Welcome Back to ID @ GT

Hey everyone,

Congratulations on being accepted to the Masters of Industrial Design program at Georgia Tech!!!

The purpose of this blog is to help to ease your transition into Georgia Tech, grad school, the design community and Atlanta.

Everyone is an author on this blog so if you have a question on anything (housing, transportation, registration, etc.) please create an entry and we will swoop in to help you. You can also use this blog to chat with us, your future classmates.

Over the next few weeks we will also be sending you emails with information as it becomes important.

If you don't have author privelages on the blog send me an email at sparks.gatech.edu.

Once a again welcome and congrats on being accepted!! You are only about a month away from starting the coolest major in the world!

Later on,
Sparky

G Map of COA

Here is a listing of all the related buildings to our College with correct addresses.



Perfect for:
Finding your way around "important parts" of campus.
Telling the delivery guys the correct address/directions
Understanding why said delivery guys get so confused

NOTE:

1. College of Arch(henceforth COA) East is often called the "Old Architecture building" In the "basement" of this building is where we reside.
2. Therefore COA West is sometimes called "New Architecture" although still much older than the brand new adjacent Computer Science almost shaped like a arch.
   
3. The aforementioned buildings share the numerical address 247 4th Street (another reason why the delivery guys botch it up)
4. Couch (nestled in the west campus dormitory area of tech) is where all the music stuff happens cause COA seemed like the most artsy place to stick the music program when the engineers created it
5. Odds are low that you will have to go to COA Annex, Heffernan House, or the EDI Building, so don't worry about storing it in your long term memory yet.
   

Off Campus Living

If you plan to live off campus, (and bike or walk to studio) ,the closest neighbourhoods live in are Homepark , Atlantic Station (both north of 10th street) ,Centennial Place (south of north avenue) and Midtown(east of I-85)
 For those looking to live frugal style, Homepark would be it (thats where I, Chris Neoh , Jeff, Ted and Indushree live ) 
If you can afford to pay something more than that (and/or you need more space or better space),the other three places would have houses for you.(Gabe Landes has lived in midtown, and Dale Kim in Atlantic station).
So if you guys have questions about living here, you know whom to talk to. :) (you should have recieved an invitation to view the google document with MID contacts in it, if not...email me,  sreikanth at gmail dot com)
 One of the ways to search for an apartment (apart from the usual websites) are these two new websites that mashup craigslist apartment listings with google maps, allowing you to locate and look at apartments on the street level (yay google street view!). This would be particularly helpful for international students who are yet to land here and have to look for spaces without having personal transportation.

Here are the links
Housingmaps 
MapsKreig
and If you know of other time-saving ways/strategies of searching for an awesome apartment, post it up here :)   

Books on Design

Hey fellas,
heres a link to some design books that Rene found online.

Click here

I would personally recommend book numbers 1,6 and 13 to be really good.

Wake up guys!

I got an email from Halley , one of the 3 year MID students joining us in Fall, with some some questions she had.So iam posting my reply to her, so everyone can see and/or contribute to it.

I am sure returning MIDers would have something to say :) gimme what you got!

questions in bold and answers in regular font follow..

I am interested in knowing what the greatest challenge is for those in the 3-year program (or, those who do not have a formal background in ID)

Generally speaking (since i do not know what academic background you come from) the biggest challenge for the 3 year MID students is to understand that ID as a field , does not have a specific way of teaching, a standardized curriculum ,or a "right" way of practicing it (as with other fields such as science,engineering, business or law).
While there are books that teach you to understand and appreciate good design, I believe there are no textbooks for learning ID.
But there is (are) a "design" way(s) of thinking.
In your classes ,you will be exposed to some of the successful ones and encouraged and helped to possibly come up with your own. The idea is to refine and integrate this way of thinking with your design skills (sketching , model-making..etc) and non design skills (from your undergraduate) to solve problems .
In this process ,by nature of the exercise and your own diversity of backgrounds , your class will come up with multiple "right" solutions.
But being in design school, every solution will be critiqued for its good and bad which could be challenging to some of you.

So the very first thing i recommend is to enter ID with an open and inquisitive mind.
Be prepared for heated arguments and comments :) and not-so-smooth teamwork. Its all good.
The graduate program is different from the undergraduate program ,in a way that you will learn a lot by collaborating your classmates. Thats what lies at the very heart of it.
So embrace it.One stands only to gain from the experience.

so much for the sermon, :)

The second thing you could do before you start is to keep sketching, drawing and writing your thoughts on design.
Have a design notebook or a blog, whichever is more comfortable (i would have a notebook if i were you) , where you scribble down your ideas and thoughts on design and rough sketch your products.
Never stop expressing your ideas and opinions on design.

Also read all the books you can lay your hands on.
A good one to start would be The design of everyday things by Donald Norman , or A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink.
Those of you interested in graphic design would also wanna read Thoughts on design OR Conversations with Students by Paul Rand (look him up :))
also read the answers to students section of stefan sagmeister's website.(he's a graphic designer)
Could answer some of your concerns as a grad student of with no background in design.
heres the link "http://www.sagmeister.com/students5.html"


I was also wondering if other graduate students find time to hold down part-time jobs

This is a tough one to answer.As far as i can remember (and i may be wrong), Most of my classmates did not have a job in fall .But by the end of the year , most of us did (some on-campus and some off of it) I personally would say that your first semester would be the most hectic, which would leave little energy and time for a job.The hours you put in at school can be odd and long ,when you have a presentation or a critique almost every monday or tuesday.Expect a few all nighters :)..So i would recommend against it . But If you really need a job to sustain yourself (which is usually the case with all grad students ) I'd still ask you to wait until you start your classes before you commit to one,so you can effectively balance both school and the job.

Have any questions  or answers!!...post them here or email them to me.

Cya around.

Sri

Hello people,

Hows its going ?

Sorry for being out of touch the last couple of days, But i am waiting to hear your questions and comments..

so start posting or emailing me.

You could also post the conversations / emails that you have had with your mentors, which could help others who have similar questions.

On my end, i am still working on a creating a checklist of things and  "an ID survival guide" that you guys would need to do , before you start @ Tech.I am terribly sorry for the delay.But its gonna be available very soon.

Until then, bombard me with your questions.

Wating to hear from you...

Srikanth 

sreikanth at gmail dot com

Welcome to ID@GT :)

hey y'all!

Congratulations on your acceptance to Industrial Design @ Georgia Tech! 

The Rm9 team would like to .. uh .. welcome you to Tech and Atlanta. 

This blog is an effort by us to ease your entry into the program, and the city, up until the orientation.

Also you can also start connecting to other new and returning students who would be your future studiomates.

There will be information of all the incoming students and current students linked to the blog, for easy access.

I will also try and get nuggets of news/alerts for you as frequently as possible (housing/travel/supplies/visa news for international students).You can also contribute your own views/ comments/ tips  that would be useful to others.

Theres also a chatbox on the right (thats right, in the sidebar)where you can shout your heart out.do (ab)use it! :D.Feel free to check out the rm9 blog too, that has some interesting links and posts from all of us here in rm9.

If you have any questions (or suggestions for that matter) you want to discuss, fire away. We are here to help.

Once again,Welcome aboard and hope you have a great trip.

Cheers

Srikanth ,Team rm9 

P.S. If for some  reason, you didn't get a contributor invitation, email me at sreikanth at gatech dot edu.