Reading Response
Wow, reading this book has been quite an experience. I felt like the lessons I learned in each chapter were relevant not just to the work we were doing in class at the time, but also relevant to challenging questions about my own creative practice. This final chapter (including the coda) really do feel like a recapitulation of the very themes we started with, completing a nice musical arc. As a former philosophy student, I really appreciated how much this chapter was grounded in theories and writings from a range of great philosophers. This book is relentless in searching for the soul in design, and in being conscious and introspective of design’s impact and potential. It really became, by the end, more of a philosophy of living than a practical guide on design. As someone who values family very highly, I felt like I could really connect with the times when Ge weaves in images and stories of his family across multiple generations. This book, I can say without exaggeration, changed my whole outlook on the work that I do and gave me so much inspiration for the future. I probably would name myself many things — composer, performer, writer, scientist — but “designer” is not a label that automatically comes to mind. Yet, I have come to see the things I love to do as “design”, and want to strive to be an artful designer. I think it’s telling that the book cites Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, and Ada Lovelace as “patron saints of humanist engineering,” as I have always looked at these very people as role models (I think I may have even wrote about this in my graduate school application essays…). I also appreciate how bold this book can be. It really is a manifesto, and the principles it lays out make strong and sweeping statements. I don’t always agree 100% with the principles, but as a whole I love them and will likely return to them as I continue to strive to be an artful designer. I suppose the book served its function as a manifesto, and I have effectively been absorbed into this cult.