the desire to understand

Our world is full of information and data. Data continually grows, expands, and takes over our lives. We’re expected to memorize and understand information all of our lives to keep up with society. We are taught to look smart and capable in school and in our careers. This expectation robs us of creating, exploring, and desiring to learn. We are told to stick to what we know and get better and better in order to move up. This mentality takes away our potential to create things that are useful, meaningful, and important.

There is a stigma behind being a designer. The world expects designers to come in and make things look better than they already do. A company invents a piece of electrical equipment and seeks out a designer to finalize the look of the product. An engineer writes the handbook which is then designed by the designer. The designer makes the final package look pretty, sometimes without even understanding the product. The designer is robbed of the ability to learn and understand what they are working on. They are designing blindly. This closes the opportunity for designers to be involved in the overall process and production. As designers we should be ever-growing and learning. We should yearn for knowledge and understanding so that our work might become more valuable. We should have a desire to understand information and create things that are meaningful and invaluable.