefecture I want to live 
1.1.3 — Looking for a job (that cares about and practices design) or start one
1.1.4 — Finding a place to live that fits my needs (commuting time, price, space plan, etc.)
1.1.5 — Purchasing furniture 
1.2 (2.2) — Eating healthy
1.2.1 — Buying kitchen equipment 
1.2.2 — Finding a good local market
1.2.3 — Establishing a cooking routine
1.2.4 — Discovering and learning new recipes 
1.3 (2.3) — Building a home library
1.3.1 — Taking back all of the books that I have currently to Japan
1.3.2 — Allocating a room for work and books
1.3.3 — Buying or building a nice bookshelf 
1.3.4 — Researching good books to read all the time
1.3.5 — Finding a cheap way to import books in English to Japan

2 (3) — Developing rich relationships
2.1 (3.1) — Finding design (but not limited to) peers
2.1.1 — Working for a firm that employs design practitioners
2.1.2 — Actively networking
2.1.3 — Creating opportunities to collaborate with new people on various projects 
2.1.4 — Expanding my network not only in japan but also overseas
2.2 (3.2) — Being a mentor to somebody
2.2.1 — Constantly working on projects solving socio-economic and business problems
2.2.2 — Increasing a visibility online
2.2.3 — Acquiring a master degree in design (?)
2.2.4 — Preparing useful learning materials
2.2.5 — Leading and managing a product and services that requires a team

3 (1) — Enjoying working
3.1 (1.1) — Designing everything
3.1.1 — Taking every project as a design project
3.1.2 — Clearly defining an area of my speciality in design
3.1.3 — Learning design theories and knowledge of related fields 
3.2 (1.2) — Working collaboratively
3.2.1 — Effectively utilizing human resources as well as my network
3.2.2 — Developing a fluency in other areas of professions
3.2.3 — Developing skills in facilitating conversations 
3.2.4 — Being open-minded
3.2.5 — Leading and managing a product and services that requires a team
3.3 (1.3) — Learning by designing
3.3.1 — Learning design theories and knowledge of related fields + programming 
3.3.2 — Leading and managing a product and services that requires a team
3.3.3 — Asking lots of questions when working with others
3.3.4 — Documenting my learning
3.3.5 — Being open-minded
3.4 (1.4)— Sharing the concept of design
3.4.1 — Keeping sharing thoughts on design online
3.4.2 — Talking about the value of design to non-design practitioners
3.4.3 — Leading and managing a product and services that requires a team
3.5 (1.5) — Experimenting with typography
3.5.1 — Keeping polishing and learning typographic theories and skills
3.5.2 — Always applying a careful typographic treatments to anything I make
3.5.3 — Appreciating and learning typography in history
3.5.4 — Purchasing books on type 
3.5.5 — Learning typography in Japan

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5 — Final thoughts

In determining the lower-level tasks, I realized one thing: my self-fulfillment goals are too abstract and talks only about things that I want to learn about design. Thus, it lacks a notion of what I want to do with it. In some other parts of the list, I mentioned solving socio-economic problems, which I think implies something.

So I thought of them:

1. Redesign education and learning systems
2. Design a sustainable system that bridges a gap between Japan’s local economy and global economy
3. Greatly simplify any required legal, social, financial, and medical processes that people need to go through
4. Understand, visualize, and explain many systems that embrace a negative feedback loop
5. Learn and document histories
6. Design a place where people can come and work on their personal projects and collaborate with others

A mapping of my mind (high-level)

d.school at Stanford University

2018 just got started. I need to organize my to-do list. This is probably the first attempt for me to list out things that I would love to accomplish by the age of 30, which is about 7 years from now. I just need to write out goals that I currently have in my mind and do whatever necessary to achieve them.

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1 — Enjoying working

Work is probably going to be one of the most important aspects in my life. A part of it is because there are tons of things I would like to accomplish through working. In addition, it is also one of the primary ways to make-a-living. I would like to be compensated for services that I can provide to others. I do not know how developed AI technology will be in next several years, but I guess I just have to adapt as I see the drastic changes. Learning financing and being able to effectively invest my money in things like stocks would be tremendous, but it is definitely a secondary matter at this moment.

1.1 — Designing everything

Design is almost equivalent of a religion to me. I am so passionate about it that I do not want to do anything other than design as a job. However, my definition of design is not solely limited to two-dimensional surface, but also includes high-level thought process, human behaviors, and social and economic activities that probably covers a lot of stuff.

Particularly interested in human-centered design — meeting human’s needs through an effective use of technology. A short list of design disciplines includes interaction, information, communication, services, and systems design.

1.2 — Working collaboratively 

One thing that I do not want to do is to work solitarily. As a designer, it is obvious that I cannot carry out every single action required when developing a solution (products / services) to a problem. Effective teamwork ensures a healthy feedback loop that leads the solution to be successful. I believe that a designer should function as a catalyst / facilitator of conversations in such an environment.

Meeting new people and establishing connections with them is another task that would lead me to attain this goal. Though it is often common that human relationships can cause stressful political dramas, it is those organic connections that can collaboratively produce innovative / humane solutions.

