Often mistakenly linked purely with aesthetics and beauty, the practice of Design is so much more. From stylish to utilitarian, to the ordinary and mundane, it is in truth a visual culture that is all around us, aiding to make the world functional, traversable and accessible. As said by Victor Papanek,
“Design is basic to all human activities - the placing and patterning of any act towards a desired goal constitutes a design process.”
Basically, Design is a universal donor to any field – from illustration to print, motion graphics, human-digital interaction, the behavioral mapping to management – it is an act of providing a solution that eases our interaction with our environs.
Being so intrinsically linked with the world and it’s current state, it is then no surprise that as this new reality of the virtual emerges around us, and we drastically reevaluate what was once considered the normal, the role of design is facing an equally drastic evolution. In response to these new isolated-connected scenarios, a new digital lifestyle is linking everyone’s lives even more than before, yet at the same time creating containers of distance. Accordingly, an even bigger role has fallen to the designer in not only laying down these new channels of communication, but at the same time allowing everyone to adjust to the unfamiliar.
Here at the COMSATS University Islamabad’s Department of Art & Design, as 20 students of the FA-16 batch of Bachelors of Design graduate this year, they question this new world they are entering into, as they leave the comfort of the familiar, and through their works, seek to find solutions for this unaccustomed reality. Through their self-selected projects, bound by the new constant, their works seek to provide alternate solutions from easing one’s lives in this new world to just slowing down and taking solace in what is familiar.
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