Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.

At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves – that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestice setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are.

If we find poetry in the service station and motel, if we are drawn to the airport or train carriage, it is perhaps because, in spite of their architectural compromises and discomforts, in spite of their garish colours and harsh lighting, we implicitly feel that these isolated places offer us a material setting for an alternative to the selfish ease, the habits and confinement of the ordinary, rooted world.

- Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

Growing up as a 1.5-generation Canadian, having moved from the Philippines to Canada as a young child, has always put me in this strange place in my heart. Since I’ve spent almost my entire life in Vancouver now, I very much feel “Canadian” – whatever that means (a whole other discussion) – but a part of me has still clung on to my Filipino heritage, despite it being almost a stranger to me now.

I guess I should back up, though. What is the “1.5 generation” anyway? Wikipedia’s entry on immigrant generations (is there seriously a Wikipedia entry for everything these days?) describes it as:

The term 1.5 generation or 1.5G refers to people who immigrate to a new country before or during their early teens. They earn the label the “1.5 generation” because they bring with them characteristics from their home country but continue their assimilation and socialization in the new country. Their identity is thus a combination of new and old culture and tradition.

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Everyone’s chimed in by now on the life and death of Amy Winehouse. But, really, what could be said that truly encapsulates Winehouse that could not be explained by listening to her voice? Regardless of her unfortunate personal problems and battle with addiction, this voice is not easily found. She had probably introduced countless young people to jazz and blues (myself included), and for that alone, her legacy in music should be and needs to be remembered.

It’s a shame that the design profession is so grossly misunderstood by the majority of people. Somehow, somewhere along the lines, the design profession has been transformed to mean little more than pixel-pushing, Photoshop air-brushing, mindless drones of their “Make My Logo Bigger“-demanding clients. This, of course, is a huge misconception, because the tools used in design (eg., Photoshop, InDesign, etc.) and the methods (HTML, CSS, etc.) are very much secondary to the problem-solving that a designer is tasked to do. And, yes, in a broader scope, problem-solving is exactly what a designer has to do to create something that is effective. These days, the problems at hand usually relate to communications (ie., marketing and advertising), though there are other forms of designs that are equally as high-profile: architecture, fashion design, web design, and – more recently – interaction design, among many other forms. Take a step back, and all involve research, planning, conceptualizing, testing — all before they start to branch off into their own respective sub-categories of design. This is called design thinking, and that is the topic – and name – of a documentary currently in production.

Put together by four designers from Taipei Design Center U.S. and media studio Muris Media, Design Thinking‘s goal through the documentary is to give a voice to creative thinkers and shed light to both the term and the methodology. Though it’s become one of today’s buzzwords in corporate boardrooms – along with Web 2.0 and social media – the concept of design thinking is not in fact a new one, and though the term may change as time goes on, the methodology will always stay the same.

The creators of the documentary have a page up on Kickstarter to donate money to their project. The higher you donate, the more incentives you receive if they reach their goal, of course. Check out the trailer above, because if the quality of the trailer is any indication, this will be a documentary that needs to be seen and will spark some discussions that will hopefully push the design field forward.