1.3 — Learning by designing

Learning is the nature of design. I used to think that acquiring technical skills is what necessary to be a good designer. Although it is true to some extent, it is simply not sufficient. What really makes a person a great designer is to have the ability to learn new things. I believe learning tested and proven theories, frameworks, and processes regarding ethnography, cognitive psychology, business, and design is particularly important. This is because they are timeless and resilient wisdoms that can be reused and applied to whatever new technology that is going to emerge in the future.

1.4 — Sharing the concept of design 

I believe that there is a strong value in sharing the concept of design. It should be one of the common disciplines taught at school. Everyone can and should design in order to reduce confusion in this complex world we live in. Design is an ethical and thoughtful conduct of our action that can be beneficial for everyone.

There are probably many different ways to accomplish this. Sharing my learning and thoughts online like this blog is definitely one way.

I am not certain how educational institutions would operate in the future given that the fact that many alternative options for people to learn such as e-learning are emerging. However, I am thinking to pursuit a master degree in design within several years in order for myself to be more educated and expand my connections and scope of design.

1.5 — Experimenting with typography

I cannot express how much respect I have for typography. Type is one of the greatest inventions of mankind. A set of beautiful glyphs that is unique to different languages can form a word, sentence, paragraph, and essay that communicates meaningful stories. When applied properly, rigorously, and elegantly, typography can enhance the communicative ability of type, allowing people to engage, read, and understand the message more effectively.  This is something that I will probably continue doing throughout my life.

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2 — Establishing a base

I cannot imagine that I did not realize how important it is for me to have a place that I can call “home.” Although my parents’ house where I grew up is certainly my home, I need to establish my own.

Living in San Francisco is extremely expensive that I am not able to afford myself an one-room apartment. I am currently renting a room from a guest house service that is very convenient and comfortable. However, I cannot get rid of the feeling of foreignness, which results in a constant unrested experience that I have been having since moving into the place.

I honestly do not care the size of the place I live in. However, at least having a kitchen space and each room for resting and working are critical for me to live a decent healthy life.

2.1 — Defining where to live

Establishing a base successfully depends on where I decide to have one. Since my goal of studying abroad has been to become a person with distinctive qualities, experiences, and skills who can bring interesting changes in Japan, my base location is probably going to be in somewhere in Japan.

 

2.2 — Eating healthy

I guess this is closely related the number 2 on the list. It is very convenient and and fun for me to eat out every so often. I do not  have to cook, I can eat good food, and I do not have to deal with dishes afterwards. Nonetheless, it costs me a lot.

After visiting my professors, house in Chico, I realize how enjoyable it is for me to be able to cook whatever I want at home and share the meal with others. It is just such a good way to spend evenings and weekends. Therefore, I need to have my own base at first.

2.3 — Building a home library

This is something that I personally really want to have my own base. Having a room filled with my favorite books that feeds timeless wisdoms into my brain is an ultimate goal. A lot of books in Japanese are economically beautiful; however, many books in English are well-designed and mutinously crafted. Knowledge in design accumulated in the Western Culture seems much more humane, academic, scientific, and intellectual.

Someday, book as a medium would become completely obsolete. Nonetheless, it will continue to hold an irreplaceable value that digital medium may not be capable of providing.

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3 — Developing rich relationships 

2017 made me think about establishing robust and healthy relationships with others. It is helpful for me to recognize that I am no more than a regular person who just wants to try harder than others. Meeting new and building a good relationship with them can provide more opportunities to grow and ensure constant feedbacks.

Here I would like to quote John Maeda’s my Four Rules (1999):

1. Don’t speak ill of others.
2. Avoid passive aggressive behavior.
3.  Listen broadly, but don’t waffle on decisions.
4. When in error, admit, apologize, move forward.

3.1 — Finding design (but not limited to) peers

It is particularly important to have design peers with similar mindsets because it supports me to boost and sustain my inner motivation. I should probably define design peers more clearly; those are people who appreciate the concept of design and concerns potential outcomes of our actions.

3.2 — Being a mentor to somebody

I guess this is just one of many ways to build a relationship. I would not actively seek prospective students to mentor, but if I was ever asked, I would like to be prepared regardless of a number of potential students that I have to manage.

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After reviewing what I wrote, I realize that these higher-level goals are sort of following the Maslow’s pyramid. Given that, I can probably determine which goals needs to be accomplished first.

So here are some of my high-level goals that I would like to accomplish by the age of 30. I still need to list out lower-level or more concrete descriptions of necessary tasks, which should help me clarify what and when I am supposed to do in order to satisfy these high-level goals.

Thoughts on this year

I do not know where to start talking. It has been a really long time since the last time I wrote a story about my life. The year of 2017 is almost ending, and I would claim that this year has been one of the toughest years in my life because of many changes and challenges.

First thing first, I graduated from California State University, Chico. My life as a formal student ended with a lot of hopes and ambitions. I felt a good amount of confidence in myself for taking next challenges. However, looking back then, I was certainly naive and unprepared to consider myself as a skillful designer. I have figured out that there is still a bunch of things I should continue to learn.

