ART 220 Concept Development-Final Project

Educational Purpose

Educational purpose is to produce professors? I view college, for example, a place of task completing. I think that people who go to college are not only learn knowledge but also to be capable of completing task on time. 

For instance, if Professor Jimmy is our client, he could be the worst client that we never meet. What he acts is good because we are not staying in college forever but finding a job eventually. We do not only need experience in college but also experience in the society. There are many different people, some are tough to deal with and some are easy going. In college, if we meet some people that we do not like, we can simply ignore that kind of people. Sometimes, we might not have a choice but have to deal with a tough person in society. 

We can simply use college as a training camp to prepare for the real fight once we graduate from college. Some people might say, why we pay for such a "training camp" not go straight to the real fight since we can learn knowledge by ourselves. As a designer, people nowadays do not care where you graduated from. If you are not the best ones at least be the better ones. The point here is that why wasting your time in college learning something that you can learn at home? As mentioned above, it's a place where you can train yourself to complete task on time and satisfy others. 

In my opinion, people in college are well-trained compared to those who go straight to the job. Not all of them are well-trained but most of them are. 

Value of Great Ideas

The Lynda's documentary about AIGA we watched in class was interesting for me to know what exactly is the design association AIGA is. The formal president of AIGA, Debbie Millman talked about how AIGA benefits the designers by providing them with such design network so that designers are not working alone but with other designers. 

Of course, working with someone is always better than working alone in terms of design. Because there is something that we can not see but others can. I'm just a bit concerned with how designers can actually work together within such network provided by AIGA. 

For instance, if I am a member of AIGA and I recently got a big freelance project, I can use AIGA to contact other designers to work with me because that project is too big for one person to accomplish within a short period of time. It's always fun to design something with others. But, we often work not only because we like "design" but also for money. How do I divide the sharing with a group of designers I just met? The point that I actually want to make is that, I really want to design something better, but I cannot achieve that without other designers' help. Realistically, people work for money so that I have to divide the paycheck. Obviously, I am gonna be the one who takes charge as an art director because I was the one who got the job in the first place. What if someone from that group of designers comes out with a much better idea than I do, should he be the one getting the biggest paycheck? Surely, he does. The problem is that I, as human being, want the biggest paycheck. But, he is the one who came out with the best idea, which was the key to start the entire project. Morally, he came out with such idea means that he should be the one who takes charge. I should let him takes charge because I love design. In terms of money, I still want to get the biggest award as possible. The question in my mind is that, if I can only choose one of the two, to achieve the best design, or to get the biggest paycheck, which one should I choose? 

Everyone is selfish in some ways and nobody needs to hide such human nature. If someone comes out a idea is much better than mine, I would work for him/her simply because I believe that idea can be more successful. When money comes into play, such great idea might be ruined . For example, Mark Zuckerberg, who designed Facebook, had trouble when Facebook started to make millions of dollars. In the movie "Social Network" that shows Mark Zuckerberg was not working alone but with other people. Now, we only remember he is the one who created Facebook and he is the one who gets the most profit. In the movie, one of his friends who contributed a lot effort into creating Facebook was kicked out of the game. Only his name remained in the Facebook as one of the founders. I'm not saying that I can design something as great as Facebook. But, I am just concerning that money might ruin a great idea and design because we all try to be the one that public remembers. Facebook is still a great social website today and many other similar social networking sites imitate it. 

I am not even sure what exactly I am worrying about. Probably, I just worry about the Design vs. Money. A lot of times, we can't eat the cake and have it, so we have to make a choice. Maybe, I valued "great idea" too high. Maybe a great idea is not as valuable as I think. I'm sure that is gonna be someone who first came out with the idea of iPhone. Without others' help, that is only an idea, which is worthless if nobody cares. But, Apple makes tons of dollars through selling iPhone and we have not idea who first came out with the idea of iPhone, or the design of iPhone but we only remember Steven Jobs.