This new set of cards offers 52 activities intended to ?Spark Your Creativity.? The cards run the gamut of design, from typeface to architecture, divided into colour-coded suites on different themes. Their appearance is engaging?colourful, with attractive, vivid photographs. Unfortunately, the activities are less so. This reviewer field-tested the cards with two groups: a gathering of architects, and a family of kids who aren?t especially focused on design. The response was lukewarm, which is not what you want from a set of cards meant to excite people about design.
The set is by Emily Campbell, who has a background in design and the design education of children. Perhaps for this reason the cards serve more as a meditation on what makes design tick, rather than engaging users in the design process. Many of the tasks seem condensed from what might be a week-long project?for example, look for forms in a picture of an engine, and then create a new form based on them. Distilling this to an ostensibly five-minute task robs it of its potential richness. The bigger problem is that the assignments (because this is what they often feel like) use examples of design?a set of icons, a typeface?as the basis for instructions like ?What rules would govern the shape of nos. 2 and 3" Draw them.? There may be such a thing as ?design principles??this set seems to assert that design should be logical and pleasing. But that?s not where design generally starts.
A few of the problems are ope...