Secondly, I became literally alone outside work. During my college life, it was super easy to hang out with friends and get motivated by my mentors and peers. I used to think that as long as I am able to keep motivating myself, everything is going to be fine. I do not think that way any more. I do not believe that I always have to be surrounded by people; it is certainly important for me to be alone and contemplate and reflect progress towards my life goals. However, receiving constructive feedbacks and having healthy competitions from others are also crucial to moving forward. At the end of the day, humans are social being; and I am one of them.

The sense of inferiority and lack of social relationships that I had during the later part of this year really made me feel depressed. I did not know what to do with them.

Social media including this blog have always been a place for me to share discoveries,  progresses and achievements in my life, not a place to confess and discuss my struggles. So I kept all of the frustrations in my head and did not share them with anybody for a while.

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Towards the end of summer, I was offered to stay and work at the design office for an extended period of time. The contract was originally for one summer. I knew that it was a precious opportunity for myself to learn more about design with wonderful people in an amazing environment. But I posed, not being able to say yes to the offer immediately. At the time, my mind was preoccupied with worrying about my future and desperately figuring out a conception of being a designer in Japan and how to perfectly fit into it though I was learning design in the U.S., which I should have considered that it would make myself as a designer special and unique.

To be honest, I was no longer confident in myself to stay in the United States and struggle all by myself for another year. It was a tough decision to make. Reflecting my past, I tend not to talk about these struggles to others including my parents in a direct manner. I believe in this type of situation, I am likely to become very pessimistic, negative, and skeptical about anything as a result of not sharing these negative feeling directly, which can possibly annoy my friends.

One day I called my parents to ask what to do since I was not able to keep all of my frustrations by myself. They were worried and told me, ‘you can come back here anytime.’ It reminded of me that I always have a place to go back and reset, that this is not the end of the world, and that I still have a freedom to choose to do whatever I want to do with my life. In addition, I talked to a handful number of my friends about my struggles and frustrations through messaging and calling. Surprisingly, they were willing to listen to my stories, and some of them even shared their own struggles in their lives. I am really thankful for my friends. Realizing that they also have issues that they face every day and are trying to resolve them as they go was truly eye-opening to me. It removed the sense of inferiority that I was feeling by believing that I should not struggle.

Although the choice I made was not as decisive as I wanted it to be,  I decided to continue to work at the office for another year, and I also decided to visit my hometown before starting the work again.

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It was only a 10-day stay in my hometown, but I did a lot and was able to reset my mind. Several old friends hung out with me during the visit. A friend from a non-profit organization, called Katariba, that I worked with last year invited me to join their event at a middle school. While still being confused and concerned with my life, I talked in front of groups of students who were also confused and worried about their futures and goals.
How ironical it was, but it was interesting. By telling those confused kids that it is going to be fine, I was also convincing myself that it is going to be fine.

Here is the link to what it looked like in the event (The blog is written in Japanese).

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It has been about 4 months since I came back to San Francisco. I would not say I have resolved all of the problems that had emerged this year. Nonetheless, I am way more confident that I know how to cope with them. I am in a full control of my life and have friends and family who support me. Now I know how to ask a help.

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After having some discussion on design, a friend of mine told me that things that I learned about design through the job and my personal learning are worth sharing. I also think it is a good idea for a purpose of documenting my learning as well as for others who may find my blog useful. I guess it is going to be one of my resolutions for 2018.

Anyway, Happy Holidays to everyone:)

Stepping into A New Life.

Akira Motomura and graduating students in the College Of Communication And Education (CME), College Of Natural Sciences (NSC) were honored during their Commencement Ceremony on Friday, May 19, 2017 in Chico, Calif. (Jason Halley/University Photographer)

I graduated from California State University, Chico with BA in Communication Design with an option in Graphic Design! It took me 3 years, the exact amount of time I planned, while I was still at NIC. The last semester was all about brutal busyness. I stayed on campus until midnight almost every single day. However, I did not hate it.

It was very interesting to me how much I ended up loving to learn Design after all the years I spent here. I think that the original perception I had about design was pretty close to what I learned regardless of the fact that I struggled to understand what it is and its practical application besides visuals.

Graduating students in the College Of Communication And Education (CME), College Of Natural Sciences (NSC) were honored during their Commencement Ceremony on Friday, May 19, 2017 in Chico, Calif. (Jason Halley/University Photographer)

An encounter with The Vignelli Canon by Massimo Vignelli, a legendary designer who defined Design as a discipline, clarified all the questions I had about Design. Looking back when I just started taking some basic design courses, I was a total beginner. I was neither an artist nor engineer/programmer. I was completely a normal college kid. However, there was always one thing that I liked and tried to achieve: applying different design principles. Visual hierarchy, color theories, the Gestalt Principles, typography, and the grid system—all of them are sets of rules, developed and used by hundreds of designers for centuries. They are timeless.

