A Note on Shifting Perspectives
Between the time that this project was started, and now, things in the country (and to some extent, the world) have been shaken up pretty badly. We went through an extremely harrowing second wave of the pandemic that really took so much away from us. From mid-april to the end of May, my family grappled with the the complications of the virus. We were sick, and then we lost some of our loved ones. And this wasn’t just the case with me. Almost everyone i personally knew seemed to be affected either by the virus, or the loss of loved ones, or worse, both. Conversations on design became extremely difficult, as we retreated to a zone of essentialism for the longest time. Being a designer, however, the act of designing, or at least creating something did remain essential to the core of my existence. In the time i took off from actively working on this project, i decided to rethink the project- in response to how things had taken a turn for the worse/ or at least into a deeply uncomfortable period.
From an outwardly discursive approach, I decided that it was time to shift the focus from looking outwards to inwards. This project shifts its trajectory to being reflective in the sense that it becomes about my concerns, over *my* speculations on design- its practice, the industry, and design education. It becomes an inquiry into self, as i pore over deliberations on what i want my practice to be, what are the ideals i hold, and how do i manifest them in my work. This becomes a partial thesis, a personal statement, and a very individualistic critique, or a comment on the state of the profession i’m entering, in the way that I see it.
Maybe that’d change soon, too. Who knows.