The Ten Commandments of Design

Life is short and the expanse of Design is vast, so big that you could live a nine lives and come back more to learn more about concepts / processes in Design – So at the start you should be specific about the field in which you want to dabble in more, to become a master (as expected, after all it is a Masters course) in it rather than be a Jack of all trades. Keeping this in mind, I have decided my route and by now have specialised in sleeping in all the possible lectures/presentations/design movies that are screened in the IDC (Industrial Design Centre) auditorium. There are followers.. ..but then I lead the pack. I further expanded my skills to sleep in the face of the professor for all possible interactive post-lunch session. So much to brag about my sleeping skills – I shall move onto other details.

You can take the technical writer out of technical writing but you cannot take technical writing out of a technical writer, says Murphy – saying which I shall summarize and bulletize(phrase in bullet points) some highlights which will make the content more easier to read and comprehend. Some of the things which can be loosely interpreted as 'The 10 Commandments of Design in IDC' are as follows:

• 1. Thou shall not know fonts, shapes or colours in Design – There are only typefaces, forms and values/hues/tints blahs blahs.
• 2. "What is Design?" could have 50 definitions, but then the one which thou know and answer to when asked the same is always the wrong one.
• 3. There is no right or wrong in Design.
• 4. Design in its simplest form can be defined as "Creative Problem Solving", but when there is no Design, there are no Problems whatsoever.
• 5. Thou shall master Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Indesign, Corel Draw, SolidWorks, Auto CAD and other software in two days time.
• 6. Thou shall always prototype your design concept.
• 7. Thou shall assign each design to a metaphor. (There is no design without metaphors).
• 8. Thou shall imagine, visualize in 2D, 3D as well from different perspectives as well as envisage from social, cultural, physiological and cognitive point of views (whew...!!!)
• 9. Thou shall unlearn all your Engineering as soon as you can after you get into IDC.
• 10. Thou are NOT a Designer (until thou pass out from IDC at least).

We shall keep the commandments at 10 for now, there'd be more and more to be added to fill up the electronic pages in Times New Roman or Calibri or Courier .. but then that is at a later stage.

This is for now (to keep it short and crisp). I will follow it up with some more writing about Design, more about IDC, the subjects learnt in the first semester and of course – There is life outside IDC.