Megalongcat | Design in the Presence of Idiocy. -

Let’s start with the things that DON’T and NEVER will make a good designer in any field:

(It’s great and productive to have -some- of these things, but God help you if you think it entitles you to some sort of designer title).

1. Black Rimmed Glasses. – I know for a fact they don’t give you a new perspective on design.
2. Being a Hipster. – Normally assosciated with some sort of art and design background.  False.  Designers don’t spend money to look like they don’t have money.  Money is meant for Adobe.
3. Owning The White Hand of God Products (iPhone, Macs, etc). – If you don’t get the White Hand of God Reference you’ve never taken a semiotics class and shouldn’t be designing anything.
4. 3/4 Black and White Myspace Headshots that make you look better than you really are. – The picture says enough. Not even Photoshop could make this girl look ‘artsy’.
5. Drinking Lattes or any form of cafinated hot drink that doesn’t start with “Cof” and end with “ee”.  - $1 for coffee or $4 for a lattee?  I wonder.  Frugal, Frugal, Frugal.  Design costs $$$.
6. Owning a moleskin journal. – When did these suddenly become insanely trendy?  Useful they are, but they’re not an icon to represent designers.  We’ll use napkins to sketch ideas if need-be.
7. Being friends with other ‘designers’ on Twitter. – It’s kind of like digg, one giant political system, no one will properly critisize your work as long as you keep giving them floats & diggs.
8. Posting lists of resources. – Posting lists is great for other designers, until you realize people only posts lists because they have nothing substantive to say.          

There are plenty of other things but this completely distracts from the point of this article which is below & Big up’s to google for these images:

If you’ve gone to any accredited design university, college, or trade school there is one question that is bound to come up no matter what field of design you hail from: What makes a good designer?  The question rivals some of the most paradoxical philosophical questions today and is very much the center of debate among design researchers and scholars.  The question applies to all fields of design and suggests that there are basic requirements and that there is an ideological designer that all designers should aspire to be.  After copious amounts of design research both at universities and on my own, I’ve come to the personal conclusion that the ideological ‘good’ designer is one whom can design ethically functional societies and systems.

You might be asking yourself now: Design a Society?  I daresay Fred McCoy I’m through with Megalongcat and this foolishness.  But I must ask you to wait and hear me through.  What would it take to design the systems to help run a functional society?  Te help think about this, I’d like to point out here that being a designer is awkwardly similar to being a scientist.  The scientific method applies to how ‘Good’ Designers should go about design. Here’s the scientific method:

SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY:

1. Observe some aspect of the universe, “free from bias.”
2. Invent a hypothesis that is consistent with what your empirically described observations.
3. Form a falsifiable theory to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations.
5. Modify the hypothesis into a theory in the light of your results.
6. Publish your findings in a peer reviewed journal (Newer addition)
7. Consider criticisms offered, and revise your theory
8. Go to step 3. 

You might be wondering how to apply this to design, especially since nothing about being creative, talented or being abreast of trends is mentioned here.  The fact of the matter is the above methodology is how designers can think about going about their projects:

1. Find a problem in the world regardless of what it is.
2. Create a well though, plausible, and ethical solution.
3. Publish a well-written proposal and outline for your solution.
4. Prototype, Prototype, Prototype.
5. Test the prototype in the field.
6. Gather observations and publish in a document to send to relevant scholars, peers, designers, and artists.
7. Take in all constructive criticism and revise solution.
8. Return to step 4.

This is nothing more than a general guide, rather than any sort of hard rule of thumb for designers to think about their projects.  I will leave you with two parting notes.  The first is that if you can design a logo, you have the thought process and capabilities to  design a solution to war in the middle east.

The second is that when design is done right, no one will have any idea you did anything at all.

What are YOUR thoughts on what makes a good designer?  I’m sure there’s plenty to be said for my article which pigeonholes a lot of people who will come across this article.

**My profile picture you see everywhere associated with Megalongcat is the 3/4th’s MySpace headshot with black rimmed glasses.  It’s there to make fun of the very people described above, the glasses are actually 3D glasses I got from the movies. .