Francis - Reading #1

Reading the beginning pages of Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming has already got me immersed in the book. The use of images and text makes the book very compelling and enjoyable to read, in addition to the interesting topic about brainstorming. 

While I do brainstorming on a regular basis for my graphic design projects, both for work and for school, I have never brainstormed that much in depth before. In addition, I always brainstorm on the computer as opposed to on a piece of paper. After reading, I realized how much better brainstorming on a piece of paper is than on the computer. For one, the designer can see all versions of his or her sketches without accidentally saving over the file. Number two, sketching on the computer is sometimes harder than sketching on a piece of paper and can take a lot more time. I am very interested to change the way that I brainstorm my design ideas because I feel like it will make my designs better, since I will have a more in-depth process of brainstorming and getting out ideas. I especially like setting a time or quantity limit to brainstorming because it is easier for me to work better under pressure.

My favorite quote from the first reading is “the right idea is often the opposite of the obvious” by Alex F. Osborn because it describes perfectly the importance of brainstorming. If the right idea was the obvious choice, it would make everything boring because it would be clear (and obvious). An idea that is interesting is usually something that is thought about in a different way.

            Moving on to “Deconstruction and Graphic Design,” it was interesting to see how Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller compared speech to writing because I had never thought about it in that way. Writing is definitely artificial to speech, and speech is original compared to writing, which is a copy. Ultimately, my favorite contrast was how speech is spontaneous while writing is constructed, just like this blog post.