Unstated Statements

Things like this make me a little angry sometimes... I understand the need to make a statement, but sometimes creations simply for the sake of irony really get my goat.

Femke DeVries' "Unstated Staments 02"



(Yes, these are blank gold and silver plated name tags.)

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Obit: Lawrence Halperin

Here's the NYT Obit for Landscape Architect for Lawrence Halperin. I've always been interested in what a landscape architect does. This reminds of a book I read over the summer called, "The Devil In The White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that changed America" about the Chicago World's Fair. It was interesting to read about Frederick Olmsted and the design of NYC's Central Park.

Lawrence Halperin: Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial



via NYT

Verb

Multi-function? Amazing. It's a chair, a lamp, a bookshelf, a table and a modern sculpture.



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Image Qualities

Highlights-Brights
Shadows-Darks
Midtones-Gradation of tones

*all looking for DETAIL.

RGB
CMY

Red filter absorbs cyan- makes daytime look like night.

"Distressed Peasant"

I am fascinated by the way in which artists and designers will take existing art and turn into an entirely new piece of art. (See previous post on Carla Gannis. She spoke about "appropriation art" in her lecture.) E.V. Day has taken costume pieces from the City Opera's archives and turned them into suspended sculpture, representative of the characters and her own interpretations of their grand stage personas. This article in the New York Times speaks about the power of taking pieces that might not have seen the light of day ever again have been imbued with new life. (Also, see previous post of Philip Johnson and his collaboration on the design of the -now- David A. Koch theater where the exhibit will be on display.)



via NYT

Headphones

I've seen quite a few different versions of designer headphones pop up over the last few years. Of course, this always raises the question in my mind... are they listening devices or style accessories? Can you have both? The answer the manufacturers would give is, of course, yes. Does fashion appropriate from other walks of life? All the time. Check out the "Beats" headphones that have appeared on a number of celebrities here.

These "Pick-up" headphones designed by Swedish ID firm Norra Norr are collapsable and based on the shape and mechanism of a turntable.



Fashion appropriates design appropriating design.

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"Fear of Apples"

"At the farmer's market the other day, not one but three people (perfect strangers) asked me what sort of apple to buy. What do I look like, some sort of apple expert? Apparently.

In our industrialized world, people are now afraid of apples. Afraid of buying the wrong kind. Afraid of making a purchasing mistake or some sort of pie mistake.

And they're afraid of your product and your service. Whatever you sell, there are two big reasons people aren't buying it:

1. They don't know about it.

2. They're afraid of it.

If you can get over those two, then you get the chance to prove that they need it and it's a good value. But as long as people are afraid of what you sell, you're stuck.

People are afraid of tax accountants, iPods, chiropractors, non-profits, insurance brokers and fancy hotels. They're afraid of anything with too many choices, too many opportunities to look foolish or to waste time or money.

Hey, they're even afraid of apples."

-Seth Godin

We are so motivated by fear in our lives. There are two types of marketing; those motivated by fear and those that aren't. So many advertisements and marketing campaigns play on people's anxieties, or make people aware of anxieties they didn't even know they had! This brings up a whole host of ethical questions. Is it right to motivate fear to sell products? How far is too far when marketers alleviate fears? (i.e. can you alleviate fears to such an extent that you eliminate the normal, essential fears that keep us alive?)

I don't have an answer for these questions, but it's something for us, as residents of the 21st century to consider.

via Seth Godin

"Upcycling"

Ah, the Swedes. Such wonderful innovative people. It's always nice to see something coming out of Sweden that ISN'T Ikea. I had a rocking stool when I was a small child (though I think it may have been a child-size rocking chair with the back broken off). The "upcycling" part of this project... the stool is made from pieces of an old sofa frame.

via core77

Guest Presenter: Carla Gannis

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination...And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to."

-Jim Jarmusch

This is the quote with which Carla Gannis opened her presentation for our class. She spent much of the lecture talking about her career and the many directions it has gone. Some of the points I found particularly interesting were her takes on Appropriation Art, "Post-Human" effects and the "Fetish Finish."

The idea of a "Fetish Finish" is interesting because it starts to cross the boundaries between art and commercial production. It reminded me of the Takashi Murakami exhibit I attended at the Brooklyn Museum of Art last summer.



Her own personal work was very interesting. I like the way in which she blurs the lines between fantasy and reality through technology, the same way our everyday lives are injected with an element of science fiction/fantasy through the ubiquitous nature of technology.

Overall, I enjoyed her presentation, however, her interest in "non-linear narrative" made it hard to follow sometimes. Her voice was very clear and, at times, almost theatrical in nature.

Love In The Time Of Cholera: Florentino Ariza

Florentino Ariza is the epitome of the Romantic lover; he suffers for love. At the beginning of "Love In The Time Of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Florentino proclaims that he is still in love with Fermina Daza after many years and the novel then proceeds to explain the events that lead from their initial flirtations to her eventual marriage to Juvenal Urbino, a prominent doctor and social patron, and his promiscuous wanderings in search of solace for his unrequited affections for his beloved. Florentino's romantic gestures are wild and, at times, frightening. His devotion is unending and his "lovesickness" often manifests itself as actual physical illness. He has a masochistic streak which is evidenced in his obstinate refusal to move from his hometown to a place with a better job (and also away from Fermina and her new husband). While he has countless sexual encounters with other women throughout his life, he maintains that he is still a "virgin" when it comes to his eternal beloved. The book describes him as dressing like a poet, in all black with a hat and an old fashioned tie, even in the dead of summer.