I remember that I really liked anything that I can learn and use theoretically and practically; it is anything explainable to myself and others. When these theories and wisdoms are introduced properly by mentors and practitioners, I believe that deepening one’s own understanding of them is totally up to that person. Thus, teaching all these things to myself developed a good foundation, and sharing them with others reassured my knowledge and enabled me to discover their diverse applications.

Analogically speaking, all the stuff I talked about Design above is pretty much same in writing as well as coding. Both of them have various sets of principles (languages) that one needs to follow in order to create something functional, usable, and most importantly explainable. If one cannot explain what he or she attempts in writing or coding, neither people nor computers won’t be able to understand it.

It made perfect sense why I like writing this blog and can enjoy typing and debugging lines of codes; because it is all about design. I love creating things that other people can easily understand and interact with. I embrace complexity because there are things that I as a designer can help simplify.

Another thing about Design is relationship. I believe that we tend to see each problem individually because it is the easier way for us to understand the problem. Nonetheless, there is almost always a realization that that particular problem that we see is just a very superficial part of a whole bigger and more complex problem. They are all connected to each other. Therefore, it is crucial for designers to have a thorough and holistic understanding of problems that they are attempting to solve. It is that understanding that allows them to design semantically appropriate and pragmatically usable solutions.

To design a single poster may not require to consider it too much because the amount of information and relationships that one must deal with is significantly less. However, when it comes to a larger publication, the quantity of information drastically increases, which forces him or her to take a careful consideration of relationships of its contents. When designing for digital services, the amount of data is way too much to handle with a single person’s mind. Thus, mental and concept map (wireframe) created by collaboration can play a helpful role in this process, which fosters constant revisions and updates in order to design a product that makes sense.

The truth is that I just started learning all these things that I just talked about. I was fortunate enough that I will be able to learn more about it at Dubberly Design Office in San Francisco. I am so excited about this amazing opportunity and how it will take me to the next destination.

P.S.

Here is the link to my portfolio: akiramotomura.com

Make to Learn.

A lot of people might have heard of, or actually listened to this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson, an advocate for brining true creativity in education. The talk was presented 10 years ago. I certainly remembered it was a very mind-blowing speech to watch. Last year, I happened to had a chance to hear his actual talk in Chico because either the city or my University got to invite him to talk about education here. The main point that he made in his presentation was that the current system of education is not working as a resource that students can use to increase their learning. It is rather taking away their own creativities that they naturally have.

I think his argument is  valid; at least, to me. I did not like being lectured by teachers since I was small. My father once took me to a local swimming pool, trying to teach how to swim. I did not think I have ever listened to him teaching me. I was just diving into the pool, figuring out how to move my body in the water as I wanted. The exact same thing happened in the classes in middle school and high school, maybe even in college. . .To tell the truth, in most of the lecture time, I didn’t even listened to what my teachers were talking about different subjects unless they are interesting to listen or stimulates me to think. Simply because they were just too boring to me. Again, I was studying whichever subjects, whenever, and however I wanted. It didn’t matter to me whether the teacher was lecturing a completely different subject that I was studying by myself.

Although I hated being lectured, I always liked to take exams because it was to me some sort of scoring games. Since I studied only right before mid-and final-exams, I was not the smartest in the schools. Nonetheless, I was mostly ok with those exams because I knew that I learned how to learn. I believe that this is sort of how I started really liking learning new things.

Going back to Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, his talk was truly amazing. There is no way to doubt about it. There was one thing clearly missing in that presentation: a solution or approach to the problem that he addressed. I was sort of thinking how people are losing their own creativities though the current system of education and coming to think that doing the same things as everybody else is the right thing to do. How can I stimulate their own curiosities that are most likely to lead them to be a self-initiated learner?

This TED talk was done by Joi Ito. He is the current director of MIT Media Lab. He is the first Japanese who became the director of the Media Lab. The encounter of his speech to me felt inevitable. Every single word that he employed in this speech somehow summed up my recent unanswered thoughts about learning and education. Although the speech occurred almost three years ago, what he was addressing accurately predicted and explained the recent trends in various industries, the changes in how people work, and the differences between how current technology and design-driven innovations happened and the old centralized innovation worked.

In my last blog post, I briefly talked about the democratization of technology; it enabled more and more people to have an access to various useful tools to build and create stuff that they used to be able to do only in huge institutions or companies where sufficient money and equipments would provide. Mr. Ito pointed out that this drastically changed the way innovation occurs in society.

First of all, it considerably reduce the cost of innovation. Since many people have the power of technology and open-source communities in different fields serve as alternative place to learn, they are able to easily create something innovative with little to no money. Then, they can actually establish a start-up as a product starts becoming solidified.

Second, the resources for learning such as online learning became diversified. The old teaching methodologies practiced by traditional educational institutions became less efficient and are currently required to reconsidered. The pace of technological and social changes have been faster and faster. The Internet made the world we live tremendously complicated and difficult to predict. It is no longer effective for people to have a grand plan to live their lives. People have a plenty of tools and resources that they can utilize as they need them, which he name “Pull over Push” as one of his primary educational principles.

