Stage 6: Communication Reading Response

This stage of the book is one of the more realistic portions that was enjoyable to read. It started off with the three phases of communication which were encoding, message itself, and decoding. I took the encoding to mean the way in which a project is presented to a group of people, while the message itself was the actual project at hand. I believed encoding was the way in which the audience absorbs all the information necessary to understand the project. The type of audience that is concerned with a presentation is a very crucial part for successful communication. The client, corporations, manufacturing, and associates are the most important ones. I took it that associates, or co workers would be the easiest to communicate with since they are most like your peers and the clients would be the hardest to communicate with. That is because of the type of relationship at hand which can be extremely formal and seen as a client vs. designer scenario in most cases.

In regards to the informative part of a presentation, there are four types of information which are statement, concept, detail, and planning. The way I took this was that the statement occurs when one is presenting the beginnings of a new project, whereas the concept of a project may have taken shape in addition to just a statement. The detail is when a project has already become or will become a physical project rather than just being on paper and the planning is the information of how the project will move forward for the final design stage.

The different types of illustration techniques to use in a presentation was also quite interesting. Every kind of medium from markers and color pencil to pens and inks are listed and described accordingly. I have used all of these and it really helped when reading what the pros and cons were for each type of medium. Also, Photoshop and boards were mentioned, with boards having become like second nature for me as a design student. PowerPoint is also something that I am familiar with and I actually enjoy putting presentations together through it.

Even with visual aids and an amazing project at hand, a designer still has to be ready in all aspects possible. The last part of the reading talks about how a designer can prepare for a presentation. These tips include having a motivation, having direction and knowing exactly what to say and when to say it. I really liked this part because it was much like a pep talk right before a very important event. I understood what the author was saying for these various points and I got a sense that he wants all designers to be the best they can be.