listening / reading / thinking

disposability

2008-08-26T07:55:00.001-07:00

It's really been bothering me that people are not willing to pay for quality. I think the culture of disposability that has developed in the US in particular has done a lot of unconscious harm. At the risk of sounding like an old lady, people rarely seem to value quality; if I can get 4 shirts for the price of 1, why would I ever pay for the 1?

I would like to think designers can be instrumental in making products a) last longer, b) age better, c) have smaller components that can be changed out if the consumer gets bored or it gets worn out.

How can we instill a sense of attachment to objects? Isn't this what design is about, anyway? Making someone desire a thing or a service should not stop at purchase. Somebody (unfortunately I can't remember who) once gave the example of musical instruments. People form attachments to the intricacies and nature of instruments and if they don't keep them, they resell them. Dents and age tell a story, and value increases over time. A lot of research goes into trying to get one that fits a personality, lifestyle etc. There is also the understanding that you have to pay for a good instrument.

What can we learn from instruments or wine and apply to modern design?

It's been a while...

2008-06-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

I have been bad and haven't updated this at all, so here is a few shots of my work from this year:

The top is part of a system I made encouraging women to think about the chemicals in their beauty products and do something about it. The last is a book cover I did with the font I designed :)

and in tradition:

L / the go find, styrofoam, the notwist, death cab
R / finished: east of eden, sharp teeth, persuasion, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, different hours working on: the count of monte cristo
T / My post undergrad job is going to be sexy. Pride. Never growing up. Doing what you please and what you want. Suffering out, rather than suffering in. Morning crits are going to be more fun again. Happiness and loneliness. Mandates are such self-induced delusions (next book?? will have to think about it). I am a baby, so young.

2008-03-21T04:55:00.000-07:00

[Dave Eggers signed my most favorite book! but photobooth flipped it...]

L // Margot & the Nuclear So & So's / Beirut / Imogen Heap

R// Roger Sessions (something about writing music) / East of Eden

T// The lone wolf persona / Where is my 8 am Friday quiet / Utility isn't everything / People are like planets (design and life) / Love in the Time of Cholera / When I thought I was getting tired of school, I am not / I would be nothing without my tea

Youtube "triops" and get the one with a few more dollars theme. I'm hatching those babies in studio.

2008-03-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

[I made this in 3dStudio Max! with a tutorial, of course, but the orange is all me...]

Listening to:

Margot & the Nuclear So & So's

the Decembrists

Broken Social Scene

Reading:

John Dewey's "The Art of Experience"

Thinking about:

Dave Eggers' lecture, 826 Valencia and What is the What: I want to do that...

Apathy isn't that pervasive, just ignorance in terms of scale

Loyalty is dead, someone please kill cold intellectualism instead

Restlessness

Learning to keep calm and carry on

The intricacies of poetry

tuesday

2008-03-18T08:23:00.000-07:00

Listening to:

Beirut

Broken Social Scene

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Reading:

East of Eden

John Dewey

Thinking about:

Putting more focus on situation and environment

Everything is human centered design...it's just a matter of it's good or bad

Just keep swimming

Predetermined-ness

What makes a person really admirable

today

2008-03-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

[This is a mailer/experiment thing I was toying with...]

Listening to:

Kings of Convenience

Broken Social Scene

Reading:

East of Eden (still)

John Dewey

Thinking about:

stress stress stress

power of being a designer (and obligation to do good)

actually having a kid with "danger" as his/her middle name

the wild west + westerns

dropping the "communication" off of "communication designer"

the smell of tablesaw burnt wood

keeping a dream diary would be good

spatula

2008-03-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Listening to:

The Go Find

Reading:

East of Eden

Print Magazine

Design blogs

Thinking about:

Parallax! and astronomy

In another life I would have gone ID instead of CD

Living in Brooklyn or getting student housing

If I had 2 months just free I'd finish my book

Is it better learning to think or make for this summer

How many more words I can learn and use before turning into 'that guy'

Bringing my A-game tomorrow (!)

Beauty has a lot of ideas behind it

the lowdown

2008-03-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

Listening to:

Vampire Weekend

Beirut

Sufjan Stevens

Imogen Heap

Reading:

East of Eden by Steinbeck

Thinking about:

Contributing to society

Tesla

Life as narrative rather than problem solving

Buying a new pair of boots

Lying on the grass doing nothing (soon)

Internships

Layers as a method of creating hierarchy and interest

Din is the new Helvetica?

inspiration, gilliam, time, rant.

2008-02-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

1) Genius steals? Watch La Jeteé. Point proven, Mr. Gilliam.

2) Don't be terrified of being strictly concerned with function or strictly concerned with form. You should fear being at either extreme equally, and around here I think people fear the latter a bit more than the former. It's getting better, though.

3) I'm finding great satisfaction at having time to work on my own projects, as well as time to sit and contemplate the universe.

I'm about 4 chapters through the book I'm writing and it makes me happy. I think we as a school sometimes forget our other passions. While it's necessary and optimal that school be demanding and make you sweat for the knowledge, you can't live in a basement and get your assignments through the door. No matter what you major in you should be a person of the world in some manner, shouldn't you?