Third point, which was my personal favorite, was the principle of “Learning over Education.”  He stated, “Education is what people do to you, but learning is what you do to yourself.” As he mentioned that he was a college drop out, he stressed the importance of learning how to learn. In this particular presentation, he used different types of examples to show how he himself worked with a bunch of amateurs to create a system that visualize radioactive density after the explosion of the nuclear plants in Japan after the Tunami in 3/11/2011. The system that the then Japanese government wasn’t even able to create.

The pace of AI development is credibly fast and unpredictable. You might not be even able to get that job of which you dream by the time you start working because of it. However, there will be always a way to get around as long as you keep thinking and learning something new.

I am so happy that people like Mr.Joi, who is Japanese, are leading some of the prestigious institutions in technology, design, and learning + education. They are working to make previously private sections of various resources more and more accessible to the public to foster further innovations and freedom.

Different colors = diversity, but can work as a whole = human.

Nonetheless, it appears that this kind of movement is still a minor activity in Japan. I think that our social and educational system is discouraging people to try different and new thing through learning and conformingly making them follow the “pushed path”. I am not saying that the system in the US is perfect, but it is trying to make sure it allows and embraces diversity and creativities more appropriately. It is obvious that people here are more comfortable with doing different things from others to fulfill their own happiness. I think that’s the fundamental concept that we lack in Japan. I would love to work in Japan in order to improve our system as a designer and learner.

Design to Make the World Better.

Still a long way to go.

Done with another semester, there is only one more to go.

I took a lecture class, called History of Graphic Design, this semester. Although I was not a big fun of the lecture, the book that I read for that class was very interesting and inspiring.

I have never thought of the reasons why I have to learn about the famous design legends and how design has evolved through time. I used to consider that learning about them is to know about design trends or styles that they were famous for. However, my old assumptions were completely wrong. It is far more important than I used to think it was.

The TED talker’s name is John Maeda. He is considered as one of the design legends and still alive as of today. He was a former professor at MIT Media Lab and the former President of the Rhode Island School of Design. I have watched and read quite few different speeches and articles by him talking about how design and technology can be synthesized together to create innovations and the increase demand of designers in current technology-driven society.

Morisawa poster by John Maeda parody sign for my room.

As I am pursuing a career as a designer at college, the very definition of designer is becoming more and more vague inside of me because I am seeing the role of a designer in a contemporary society in a much broader perspective. And I think I am right in this sense.

The Internet, personal computers, and cloud services gave away a great access to current technologies to many people. They can create some sort of artistic works via Photoshop and Illustrator and build a website using some DIY (Do It Yourself) online platforms such as Wixs and SquareSpace. The proliferation of these types of tools have been evolving into a substitution for traditional visual designers (artists).

I was extremely excited for what Mr. Maeda pointed out about the expanding responsibilities of designers, but at the same time I was very confused by this trend that seems to be neglecting the role of designers and the superficially saturated number of “designers” who can use “those tools.” It was very obvious to me that I did not want to be stuck in this situation. It was when I started my endless reading to figure out what kind of designer I would like to become and be perceived as by others if only I wish them to know.

I read Thoughts on Design by Paul Rand, one of the most famous design legends in the design world. The book was written when the author was still young. Nonetheless, the sophistication in his writing and his clear and thoughtful comments on design were undoubtedly apparent. There are two quotes that I loved from the book:

Visual communications of any kind … should be seen as the embodiment of form and function: the integration of the beautiful and the useful.

Took a quote out of Rand’s book and created a poster in an attempt to show my understanding visually.

An erroneous conception of the graphic designer’s function is to imagine that in order to produce a “good layout” all he need do is make a pleasing arrangement of miscellaneous elements. What is implied is that this may be accomplished simply by pushing these elements around, until something happens. At best, this procedure involves the time-consuming uncertainties of trial and error, and at worst, an indifference to plan, order, or discipline.

The core conception that I learned from his writing was that designers must consider the relationship between content and form and its relevance to a particular problem and its functional practicality. Design has to be aesthetically pleasing; however, if it cannot be associated within a context that the designer is dealing with, it has no good in it. Rand mentioned the way a designer should take in order to create something meaningful and aesthetically beautiful in his book. He said something like a mental process and interpretation of the content that a designer deals with in a given situation. It sounded that being a master of communication was the only way at the time to be a good designer like Rand because there was no technology that informed him and other designers how their customers reacted to their visual solutions. It must have been extremely difficult for them to objectively judge if a solution that they came up with was right and effective to a given problem.

Nowadays everyone has access to technology that makes their lives much easier than ever before. The technology we use has become a part of our lives and styles. As Mr. Maeda repeatedly claimed, people want products that can represent who they are when all of them started them. This is the important role that design has begun to play in recent years. Interestingly, the argument that he made strongly corresponds to what Rand believed: the relationship between beauty and usability (practicalities). If design was merely another form of fine arts, it would have already vanished from the industry. The reason why it’s been out there so long and still exists to this day is because its role is completely different from fine arts. I believe that it is the designer’s job to add empathetic and humane values to a product and service and aesthetic and functional solutions to a problem around us.

So what do I want to be?

