Ryanpeel’s Weblog

Lecture 1 – Designers Accord

The faculty’s new Dean, Ken Friedman took the opening lecture to inform all about the uni’s newly formed partnership with the ‘Designers Accord’. Although i thought this was a great idea, i had trouble figuring what a multimedia designer like myself can do for sustainability. The following visualizations focus on this and Swinburne’s initiative on the issue.

Lecture 2 – Ethos

The second lecture consisted of a panel discussion on ‘ethos’. Stephen Huxley raised an interesting point that large web sites such as google and face book have large server setups that require alot of power to run. I had a look at this for my first visualization. I also had a look at how advertising firms are telling us to consume more, when this is clearly not sustainable along with the misconception the we need our objects to be ‘bigger, stronger and faster’.

Lecture 3 - Designing for the hunter-gatherer brain

the ‘Designing for the hunter-gatherer brain’ lecture by Professor Allan Whitfield was the third lecture off the rank. I decided to have some fun exploring a few of the themes that Allan touched on with these visualisations.

Lecture 4 – Sustainability

This week we watched a documentary on how Cuba became sustainable during the ’special period’. My visulisations center around peak oil as well as having a look at how Cuba survived during this potentially dark time.

Lecture 5 – Lateral thinking

Edward deBono’s Lateral thinking was the topic of discussion for week 5. Craig Austin took us through some of Edward deBono’s work as well displaying how he his furthering the work of deBono. My visualisations explore some of the concepts Craig talked about. These include how the brain thinks laterally as well as the 6 hats of thinking.

Lecture 6 – Design Theory

This week Keith had a lecture on two of the great theorists in Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu.

Lecture 7 – Community

Following on from the movie watched in an earlier lecture on the way Cuba was force to deal with ‘peak oil’ crisis, this week was a panel discussion on ‘Community’.

Lecture 8 – Shit Design

To conclude the lecture series, Keith gave his ‘Shit Design’ Lecture. The Lecture looked at two extremes in the design world, ‘Vouge living” and “That’s Life” Magazine.