Philip Johnson Brochure (Original Layout Sketches)

Apparent vs. Actual Risk

This is a great post from Seth Godin. It talks about the way most of us perceive the world around us and how every action is influenced by the risk we perceive, rather than the actual risk. (i.e. fear of flying, even though driving is more dangerous) I think marketers have to be hyper-conscious of this effect when analyzing how to position their product or service. People will gravitate away from something they are even remotely fearful of, even if that fear is totally unfounded or is simply based on the fact that we, as humans, are apt to seek out the familiar in our environment.

The vast majority of us are creatures of habit.

HAGA Photoshop Workshop Project

Dell Adamo XPS

Holy breakable laptop, Batman! This thing is insanely thin! I guess it's only to be expected that the PC world would be right on the heels of Apple's MacBook Air. How far can developers extend this trend before I can break a laptop in half with one hand?

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Philip Johnson Inside

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Philip Johnson Cover

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"Rethinking the Shape of Everyday Life"

This article from the New York Times has some great projections for the way life will operate in the not-so-distant future. I especially love the idea of turning telephone booths into charging stations for the next generation of electric cars and to feed the increasing demand for power sources for personal electronics. This also plays into the ultimate buzzword of the last few years ("green," of course) by transforming something old into something new.

"Hammer Time or Miller Time?"

A classic case of mistaken identity... Is this promoting drinking whilst carpentering? Or is it in fact what it proclaims; a hammer for breaking up beer cooler ice that happens to have a bottle opener on the other end? I'm not sure. But it sure is snazzy.

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Taking Education Into the Future

I took the summer off from interning/working and just stayed home. Some of the most interesting changes I witnessed going back to my hometown were the improvements to and constructions of the schools in town. The high school had major renovations with an entire new wing and lots of "smart classrooms." Down the street was a brand new elementary school that, frankly, looked more like a prison than a school. No doubt this design choice was purposeful, but I still felt it missed the brick & mortar feel of the schools of my childhood.

Check out this blog post from Allison Arieff from the New York Times. Solving the space problem and the issue of integrating new pedagogical technologies is something that everyone should be interested in. Designing sustainable and energy efficient schools is also a huge issue. Overcrowding will eventually cripple our classrooms if we don't take action and intelligent classroom design is the key.

Digital Reading

What a contentious issue this is... people have such very strong opinions about the act of reading a book or a newspaper. I'm on the fence about this. I think that economically, environmentally, the digital option is the best for the future. However, I will agree that there is something very tactile and grounding about reading something that is physically printed. Personally, I think it'll go like this... Books will never become obsolete. However, they may at some point attain the "cult" status that items like LPs have achieved. Stylishly anachronistic.

Check out this competition for the future of digital reading.

via core77

Hiding your emails...

From Seth Godin

"Promiscuous dispersal of your email address

I just went through the hassle of trying to get some B2B firms the details needed to give me an informed quote on a project.

I visited eight sites. Six of them hide their email address. They use forms of one sort of another. One firm refused to accept more than 500 characters in the "how can we help you" box, while three of them wanted to know what state I was in, etc.

Email contact is like a first date. If you show up with a clipboard and a questionnaire, it's not going to go well, I'm afraid. The object is to earn permission to respond.

If you sell something, set up an address like "sales@xyz.com". Put this on your home page, "contact us if you're looking for more information or a price quote." Sure, you'll get a lot of spam, but deleting spam is a lot easier than finding customers. (Hint, ask your IT people to make it a mailto link, with a subject line built in. That way, you can use the subject line to find the good email)."

This is an interesting phenomenon. When the internet first arrived on the scene, everyone was excited to get email. Now we live in a world of ubiquitous spam and people are afraid to give out their personal, or sometimes, business email addresses. It's the same thing has having an unlisted telephone number. What are you trying to accomplish? Sure you might get less spam, but making yourself available to your potential clients/customers is more important, isn't it?...

"In Praise of Shadows"

I love the idea behind this design exhibition in London. We always talk about how we use "light" in spaces, but no one ever talks about how you use the dark to create a statement in a space.

Not to mention, the post feeds my ongoing obsession with light fixtures:

via core77

The Crystal Cathedral, Orange Co., CA

by Philip Johnson.

Daniel Johnston

I'm familiar with the music of Daniel Johnston and saw the stellar documentary, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston." I also interned with his music publisher. I'm just not entirely sure that an iPhone app is the logical next step for the way off-kilter aesthetic that is Johnston's life.

Check out the article here.

Does everything in life need an iPhone app? Are we long past the age of slick new applications and on to the muddy world of "me too-ism?"

New Lights

Lighting can add or subtract an enormous amount of character and warmth to a room. I enjoy interesting light fixtures. One thing that's always fascinated me is the general continuity of the original lightbulb design. The exception, of course, being the energy-efficient coil bulbs. Perhaps Benjamin Hubert will design a lightbulb that looks like these fixtures?

via core77