Materials and Processes recently toured El Dorado Inc. in Kansas City MO, an architecture and Industrial Design firm. Our tour guide was Josh Shelton, who has been in the company since 1999. El Dorado Inc. has grown the past few years and now has 23 employees. They design for big companies as well as small residence. Throughout the tour Josh gave us advise about being in the working world, and he mentioned that it's ok to say no to projects because you don't want to waste your time doing something you don't enjoy. But never burn a bridge! The design world is a closer knit then you think. When designing El Dorado loves prototypes, but sometimes it is too time consuming or costly, but given the chance they will always take it. Their office is a wide open studio with no separate offices, all of  their furniture was custom made by themselves (it was beautiful). They also have a small work shop down own the bottom floor. At the end of the tour Josh scolded us on work ethic, his overall idea was that you get out of school what you put into it. If you don't try, it will show in your work. So we need to put some fire up our ass and work harder is how i interpreted it. Lastly he mentioned networking, which is extremely important in this field. He told us now is the perfect time to begin, that we should try to become friends with people in the companies, stop in, ask them what they are doing, and things like that.

Today in Materials and Processes we watched a documentary called, Manufactured Landscape directed by Jennifer Baichwal about the Canadian photographer Ed Burtynksy. This Film was composed of the adventures Burtynsky took to capture his photos. Burtynsky does landscape photography, but not just any typical landscape, he does landscape that has been altered by human activity. Such as factories,mining location,  e-waste, debris, etc. It's amazing how waist, destruction, and trash can still look so beautiful. When looking at them one experiences all kinds of emotions, guilt, confusion, helplessness, anger, joy, which is the whole point, he wants the viewer to decide how they feel on their own. These are problems that run deep. At this point it is safe to say we are doing something wrong with design. What is the point in designing for products thats final destination is the waist land?