I found it very difficult for me to define myself as a graphic designer, because the term is necessary, but definitely not sufficient to describe. It is rather too narrow. The closest answer that I’ve found so far is a multidisciplinary designer from an article by Razvan Gradinar, a Senior UX Designer at Adobe. This is the kind of designer I would like to be; they can start a project, play a various role in different team environment, organize and manage a team, and help others. I love helping clients with their problems using my skill sets. However, my ultimate goal is to utilize design to find a better solution for a problem I am interested in. With even broader knowledge of everything and sharp understanding of design, it is possible to make the world a better place.

Design Thinking.

Another month has passed. It is so hard to create a post out of my mind although I certainly enjoy the process of putting things together into an unified writings. I tend to let my thoughts float around in my head until they come into a single solid idea. It is almost impossible for me to instantly come up with a great thought.

Writing is the last step of finalizing the concept that came to my mind. It allows me to make my unorganized thought much more constructive and sophisticated. I believe that this is undoubtedly parallel to what designers including me practice. We identify a specific problem our clients  or we want to solve. In the meantime, we also figure out the target audience. Then prioritize the main focus and develop a best suited solution for this particular problem. There are a lot more small steps involved in this process. However, the last step designers take is to design. It is simply a tool that enables us to communicate a message with audience better and clearer.

I think
the history of humanity
has always been accompanied with
D E S I G N.

Everything we currently have in our lives is designed. Only nature is created through its own different design system (although we can alter its system by modifying genetic information or simply destroying them nowadays). In particular, graphic design must have been at the very center of how we communicate because we have created languages or types throughout the course of our history. How we think, write, and talk is heavily dependent on this unique linguistic capability. Since we conceive our languages in this way, it would not be too much to say that our languages are in fact the form of our cultures and dominate our societies.

More and more people in different parts of the world speak English as a common way of communication. Also, people in my home country are desperately studying the language to master. At the same time, it seems like the Western culture is actually taking over the entire culture as more people learn to speak English. Once people start speaking a language that has been developed based on a particular culture, I assume that their way of thinking somehow gets closer to the culture in which the language is spoken. As this examples shows, it demonstrates how strong the effect of languages is to us. Therefore,

T Y P O G R A P H Y 

— the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed

is essential and effective in our society because it definitely affects how people perceive and absorb information thought the linguistic communication. It could possibly create a movement with the power of typography.

Why am I writing something like this? Because this is what I am learning at my university, and this is what I am going to utilize to make myself living. So I really don’t like when people ask me what my major is and they thing of it as something purely artistic.

THEY ARE NOT FINE ARTS.

Anyone can
make things look pretty,
draw illustrations,
and call those things “design”
if they wish to.

However,
they never achieve what true design can do;
design can make things functional, communicative, and then appealing.

This is not the best example, but you can see how it works.

Today’s post was kind of strange, but this is how I feel. Some say that the things that I share on my blog from my experience are mostly bullshits. I don’t really care how they perceive my intellectual, or possibly philosophical, activities because I know that I try to make myself clear here. Nonetheless, the point I was trying to make mightn’t have been clear enough. So let me end this post with a quote that perfectly describes what it is.

“Styles come and go. Good design is a language,not a style.”—Massimo Vignelli

Expand.

Hello, everyone. It’s been about a month again.

The 2016 summer vacation is going to be over in just 2 days. Although I have done fairly a lot of stuff during this vacation, I don’t really have a feeling of accomplishment. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there hasn’t been anything that’s worth noting. It is just that I didn’t make many tangible stuff such as some design works.

Through the experience of job hunting, I think I have spent an enough duration of time and felt so-called, peer pressure, to be fully a Japanese again, by which I mean I am a regular Japanese who hasn’t not yet exposed to any other worlds other than Japan. I don’t think that being Japanese isn’t bad at all. They are acknowledged as one of the nicest people by most of the countries. Nonetheless, I don’t think that it’s not me; all the characteristics of myself cannot give a full play with just one single identity. I cannot easily comply with common sense and social conformity.

A couple weeks ago, I took part in a volunteer camping program organized by a NPO organization called, KATARIBA. The NPO has been holding a successive tutoring sessions in my hometown since the massive earthquakes hit there. The tutoring sessions are mainly held in the areas where the damage by the earthquake was enormous. Many of the junior high school students to whom I talked there have lost their houses due to the natural disaster, and they still go to school from nearby temporary shelters maintained by local governments. The camping program I joined was also organized by KATARIBA; they cooperated with the principle of one of the middle schools that they work with and decided to have this program as an extend of their volunteering. The aim of this program was to give some joyful time and inspirations to those students who have experienced the difficulties because of the earthquake by incorporating one of Katariba’s main enterprises into the study session that they have been holding.

Me Doing A Little Presentation about My Life

On the first day of the camping, I got to a chance to have a presentation about my life in front of a group of students, and it was one of the KATARIBA’s original programs that they usually do for high school students in order to have them consider their lives by listening to stories from their seniors. It’s been a quite while since the last time I gave a presentation in front of people, so I was a little bit nervous to do it. Although I tried to design my stories in a way that attracts the students and gives them an inspirations to think for their future, I am not really sure how much they could absorb and learn from me.

