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It would be safe to say that I am confused about my life. I have hardly figured out what I want to do and I have many unanswered questions. Questions like; what does good design mean to me? Which professionals do I respect? What could I design that I would be proud of? Who do I want to design for? Do I want to do design? What is design? These questions are not easy to answer, and I do not expect to answer them any time soon. But none the less they are questions that I am trying to explore, understand, and come to conclusions about.

Because of the lose structure of the ID history class I have decided to take the assignments as an opportunity to investigate some of these questions that I have. Every week I try to research and find an area of design that offers a unique perspective on some of the questions that I have. The subjects I chose are not answers to any of the questions I have, but instead investigations that may possibly yield partial answers to some of my questions.

There are many aspects to design that I find interesting, but have not taken the time to explore. This has had an effect on my choice of objects for my timelines. I know a lot about informal contemporary design because I read blogs such as core77 and read magazines like ID Magazine which showcase designs that have been unveiled within the last month, week, day and sometimes even within the hour. But what the blogs and magazines don’t always do is explain the history of design; how the things we have today came to be, why certain designers are important, what caused them to do what the did.

I was perplexed when you responded to my project about lighting the way that you did. You said “Clearly, it seems to me, you are in the ID as modern cultural practice camp here, with all that implies about arena for ideas to circulate and the role of the designer as closer to artist. “ I was perplexed because that was not what I thought I was investigating. It made me ask myself, if it’s not that, than what is it? Why did I choose the objects I did? The answer to this question is just as complex as many of the questions I have had.

I chose the lamps I did because they were by designers I had seen one or two of their pieces and I had heard a lot about (Ingo Maurer, Rody Graumans (Droog), and Front Design) but did not know much about their many of their products. I know of these designers to be considered good designers, but I wanted to investigate why they were considered so. I wanted to try to understand a little more about what the “deciders of good design” think good design is and why.

I found the examples style of visually minimalist and yet unnecessarily complicated intriguing. This style is different than what I am used to. I am used to simplistic meaning minimalist but these lamps clearly illustrate the difference. I realized a minimalist lamp would be a light bulb, in a socket. Any more than that is ornament and it would no longer be minimalist. The lights I chose all had unnecessary ornament yet still appear to be simple, elegant and refined. This style is exemplified by these five lamps because of their unifying theme of having the exposed light bulb. The exposed light bulb shows that the functional aspect of the lamp has been stripped down to its barest form and therefore the functional aspect of the lamp is separated from the rest of the lamp, leaving the ornamental aspects.

I was also interested in how technology was used in the examples I chose, and how technology can be used as a way to push design forward, and as a source of inspiration. The Fly Lamp by front design uses technology developed for the video game industry which sensors are set up to track the movement of something in a three dimensional space. Front applied that technology to design a lamp by tracking the path of a fly as it flew around an exposed light bulb to create a 3-d computer file of its path. That was then applied to 3d printing and prototyping which allowed Front to produce the lamp that wouldn’t have been possible to produce in a traditional way. Technology was also a source of inspiration/hurtles for the Holonzki lamp by Ingo Maurer as well as with the Lamp/Lamp by Hironao.

These lamps being part of the “modern culture practice camp” is just one of the many ways to look at these lamps. And yes, as a design scholar that is the way you would look at them. But as a 20 year old design student confused about the world I look at these lamps differently. The reasons for choosing the lights I did, as well as the chairs and the passed/past examples were personal reasons, they were for my own investigations. The choices I made do not necessarily reflect who I am, or my design beliefs in any way. My ethic beliefs and designs beliefs aren’t even visible in my designs, because there too, I am investigating. I do not feel in any way that I have to know now what I believe in or want to do, but I do want to question it. I also do not feel that there is any one point in my life where I have to define those things, but instead I would like to continue to investigate, and to question.