Emily Discussing her Time to Design Entry
Notes from Emily: I have been at Continuum for seven weeks now, and the wisdom and grace with which everyone here acts do not cease to amaze me. Continuum is a global design consultancy, meaning it works with businesses and organizations to develop strategies, products, and environments that connect with people on a human level. Through my experience here, I have grown to understand and appreciate the sundry aspects of design and design thinking.
My (awesome) mentor, Emily Elwell, and the other Continuum mentor, Jeremy Zietz, schedule meetings and expertise sessions for Dimitri Duboisson, the other Youth Design intern at Continuum, and me with folks who work in all sectors of the design business. I’ve also been in meetings where financial and functional details of Continuum were discussed, and here I recognized that it takes more than just great designers to keep a business like Continuum running – a great design firm requires entrepreneurial and structural solidity to sustain any enterprise. Emily also has me sitting in on project meetings, and I’ve learned so much about ethnography, interviewing, and the technical aspects of design just through osmosis.
Yet my tenure here at Continuum has not been purely observational. I’ve learned much through first-hand experience. For example, I am getting very familiar with Adobe InDesign and Macs in general. Also, working with Emily, Peter Strutt (another Continuum designer with ties to Youth Design), and a few other folks at Continuum, I am using design thinking to prototype a solution to a problem we’ve identified with the National Junior Classical League Convention. I’ll finish the prototype by the end of this week, and perhaps I’ll even send my idea in to the NJCL Committee – who knows, maybe they’ll use it to improve next year’s convention experience!
However, the values that designers hold close to their hearts are vastly more important than any technical trick. The people here are incredibly committed to designing products and services that actually help people. Emily, Peter, Tara Whitla (who once worked with Denise at Korn Design), Jeremy, and everyone else at Continuum have made me understand that one can design something totally cool that nobody uses, simply because the item does not resonate with their core values, or because it serves no purpose. Yet aesthetics are also important, and design is that happy marriage of the two elements: a person’s needs with his or her wants.
I have learned that design is not simply a profession. It is not even just an art form. It is, I think, in its marvelous entirety, a philosophy, a very way of life. Design is that uniquely human ability to transform a problem into a solution, and to do so beautifully, in a way that evokes the human heart – nothing more, nothing less. The industries, enterprises, and institutions that have arisen surrounding design are cognizant of its true nature. So are the designers themselves (or at least the good ones.) Design has the power to unite a nation, to decimate a people, and to enchant a child; I think it is rather like magic.
To Emily Elwell, to Tara Whitla, to Peter Strutt, to Jeremy Zietz, to Denise Korn, to Amy Draybuck, to Michael Estabrook, to Ms. Esteve, and to the other folks at Youth Design and Continuum, I owe my understanding and appreciation of design. Thank you so much for guiding me through this process. I hope to one day claim my slice of the cake whose crust you allowed me to sample.