[Week VIII] Summary: Becoming a Digital Designer

The book, 'Becoming a Digital Designer' is a guide to careers in web, video, broadcast, game, and animation design. The book, authored by Steven Heller and David Womack is filled with various way to tell the readers about the world of digital designer, there are interviews and advise from leading digital designers. It also give readers the knowledge about digital designers,the technology, and the future job for digital designers.

First of all, in short, digital designer is anyone who designs using digital tools. There are many substantial changes in ten years for the design world, but the basic job structures for the designers remain the same. Although, now, designers are provided with various technology to support their work, what they're doing is still the same, only different. Being a digital designer means creating forms, conceiving ideas, and developing objects, and it doesn't mean that digital designers are only good at using digital tools, because for drawing and sketching, fingers are still the most venerable and versatile 'digital tools'. So, even if there is no power to turn on the computer, digital designers can still work with 'digital tools'.

Secondly, nowadays there are free softwares to support the work of digital designers, with various tools which resulting different results. For example, the sketch up which enable the user to create elaborate models of anything from cities to software system. Not just software, there are also many kinds of high tech graffiti such as Hektor and graffiti gun. Hektor is a robot made by Jurg Lehni. It's able to paint any image that appears on a computer screen onto the side of a building. It swing loosely from a string that can be stretched between 2 windows. Then there is the graffiti gun which shoots paintballs and print out pictures and spelling words using the paintball spots. Not just that, there is also the graffiti machine. It releases water droplets at precisely timed intervals so that the drops spell out words or make a shape of something, so it's like reading a waterfall.

Lastly, there are many jobs for digital designers. The future jobs for digital designers are graphic designers, digital designer, design director, art director, flash designer, and many more, but sometimes the title of it is confusing. For example, a graphic designer can be a digital designer, but a digital designer can be more than a graphic designer. An art director can be a digital designer, but not all digital designers are art directors.

In conclusion, this book contains many important information such as what are digital designers, the technology that makes the designers work easier, and jobs for digital designers. It really helps those who are interested in the world of digital designers, because the readers will have broader knowledge about digital designer.