3: How to not just Look, but See! And seeing within yourself.

The Design TTAStelier With Chrys Teo

Transcript for Ep3:
Welcome to design@ttastelier
Im Chrys and in this episode, I will continue to share with you on seeing beyond yourself and the environment around you, you’ll soon realise that the world is full of great designs!

So some will ask – what is design, how do u define design?
Is it man-made and created out of nowhere or somewhere or can it even be from Nature?
The answer to all these questions is Yes!
Yes design is man-made, yes design is created, and yes design is even already in mother nature!
Remember in the last episode we talked about Design is in the Details?
But before we even move on to the details, how do we even start going about doing a new design in the first place? or what we call our own creation? our own design? This is often the most asked questions whenever I teach the first year students on their first design project. It brings me back to what my lecturer once said, something that I thought doesn’t quite make sense to me at that time – she said design cannot be taught, it has to come from within yourself, and what the lecturers or the designer can do for you, is only to guide you with our professional ability to help you see what you didn’t see, bring it out from within yourself and help you craft it out into what you have envisioned it to be… or in simple summary, we use our skills to turn a good idea into a better one, or even make it it the best.
Maybe now you might understand better on the saying you heard before – To Look but did not See! So you have to start seeing all things and the environments around you, then you will subconsciously realise that you will be able to see within yourself very soon. To see beyond the surface of things requires time, not a lot of time but start staring longer, and think more about it. Think of it like preparing Orange Juice - you see how the fruit, from starting to peel the skin pieces by pieces, before holding on the peeled fruit and transferring it into the Juicer machine and getting the Juice eventually. It’s just Orange Juice, but there’s so much more to just orange, even the smell of its fresh skin that still lingers on your finger tips. That’s seeing, deep within. These processes will unknowingly map into a visual library in your mind that will help you to design and led into interesting creations later on. You never know when you will need it or use it, but start accumulating your visual library in whatever you see, wherever you go and whatever you experienced! It is really that easy. Or if you think you are a forgetful person, you can create folders to store different things that you have seen or come across, you can even turn this into a hobby, a hobby of keeping beautiful things with beautiful memories! This will make designing enjoyable, it will a happy thing to do, to even share on your social media page, it’s learning to appreciate Design, and you will see that it can be the little things we comes across in life that can make us happy. And with happy memories, we will be able to recall it in our mind and re-create something with our own thoughts into something or some designs that will be become your own understanding, your own creation, and indirectly these spaces will make us happy again, even passing on to others using the spaces created.

Then there is this other painful question that you might ask is - what if I still cant see and what if I still have totally no idea to kick-start anything? Yes, then just leave it to the professional designer like myself to do the magic, because that’s why im here to help and I am the trained person afterall. But having that said, in order to help you with doing your design, or even for me to start designing it myself for you, I cant just pluck anything from the air and give it to you. What I meant is, I need to know more about you, your thoughts, your likes, dislikes, your work, habits, the people you are with, the kind of fashion you like, watches, bags, shoes, movies, even the kind of food really…so now, are you beginning to understand what I am getting at? It’s the same thing again, it’s about seeing you, im trying to create a visual library of my understanding of you…To create a design, I would first need to know the nature of you, the User! This is so that what I created eventually will be specifically crafted for you. I’d like to link this experience much alike going to a tailor shop, whats crafted has to be fitting to you. So similarly, to create a design for you or even your family members, your retail shop, your office space, your style…it is in fact YOU that maketh the design, im sure some of you wouldn’t realise this, but that is the truth, or at least that’s how I do it and that’s what I believe should be done. Design cannot be arbitrary.

I hope by sharing my thoughts and insights will inspire you see more clearly on the things around you and discover that the world can be beautiful in our own eyes, and with our own efforts we can make our world an even better place to be in. So the next time you walk around a park or shopping mall or even in a train, don’t just look at the environment, See it! Im sure in no time you will realise soon enough that you can see new things from a different perspective, even new beautiful creations in your mind with your eyes closed. Keep Looking, but also See, see more.