Nice article, via website of the week: Typotheque: What is Typography? by Peter Biľak.
Monthly Archive for October, 2010
Creative Review run a feature on what claims to be the worlds shortest and smallest film from dutch advertising agency KesselsKramer. Design of stamps, now, where to begin? (How about, in a cyclical world, we look at the retro-yet-topical National Year of Productivity, designed by David Gentleman).
I’ll try to moderate what I think of Student Designers. But have look around the site and you may well come to similar conclusions. (You may have seen posters up round the Foulis building for a social media strategy for the building competition for V&A Dundee).
What do we think about crowdsourcing as a way of generating good design work? As a strategy for sound design processes, that value creativity and quality? I fear this type of conduit between the supposedly ‘inexperienced’ student/designer and the baying and un-paying mob of predatory ‘commissioners’ of this type of design work will increase. The only thing I would say is never underestimate the skill and value that you hold, or let people suggest that you are somehow unequipped to deserve to be properly remunerated in money or in-kind for your ideas and your time.
On a more positive note, having the V&A set up a satellite operation in Dundee could be very interesting though.
I don’t often write posts about the book and website of the week (see right), but these two are worth a special mention. Uncorporate Identity, if I may be subjective for a moment, is the current book to read about visual language, identity (crisis), urbanism, politics and design – erudite and far-sighted, an awkward and exhilarating ride. DxCrit is a very useful design criticism resource, allied to the design criticism course at SVA in NYC. A video from that below, on failure and design.
Crossing the Line: The 2010 D-Crit Conference: Peter Hall from D-Crit on Vimeo.
For anyone interested in professional practise, advice, funding and entrepreneurial activities: Evolve At GSA.
Ways of Seeing by John Berger is now available in full on UbuWeb. Thanks to GSA library for the tip-off.
The New City Reader: A Newspaper Of Public Space
Linked objects; Newspaper is Poster is Hi-res Image is Website. And more connections; the editorial of the New City Reader connects to this via this.
The outcome of our short Mapping the Terrain project in 2nd Yr. (As messy map here)
Sound in Context (Full Film) from Sound and Music on Vimeo.
While the film above is talking about sound in an ‘art’ context, its useful to translate some of the discussions across to its use in design. The following outlines an interesting position; “In fact, music is never just about music: it is always the product of its wider situation[1]. Some musics reinforce the status quo[2] . Other musics try to affect the collective conditions of existence. We’re interested in the later: not once radical, now stagnant scenes, but musics that continue to develop useful ways of acting and thinking outside dominant ideologies; musics as part of that wider situation, with something to say about and offer back to it.”
The video features Barry Esson, co-director of arika, who will be speaking at one of the forthcoming GSA open events on the 10th Nov.
[1] Isn’t music always produced through interacting social, cultural, philosophical and ideological factors. (Is it cowardly/reckless/naïve to abstract away from these?)
[2] Don’t you find that most music (incl. most experimental music) simply fortifies false notions of freedom and possessive individualism, of art as lifestyle choice lacking the will/ ability to say anything other than the simply musical?
Quite last minute I know, but Cloud People hosted by New Media Scotland is on tonight at the Apple Store.
I am really excited about the Shadow Catchers Exhibition at the V&A from 13 October 2010 – 20 February 2011.
At Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, England, Floris Neusüss reveals his preparations to make a picture without a camera – a ‘photogram’ – of the window that formed the subject of William Henry Fox Talbot’s first photographic negative, made there in 1835. In the Abbey’s grounds Neusüss also demonstrates the creation of ‘cyanotype’ photograms using fern leaves, recreating the methods of the very first photographs.
(Good RSS events feeds from this site, have added to the sidebars, speaking of which, this site is having a minor refresh, so please bear with it in the interim).
When researching an idea for a project, I came across Ustaaz in Palestine, a fascinating post, which in turn alerted me to the Design Altruism Project, and the Designers Without Borders movement. It also caused me to stumble upon this fascinating critique of the Bruce Mau Massive Change exhibition, and more broadly speaking, Data as Spectacle. So is “humanitarian design the new imperialism?”
Interesting post that suggests that some designer may have overestimated their reach. Time perhaps to consider the strength of the vertical stack.. Is it time to rethink the T-shaped designer?
I went into a hot flush recently when a friend forwarded me the following images of a restaurant called Modern Toilet in Taipei. It features 100 seats made from toilet bowls with food being served in mini toilet pans. The toilet rolls for wiping your hands and mouth are hung above the tables, which resemble glass-topped jumbo bathtubs. I think Victor Paris have missed a trick in their Glasgow showroom.
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