"Because I was a Science Student" by Some Designers Including Me
Long, long time ago (in Chinese accent), there was a myth spread by legends among students and parents that, choosing science stream might be the best way to guarantee you into the widest / broadest choice of future careers & campuses.
I bought the idea, thought that one day I might choose the path of an IT guy. I tried my best to score in SPM (Malaysian Certificate of Education) not knowing which degree I'll choose.
Me leaving science stream right after graduate
The choice to decide which campus to start my design studies was surprisingly, straightforwardly easy (for bad reasons which I find is extremely beneficial to my learning habit. I believe extremely disciplined school has its trade off). Going through the orientation week(s) (you read it right, my orientation lasted for 3 weeks) was a horrifying experience for me. Apparently, almost every freshmen in this campus came equipped with various kinds of talents - sing, dance, joke, draw (obviously). I sat near the corner, depression sunk in, wonder what have I learnt during my past 11 years of education. Do I even have a life?
Like this for three weeks
Of course, things became much better after orientation ended ... not really, I skipped it. Now I'm more able to focus on the purpose of attending design school - except that I don't seem to understand the mind of creative peers. They are wild beings who like to doodle everywhere, able to draw almost infinite objects. I told myself, "maybe because I was a Science student, ahhh".
Ironically, people are unlearning art to draw like Picasso, which means I succeeded in Cubism even before I'm trying!
Few assignments came in, I had problem generating concepts, and again I told myself the same thing. Met peers who can't draw, also "because we were Science students". Everyone used the same excuse, some eventually got tired of the creative life; some managed to sustain the fear of unable to draw (me until now) and learn the bare minimum skills just to pass foundation and move on with other creative skills.
But there were times we had to use additional mathematics to calculate the adjacent length of triangle using trigonometry (that was a rare case), because using basic ratio and proportion is too risky to be reliable. My first metalwork sculpture for Ecoworld project during 2015 involved mathematics to calculate the length of a bull's slanted leg and basic science to understand how material works.
It's so ugly even my sculpture laughed at itself. Joking, my teammates really worked hard for that. Most of them graduated into Industrial Design degree too.
Interesting Read:
The point is, extra reading is always beneficial, and being multi-lingual helps. Although designs rarely touch the surface of dry physics, we couldn't ignore the vast knowledge we borrowed from other field, the most obvious one is the science of psychology and how it works - from colour to forms.
For user experience designer, I would recommend everyone to have a read on Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things which provides in-depth explanation of how we behave and interact with objects we knew and we thought we knew.
Robot Designers
Designers are actually easy to train - sign them up for design software classes, have them to sketch 10 generic logos per day (with the help of Google Images and Pinterest), bring them to sponsored galleries.
However, to train a good designer is a hell lot harder - a person who is able to give and receive critique, able to question the importance of a project (or any general subject), understand how visuals could create sympathy, willing to listen and read essays from design masters. It seems that the latter aren't the characteristics that can be found on most designers, because most designers displayed the lack of interested in being curious towards the subject they should research - adding that they themselves don't like to read.
Me when designers say "Design is all about creating stunning visuals"
Imagine how understanding local history could influence an outcome of a design project? How augmented reality can reshape storytelling? Why artificial intelligence is important in data-driven era? Without the will to understand the former, the latter will never achieve great result. In another words, great reading generates better answers.
"What kind of 'creative' we are talking here?"
The belief that designers should all be "creative" and creating "fun" stuff is (for me) very misleading. The fact that the term "creativity" is so overused the meaning of it was twisted. Michael Beirut explained it all here. Having trained as a logic thinker during high school, I always try to understand common patterns that laid deep around design concepts and visuals - such as similarities between branding & religion and folk myths & debunked science.
Understanding science and mathematics certainly will not help your design in a direct manner, it is through the way of understanding them that you will be able to find the common sense of existing objects and recognise the pattern of knowledge. Isn't it that all infant milk powder products are emphasising on the importance of connected brain neurons that makes a baby few times "more genius" than your average neighbour's baby?
Those advertisements usually start with baby asking weird questions, mom feeding them milk products, infographic of connected neurons and lastly, baby figured out the answer by themselves? Who needs Einstein when you got baby milk powder, perhaps I should drink some too!
Ironically, Stewie's intelligence came from homo sapien breasts milk.
The ability to understand common pattern, to me, is the basis of creativity, which is also the single ingredient of leaving a strong impression in everyone's mind thinking "wow, how could you think of that?". If you ever watch a single episode of John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, you would know what I meant.