However, there was a very interesting thing happened to me after spending 2 days with them. It was not them who have learned a lot and thought of their future from me, but it was me who have really experienced and learned many things from them. Those students with whom I spent time have diverse opinions, personalities, preferences, and dreams. Since I was the only one among the staffs who have an experience of studying abroad and can speak English, they asked me questions like, “Do you think it would be impossible for me to start studying cooking in France right after I graduate from middle school?” I said to them that. “No, it is absolutely possible for you to accomplish your goal as long as you work hard.” The answer I gave them was the very phrase I always say to myself.

It was a little sad that most of the students who personally told me their stories and dreams started their questions with “Would it be impossible?” Because this implies that they don’t believe what kind of possibilities they have with their life; it is too early for them to give up on what they want to realize.

I know that I feel the same sometimes. I am afraid that I cannot fully realize and enjoy what I want, but I think it is ok to feel that way. That pressure gives me a strong motivation to work and learn harder  in order to break the wall ahead of me. I believe that people can become better and better as long as they think they can.

The fist step to an ultimate goal would be a very small step; however, the accumulation of those small steps can take you thousands miles away from where you are currently.

I began teaching students in Kumamoto as a volunteer so that I could help them and my lovable hometown, but the truth was that they helped me to rethink who I am and what I want to be. I hope that the time I spent with those teenagers was able to give them some sort of realistic images of what they can actually be if they work hard enough. Although I am still just a student, I should have been able to do that.

Expand My World.

In closing, I would like to thank the staff members whom I have met through KATARIBA for offering me this amazing opportunity. I don’t know how far I can go, but never stop trying.

 

Be A Weaver.

Shibuya

It’s been more than a month since I came back to Japan. I was in Tokyo area, working on my job hunting, which was pretty tedious.

I was actually writing another one talking about how I am thinking about doing job hunting in Japan. However, I didn’t feel like to share my thoughts on this matter on this blog, so I ditched uploading it and started writing this one right now.

Cat Cafe in Ikebukuro

Since the beginning of this summer vacation, I have been constantly purchasing and reading books. I think that those books have become almost like my necessities because they can give me great knowledge, lectures, hints, and ideas out of which I would formulate new ideas. The more books I read, the more I know how the world works. However, reading more books simultaneously makes me realize that there are a lot more things that I might never be able to learn after all. It is like that I am being absorbed into a huge black hole that everlastingly grows; there is no end.

Books are the source of learning, excitement, fulfillment, and history. They are the packages of their authors’ lives. Each piece of diverse ideas, thoughts, and perspectives are arranged onto hundreds pages of paper by the authors, and they flow as a single insightful meaning. Some of the books that I have read so far really had this beautiful flow. I think it is precise to define that smooth continuity as an art of words.

Why do I think this is beautiful? One of the books gave me an undoubtedly rational reason for it. The very reason is the continuity of discontinuous beings.

So what is the continuity of discontinuous beings? I guess the simplest way to clarify this phrase is critical thinking. Critical thinking is probably the most common notion that you would have encountered in your writing classes, and I assume that many students are very confused by this term because usually your English teachers might not tell you how you can tackle your paper with this way of thinking.

Hundreds of Boxes of Dr. Pepper create the Chico State’s name.

In order to understand how this works, you have to imagine that how an image is made out of millions of tiny three-color dots. When you looking at a photo on your laptop, you would recognize what the photo is representing because it is very high resolution photo that even captures the shape of micro-small bugs. However, if you use some sort of magnifying tool and look at the photo very closely, you will realize that tiny dots are actually visualizing the overall image, which is categorized as  rasterized RGB image.

I am assuming that you would have seen some really low-resolution photos that you don’t even know what they are, but you still see some rough color dots on them. What’s important in this analogy is that the image can give you a precise object when it has very high, organized color dots. However, when it’s low resolution, it doesn’t make any sense. Although each tiny point has its own circular shape and color, they are acknowledged as a whole and make one meaning. The higher the resolution of the photo is, the clearer and more beautiful it looks.

In the same way, your argument or any sort of writing has a much stronger and more sophisticated power to convince your reader if it has rich, consistent, and rational reasonings. Each support you have in your argument must be arranged in a way that makes your opinion as strong as possible. When this is accomplished, what you write starts having a natural and smooth flow in it. Even though technically, each support in your writing is individual and different, and words you would employ are also individual and different, they turn into a single argument.

That is what I mean by “the continuity of discontinuous beings.”

Imagine this: when you read a book, you have many trouble in understanding English words. So you have to look up every single word you don’t understand in the book and you do it. However, no matter how hard you tried understanding the content from the book, it would be very difficult for you to do it because you must stop reading while looking up words that you don’t know.

However, if you stop looking up each word you don’t understand while reading, and instead you start reading the book without stopping, you can comprehend the material a bit easily.

It deliberately illustrates the point as well. This is how you understand the flow. This is how things are.

