by Wadhah Al-Shugaa

How much do you know about design? You probably know the fundamental, basic things about design: that it is fun, interesting, deals with creativity, and that it focuses on the overall look and use of the designed object. You might even know that you could have a job as a designer. But what else?

Before any design product is approved to be mass-produced, it has to go through a very important stage: critique. Critique is when a designer gets the chance to present his art piece and then get feedback from professional designers. The reason many people have to critique designed objects is to make them better and improve their weaknesses. While this stage is important to a final successful design, it can also be stressful, and sometimes disappointing. While listening to feedback about your design you gain lots of experiences and helpful skills that can benefit you as you design another object in the future.

I went through this frustrating process this past summer while I was a student in the design class at In the Making: Summer at MoMA. While I enjoyed designing my own objects and making my own ideas come to reality, there was no way I could get out of the scary part of criticism! Here is how it worked: We all designed our own projects and had absolute freedom to choose colors, size, shapes, and structure. But this freedom didn’t last long. Once the projects were complete or close to completion, we went through the process of critique. We would usually stand in front of everyone, including my classmates and both of my teachers, Sarah and Mareena. Often there were other visitors from the Museum and other design professionals, who took a role in critiquing our work. First, they started with the overall look of the object, and then they went on to the structure of the object, the colors, the size of certain parts, the places of things like zippers or pockets and so on. They focused on every single thing, little or big, important or unimportant, relative or irrelative. Their purpose was to give you helpful tips, but sometimes even the professionals didn’t agree about what to change. Sometimes I would get really upset and just want to blow up and say something to defend a project that I had worked really hard on to make it look a certain way. But, the bottom line is that emotions are not supposed to be hurt in this kind of process. In the end I was just a student and they were professionals, so I was learning from the critique how to make my work better for the future so I can be a better designer.

In the end, the price is rewarding. To just look at your finished project is worth all the hard work you put into it, and you realize that you have really done something worth the difficult critique process. At least that’s how I felt in the end.