My Design Career
“I heard Sophie’s going to Japan to study.” – Father
“Really? Why? What for?” – Father’s nine year old son
“Industrial Design or something.” – Father
“What’s industrial design?” – Son
“It’s like product design.”
“Like what products?”
“Anything”
“Anything huh…”
And there the seed was planted, even though the boy didn’t know it yet at the time, his dreams were slowly maturing like a fertilised embryo in a mother’s womb.
I guess it’s not completely accurate to title this as ‘My Design Career’ since it’s not so much of a career just yet. But something must’ve happened for me to have chosen this path right? Since I’ve been a toddler armed with a crayon or paint covered fingertips, I’ve always been labelled; creative, innovative, imaginative or another one of those dangerously assuming adjectives.
Truth is I’m not.
I think what people have seen on my crumpled pieces of scrap paper is just the aftermath or the result of my doings. Almost every single idea that I’ve ‘come up’ with has been heavily inspired or stimulated from something else I’ve seen either in a magazine or on the side of a bus. I can rarely truly create something that has been completely thought out and produced from my brain alone. What I often do is find solutions or alternatives to problems and situations that have already existed before me and I have merely summoned or evoked it from its original place.
I didn’t always realise that though. Just like any other kid, if you were called creative, imaginative, you’d accept it and smile. This went on until childish psychedelic thoughts and Power Rangers were replaced by stresses of adolescents and university applications. One day the same boy in the story was asked to produce a painting as an assignment with a troubling boundless theme. By the time it was finished, the boy realised the things he grew up being labelled were not all that accurate. Yes, the strokes ‘nice’ and the colours were ‘good’ , but it was painted like the artist was in desperate need of images and objects to imitate. And it showed like an aggravated crack in the sky.
In my head, imaginative turned imitative, created meant re-created. I felt like a counterfeiter that could copy things but really had nothing. It was like the water in my reservoir was only a mirage created in thirst.
Graduation came and I saw in my eyes a new opportunity. Sydney was chosen as my new home. The place where I would soak up every new experience and lesson I encounter. I think if I start gathering and developing some of the tools and knowledge I need about design, then maybe I would be closer to what it means to be a Designer.
This is the reason I chose Industrial Design as a course and why I chose it as a starting point in my ‘Design Career’.
Happy learning.
