How important is it to adapt and incorporate new technologies in our practice as designers?

With technology, we are more connected than ever, which makes changes happen even faster. I could not imagine the graphic design world I know now without social media or the internet, also as a mediator for networking. I am part of a generation that has been born with technology and it is very difficult to imagine this world any other way. With the pandemic, technological growth has been accelerated, and will probably only increase over the years.

Graphic design has changed a lot during these last years. Even since I started my interest in it about four years ago, I have been able to notice it. Technology has been the main factor in these changes. As it progresses,  the rest of the fields go along with it. If they don't, they become obsolete. In a way, technology rules our world, it dictates our progress and makes everyone follow a certain path and speed. I believe that we, creatives, need to adapt and absorb as much knowledge about new technologies as possible to be able to incorporate it into our own work and not miss out on opportunities. Of course traditional graphic design methods should persist but it is important to evolve. It is in a way our duty as designers to respond to what happens around us in the world. 

Working at the studio, I have seen firsthand how companies ask more and more to integrate new technologies in their branding and design. It is no news. This has made the studio I was working at expand their knowledge and step out of their comfort zone. This has encouraged me to keep learning areas that I was already interested in like motion design, creative coding, 3D, or VR, and AI and generative processes. Deepening my knowledge in these areas is something that I would have liked to explore more during my DPS year. However my internship studio was not specialized in any of this, in fact, I was the one who knew more about new technologies from my previous experience in university. So all the progress I have made on this has been on my own from my lockdown room… This led me to make my first contact with live coding and TidalCycles, a platform for writing music with code that has blown my mind. Generating music from code and interacting with your computer to make sounds. Crazy. As a musician, I am very interested in mixing my designs and musical background together. I am eager to find new ways of exploring music production through technology, with generative design and music following the steps of musicians like  Holly Herndon ( https://youtu.be/k67IKMXzD7A ). She has created Spawn, an AI baby that rather than replacing the human voice, works through a voice-modeling approach. These ways of making music are something I definitely want to explore more in the future and will probably try for my final year at university.

After having this year of real experience, I see the world differently. I cannot imagine myself working on a very particular area of design for the rest of my life, but to keep exploring and learning and shaping my practice around the world that grows and moves on, especially around new technologies. By doing this, so many new doors will open for exploration and non-comformation! 

Patricia ·····