Each thing we design should tell a story. For our first project, we were given a story, a fairy tale, to read and translate and create an artifact of. In this way, we were given the story first to create an abstraction of, instead of creating our own story. As a class, we watched a movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is many stories brought together into one.
Artifacts
The things that we make and design are artifacts. To be specific, one of our first assignments is to create a wearable artifact abstracted from a Grimm’s Fairy Tale assigned to us. The study of Material Culture explains civilizations by their belongings, instead of written texts, like history. It is also interesting to note that the word “artifact” begins with “art.”
Multiview
Multiview drawings can be essential to understanding pieces, rooms, and artifacts. They are helpful ways to get the point across to a builder or potential buyer. We had a quiz in which we had to draw views of a model building. There is a standardized way to draw the views of an object, which must always be followed for continuity and clarity.
Cycle
The world runs in cycles. There is a life cycle for organisms, objects, and styles. There is the design cycle of popularity and decrease in popularity, always in response to what came before and to the greater context of what is happening in the world at that time. Objects are passed from generation to generation, essentially making what was old new again.
Translation
One of our first projects is entitled “Found In Translation.” The stories we read in this assignment must be translated in order to create an artifact from them. Fairy Tales, parables, and stories like them are always subject to, and often meant to be translated to better fit the audience’s personal experience. Drawings are translations of artifacts.
Summary
Stories and artifacts are translated. A multiview drawing is a translation of an artifact. Artifacts are a part of the design cycle. Everything we learn is more closely knit than we often realize, and once a moment is taken to see the connections between each thing we learn and each thing that happens in our lives, things often will make more sense and be of greater importance to each of us. It is vital way of translating things.