I've heard complaints in the past of not being able to get inspiration...hitting a rut is horrible and that most definitely happens to everyone, but I never thought it was a matter of inspiration. It's a matter of energy, of interest. If you aren't interested in a kind of content, how do you expect to design for that information? Understanding takes some bit of interest, and if you don't read you sure as hell won't be able to design a good book, and if you don't know how to cook you sure won't make nice utensils unless it is an accident.

Why Bembo sucks

2008-01-25T05:05:00.000-08:00

Interesting.

Don't let the title mislead you. Thanks Mattt :)

fuschia

2008-01-23T08:02:00.001-08:00

...Thank you, Mr. Hoefler!

Now, random quotes:

"The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting" -Emerson

"It is every artist's fantasy to run things. I know personally, I'd be happiest as dictator of a small island. The problem is that romantic artists are usually too disorganized to run their own lives, let alone societies. And most societies are too sensible to let them try it." -Brad Holland

ps: new site up.

does this font make my ass look big?

2008-01-06T07:28:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be doing an independent study on type this semester and I am expecting it to be an enormous challenge. This is Hoefler & Frere-Jones Acropolis and I fell in love with it last night.

You can look at it here: Acropolis

Right away you can tell it has historical roots but it doesn't look quite like an old font and doesn't look cheesy, like it's trying too hard. Effortlessness! Isn't that what we are all striving to look like we have?

During my stint at Atari I tried to make just two characters (3 and 5) on my own and it was ridiculously difficult. My letters looked lumpy and strangely proportioned, no matter how much I sketched and refined and refined again, again, again. I'm see the reason why type design isn't covered in our curriculum--it would take another 4 years to start to get it right...While I keep saying I don't think I want to go to grad school I feel like I might have to at some point to really delve into the things that get me.

Talking with a very cool alum from CMU who was kind enough to respond to me, I definitely think type design would be something I want to look into. From what I hear it's definitely something you have to be crazy about, so I guess this semester will be a good indication of whether it's for me. At -least- it will give me a more critical eye.

Audience

2007-12-31T13:14:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I get a little scared for the future of communication design. While it's really nice that design is getting more recognition as a necessary and valuable weapon of sorts, I worry about its misuse. Design is all about the message, anyone will agree, but what about the quality of the message? Do we, as designers have the luxury of only accepting jobs that have an important message? or, is it part of the trade now that we have to design things that don't actually mean much so we can eat?

Perhaps it is less of a problem of message and more one of how an audience is treated. I have serious qualms about designing objects that are too easy. I don't mean this in terms of functionality, I guess I am talking more about an issue of transparency. When you design something, right off the bat you assume the viewer knows certain things, ie how to read english, has his or her glasses on or can even see at all, etc. Different designs assume different things: a wheelchair assumes a person cannot walk, a toaster assumes you will only toast things of a certain thickness, a book assumes you have fingers to turn the pages. This process of assumptions is natural.

I think it can be very dangerous to go too far in assuming what a viewer knows, but also extremely dangerous to the quality of a design to go in the opposite direction. I suppose we live in an age of convenience now, for better or worse, and things that take too long or require too much work are discarded in frustration. What effect is this having on messages, though? Is this going to destroy complex and harder to grasp concepts and ideas in favor of more bang for the buck?

The movement away from modern aesthetics is kind of a relief to me. While I think going too far into ornamentation and useless decoration may obfuscate messages to the point where it's possibly more dangerous, I think that this fear of the degradation of content is in the air. The visual trends are significantly less Swiss and clean and modern, but not quite on the doorstep of 90s grunge/postmodernism. I almost feel like we are having a safe and scientific revolt against the modern aesthetic.

picture: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/910114

time

2007-12-29T21:02:00.000-08:00

Something I was thinking about when doing the photo section of my site is the span of time captured in an image: the difference between an image that is meant to speak centuries and one that is over before you really know what has hit you.

New

2007-12-23T12:50:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again. Rebranding time!

It always is ever much easier to brand someone else... New website with new work should be up very shortly!

Goodbye Junior Semester One!

2007-12-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

Hot damn. That was a really intense semester.

Now that I'm done with my work (well...let's discount the 70+ page book I'm making for philosophy class) I'm starting that whole yearly winter break digestion process. I think I would describe this semester as:

most fruitful in terms of showable and interesting pieces.
most diverse in kinds of content tackled.
the one where I figured out what kinds of things I want to do in life.

It's kind of funny to think back to last year and how my ideology of design and what design should be has changed. I used to be very much a part of the school of design that believed solely in functionality and that anything superfluous must go. Who knows what happened to make me completely renege on that attitude?

I really do respect people who make designs that save lives and help people get around. I've just found that I do not have the love and subsequently, patience for this kind of work. Is it selfish of me to say that I find it much more engaging and fruitful to say something important, something that has substance and emotion?

Content has always mattered to me. I want to take content and make it matter to people. Stupid things, like the etymology of the word "flip-flop" or even serious things, like why the American educational system is having such issues. To me, information is simply amazing. I want to think that everyone could be as intensely interested in the things in this world, it just isn't fully accessible to them yet and that is a tragedy in my eyes.

Without getting too far into this can of worms, I will just say that so much knowledge is lost through human history. How much of it is willfully destroyed and forgotten really does terrify me. While it is impossible for one person to remember everything that has ever happened, the collective existence certainly can.

Well. As to more mundane things... I'll be updating both this blog and my site soon with some of the work I've done this semester. And hopefully a title...