I studied design in an art college. If you have a background in design education, you know how frustrating that can be. An art college views design from the point of view of applied art, or ‘applying art to commerce’. It doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that the educators are all out of work painters, perspective artists and poets. While philosophy was abundant, there was absolutely no rationale or logic, business or otherwise. Design approval was arbitrary.
After the first 2 years of art college education, I began to feel irritated with the lack of accurate feedback. The internet wasn’t available to me at the time, and our college library only had art books. British library was ok, but I couldn’t decipher head or tail of the science books there because popular books on neuro-science weren’t as widely available. It was frustrating because, like any student I developed theories of my own on why some visuals appealed to some and not to others. Some worked and did what they had to, others fell flat, and there was no way of objectively verifying my theories…
