As said repetitively to everyone in Professor Housefield's Introduction to Design class in Haring Hall, "Design is everywhere." It has been surrounding us since our first experiences as infants. It surrounds as we currently skim through multiple posts on Blogger. It will continue to surround us even if we grow older and our perception wares off. But before we start to experience the "magic of design" throughout the rest of our lives, we all have that beginning moment early in our lives that starts making us aware of the design that exists around us.
My earliest memories of the impact of design in my life occurred when I was in Kindergarten. One of our assignments was an arts and crafts project that requires us to make a paper cutout of Santa Claus using construction paper. It was the type of project where the teacher has already set black lines on the construction paper as guidelines for cutting using those tiny safety scissors with our eager little hands. The teacher also set out other supplies for us to use: black buttons for Santa's coat, cotton balls for for his jolly beard, blue sequins for his Aryan eyes, and Elmer's liquid glue to hold our Santa creations together in one piece.
After the teachers tells us the directions, I set out to create. Each of the components - his circular belly, the sparkling eyes, his soft cotton beard, the hard coat buttons - were compiled together. The assignment and the directions that the teacher required us to follow caused all these components - which may have no meaning separately - to combine and fulfill this design that is known to be a simplified two-dimensional version of Santa Claus for mere Kindergarteners.
As the little Kindergartener I was at the time, I was simply amazed at what I had made: my own Santa Claus. Going back to this memory of mine, I remind myself that while design is everywhere and is everything, design is also something that we can create. It could be something we create based on an assignment or something we can create without even noticing.
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