A0. My Design Manifesto & 1st week Reading Response

Ariel Li
6 min readFeb 9, 2021

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Design Manifesto

The design should be aesthetically pleasing and unapologetically thought-provoking for the audience, carrying the message concerned with the society and humanity. Besides plain text, visual design is my creative tool to show my values and thoughts with the world. It is also my way of expressing my personality, intimate emotions, and struggle feelings that I cannot verbalize perfectly. Visual design is a language I’m able to practice that speaks for itself without sound. I believe that power design has to awaken the unconscious part inside one’s brain and would like to learn how to use this “superpower” to create emotional impact and promote positive influence.

With my passion for design, dedication, hard work, and patience, I hope my design can communicate the message that I intend to convey correctly to the audience and build emotional connections with spectators. My design pieces can be a form of externalization of my inner world, chaotic or peaceful. I hope my pieces can also address social issues and bring philosophical questions to the table for discussion, such as about our existence and meanings of life. If the goal of my design is to promote a business or a product, I hope my design can catch the attention of the audience carrying the message aligned with the strategic branding goal.

  • During the design process, I hope I can do adequate background research to understand the context and audience I design for and be aware of the message I choose to express.
  • Get familiar with the whole process of design including brainstorming and sketching. I believe that there’s no one and only fixed routine for design and I hope I can try different combinations and figure out the most effective order for me. In the situation where I may feel stuck and can’t come up with good ideas to follow through, I hope I can still try to sketch something, or look at some creative graphics or videos without worrying about generating ideas. I probably will be inspired by others’ work and the idea will find me.
  • Learn how to critique others’ work in a professional manner, increasing my vocabulary for artistic critique, and expand my perspective.
  • Be patient and resilient. There is always a curve when it comes to learning a new skill. Trust in myself that with the time and effort I put in, I will be able to navigate the softwares just fine. If I come across a problem, remind myself that I am resourceful and able to find the solution. I can always ask for help from peers and the professor. The more I use the software, the better I will be at it.
  • Stay curious and explore. Training my eyes and design sense by looking at other acclaimed artwork. Take notes of the features that impressed me, such as the use of color, structure, and other creative ideas. Try different color combinations and be confident to use different colors to convey different emotions. Hope I can try different styles / moods from crazy, bold to calm, peaceful.
  • Stay humble. Contemplate on my peers’ critique and think about how to improve my design giving their suggestions. Schedule office hours with the professor to talk about where I can improve. Be courageous to share my work with industry professionals and friends to ask for feedback. This is a good way of networking and I truly welcome genuine and insightful feedback for the art work I create and care about.
  • Stay grateful by practicing self-affirmation and meditation. I believe that the mindset during the creation process is critical and I’d like to appreciate my innate creativity and my chance to study at IDM to develop my skills to be a better designer. I believe in myself that I am capable of creating something meaningful.
  • Plan things ahead with time-management skills. I will book enough time for my brain to be relaxed during the creative process. Stress can harm the creative mind to perform its best.

I aspire to be a designer with integrity, dedication, and self-awareness and design with purpose. I hope my design can create even a tiny positive impact on society or people’s life.

Reading Response

I am inspired by the sense of purpose these two manifesto articles have shown me. Even though Marinetti was a fascist and some sentences made me feel disturbed, his manifesto contains the power of his determination and craze. Rodchenko’s manifesto consists of shorter phrases with the use of Parallelism to emphasize constructivism, which gives me a sense of solemnity and the collective power of the union being constructivists. I really like Moholy-Nagy’s analysis of typography stating that it’s “visually the most exact rendering of communication” with “strongly optical tangibilities” He explains how art form’s evolution is related to what happens in the human world, which aligns with my understanding that art originates from human’s secular activities. He also predicts that film will be a form of communication broadly utilized in the future, which became true.

Gropius’s manifesto inspired me by his words that no matter what kind of artist one is, craftsmanship is always the core spirit of one’s profession. He also eliminates the conceptual barrier of class between artists and artisans, which I respect. Good design is always a result of hard work and creativity and it applies to all professions. He intends to create a respectful and equal space for creativity and collaboration and foster a creation of architecture with no social boundaries.

The last article “Dematerialization of Screen Space” discusses the spatial paradigm of the internet. First, Helfand points out users’ role and relationship with computers that we are also the prisoners, whether we’re aware of it or not. The algorithm is like the key to the door of design and information for us. Without the right key, we might not be able to see the design or have access to the information even if they exist online. I find the analogy of the relative movement between viewers and information interesting too. As the viewer, our perception is limited by the algorithm even if we may have the sense that the internet is seemingly open and comes with freedom for our judgement. During the past few years, people have witnessed the power the internet has to divide people and create deeper prejudice, misunderstanding, and resentment. The internet keeps feeding us content that we’re interested in and values we agree with to blind us of the whole picture in which there are people who think differently than us. People can be manipulated by the data and materials presented. I’d like to believe that the programmers didn’t intend to build a system to divide a nation but to satisfy the social media’s business needs and goals, but the unforeseen impact the algorithm creates can have on society and is terrifying. This article reminds me of the documentary I watched on Netflix called “the Social Dilemma,” discussing the impact of social media to our society and how critical the role of design plays in the process. When I first choose to learn about user experience design, I aspire to become a designer who can design a system or application that makes users feel better. However, some applications of UX have become user exploitation, seeing users as data points and figuring out ways to manipulate their behaviors to the benefit of the business revenue. Since users are receptors who passively accept the next step program offers, designers have the power to adjust the process and function to perform in the way that serves humanity the best. I agree with Helfand in her article that designers should accept the challenge to create this online universe a better environment by design with responsibility and integrity.

I really enjoyed watching the talk of “How Great Design Makes Ideas” by Milton Glaser. I felt his wisdom, honesty, and wit during his presentation. I’ve learned that the use of vocabulary can carry a specific image the crowd has as preconception by the example of the word use of “dutchman.” I’ve learned that even the genius of design can stumble into the creation process but there’re always methods — we can try different ideas, write down what we know about, and keep moving forward. One quote I found motivating is that “if you don’t believe in your work, who else is going to believe in it?” I am still on the road to build my self-confidence and I believe that if I have put enough thoughts, time, and effort into my work, I will feel confident and be proud of it. For my future work, I hope I can also challenge the convention (posters don’t have to be square). His creation of the “new,old” poster also makes me wonder if the criteria of a good design is to be understood and seen by the audience immediately without explanation and whether a piece is not working if the artist has to explain what’s going on. I think there are pieces for different uses, the one that carries clear messages and the one that provokes deep contemplation like an open-ended question can both be good art pieces. I feel a sense of transcendence when Mr.Glaser says art is mystery, history, and continuity. I’d like to end my response with his ending that “art is whatever, and art is whatever remains.”

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Ariel Li
Ariel Li

Written by Ariel Li

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Designer & Creative Thinker at NYU IDM

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