Design, Culture, Language...

DESIGN: In my opinion, the term design means to create art in an imaginative manner. To design is to choose specific elements of something and communicate a message with what you have chosen. To design is to let your heart wander, to let your imagination run wild, to let your inner soul and thoughts appear in your creations. To design is to let go of what others think and simply create images, sculptures, anything your heart desires. Design ultimately means to unleash your imagination and create new things. There are different types of design, such as two dimensional and three dimensional. Design may inform, persuade, or express a specific idea to audiences.

CULTURE: The word culture means so many things to me. A website I found defined culture perfectly. This is what the website had to say: Culture is a shared, learned, symbolic system of values beliefs, and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behavior – an abstract “mental blueprint” or “mental code.” Must be studied “indirectly” by studying behavior, customs, material culture (artifacts, tools, technology, language, etc.).

1. Learned. Process of learning one’s culture is called enculturation.

2. Shared by the members of a society. No “culture of one.”

3. Patterned. People in a society live and think in ways that form definite patterns.

4. Mutually constructed through a constant process of social interaction.

5. Symbolic. Culture, language, and thought are based on symbols and symbolic meanings.

6. Arbitrary. Not based on “natural laws” external to humans, but created by humans according to the “whims” of the society. Example: standards of beauty.

7. Internalized. Habitual. Taken-for-granted. Perceived as “natural.”

LANGUAGE: According to www.dictionary.com, there are fourteen different definitions of the word language. After reading all fourteen, I came to the realization that what language means to me can be simplified in one word: communication. We use language in many different forms—verbal, body, art, writing, signs, symbols, etc.—and they each communicate what we want to express.

Now, here’s the tricky part: how do the words design, culture, and language influence each other? There are actually many ways they influence each other, and it all begins with [in my opinion] culture. The culture that surrounds you influences the types of designs you will create and the language you will communicate. I believe this because the core of what defines each of us as individuals is our culture. Our culture makes up the attitudes and values we possess, and ultimately who we are. All three words—design, culture, and language—are an example of intersection. What is an intersection? One definition, according to www.dictionary.com, says the word intersection means a place where two or more roads meet. I think in this case, design is one road, culture another, and language is yet another road. All three meet up to form an intersection; and each word defines one unique way to get to that intersection.