Dream Weaver

I believe that the idea of the continuity of discontinuous beings is applicable to lots of circumstances in the actual life. Innovation occurs when some things that already exist get merged together; single knowledge is just random ideas as individuals, but become something completely new when combined. It is very important to learn new things; however, it is even more important to find the connection between those new things that have been acquired and weave a whole new concept out of it.

So learn a lot and be a weaver.

 

 

Keep Going My Own Way.

One Way? No, I Go My Own Way.

Hello, people!

It’s has been a while since my last blog post.

Spring 2016 has already started and a half of the semester is over. I am on my spring break now and just came back from my road trip to Portland, Oregon a few days ago. It was a very beautiful experience to visit Portland; this road trip definitely made me realize that there are bigger and more exciting places other than the cities and towns I know where I could possibly have more interesting opportunities.

Unlike other huge cities, Portland is, in my opinion, very neatly designed and developed in terms of the coherence of the city’s appearance, its accessibility of the nearby towns, and its cleanness. Although it looked that car is still the most commonly used transportation there, Portland seemed to put some emphases on its city train and bicycles as other usable transportations inside the city.

One of the most striking things that I have experienced in the city was the cafes there; they are different from the regular cafes that people would usually imagine. They are categorized as so-called ,”the third-wave coffee,” which is a movement to produce high-quality coffee, and consider coffee as an artisanal foodstuff, like wine, rather than a commodity (from wikipedia). I thought that Starbucks is selling a pretty expensive, high-quality-looking coffee already and fancy, but those coffee shops are self-owned and have different styles that they strive to show. My friends with whom I went to Portland were pretty nerdy about coffee and really really impressed by the quality of the coffee they tried in Portland. Thanks to them, I think I started getting the different tastes of various coffee like I did with beers.

 

As I began this blogpost, it has been about three months since the last post. I have been simply just so busy doing my school stuff this semester. Well, I think I had few chances to make some updates on my blog so that I could have told my recent stories.Nonetheless, it’s been really busy for me.

The reasons why are as described below.

One of the reasons is that I started a graphic design internship at the CMT Design studio on campus this semester. This is a very exciting experience because I get to design most of official posters and other kinds of print-based media on campus, and the internship gives me a great hands-on experience that will help me improve myself as a graphic designer. I did not expect that working and communicating in English with my coworkers and clients, which is not my first language, is such a hard and fun thing to me. I believe that though this internship, my ability to clearly convey my thoughts in English as well as my graphic design skills have gotten better. Currently, I am working for 12 hours a week, but I am going to work for 20 hours next semester, which will definitely keep me busy until I graduate from Chico State. However, by the time of my graduation, I am assuming that this internship will give me a fairly good understanding of how graphic design industry works in a real life and a strength in print production.

The other reasons is of course, five of my classes, and all of them are upper-division courses. As getting closer to graduation, classes I have to take are getting slightly more difficult and time-comsuing. Right now, I have 4 major-related courses and 1 upper-division general education class. 3 of them are really a project-based classes which I am enjoying taking because they are my major classes and the projects my professors assigned us to do are just simply fun to work on.

The rest of 2 classes are the one that I have some problems with.

One is called Communication Criticism, in which I have to make an argument against any sort of media work on the basis of media analytic methods explained in the class. Analyzing a medium of any kind is a very fascinating subject; looking at different components of the medium and trying to understanding its deeper meaning allow me to recognize the complicated patterns of the media that people consume on their daily bases. However, the thing is that my professor is just too specific on what she wants us to write on our papers and her explanation to clarify what she wants is not clear enough…, which makes it harder for us to understand her point.

The other one is called Philosophy of Science. This class is, as you can imagine already from the title of the class, complicated. The major problem I have with this class is not the ideas that each philosophers who had examined science from their philosophical views present, but rather their choices of words in their writings. Yes, philosophers. They are the kind of human beings who really want to show off the fanciest terms and words that they know in order to explain what they had in their minds, which most of the time creates some sort of bullshits and could have been described  in much simpler ways that everyone else can easily understand. Looking up some of the words that I found insanely difficult to understand takes me lot of unnecessary time.

Ironically, I started liking some of those philosophers’ ways of writing because as you can see, they look fancy and sophisticated in a way. Haha.

Anyway, there is one thing that I would like to point out here in this post.

There is only one year left until I leave the world of academia and begin working. Most of my friends in Japan and some in other countries have started looking for jobs. Looking them and hearing some stories from them, I realized myself being a slightly scared of not doing the same thing that they do. I guess there is a certain feeling of conformity that I have developed without knowing it. I am pretty sure there are several people who are feeling the exact same way I am.

I am just focusing on what I want to do right now, and this concentration has significantly changed my view of life: there is no one way to reach my goal. 

I think that I just got to the point where I started grasping the concrete and solid objective that I would like to accomplish in my life. My goal is still pretty vague, but I know which way I am going for.

Everything I can have from my experience including this time’s road trip, my classes, my internship, and many others is meaningful. Each of them allows me to expand my world and see other possibilities.

The point is that you do not have to stick with one sole plan that most of people would take; you can decide how you approach to your goals.