12 hours til our flight back home, just chillin’
— see you on monday 
Archive for the 'Cities' Category
Folk might be interested in this forthcoming event: I personally have some questions about the idea of ‘occupy design’ but undoubtedly the event will be a melting pot of ideas and proposals and one which could lead to some interesting outcomes.
‘This Space Is Not For Hire’ will take place at the Bank of Ideas, an occupied former bank near Liverpool Street Station.
Running across the afternoons of Saturday the 28 and Sunday 29 January 2012, will be a range of talks on topics such as: radical forms of communication and design activism; the precariousness of design employment; and exposing and reflecting upon the ways design is used to give a friendly veneer to the worst kinds of Corporate behaviour.
via Eye blog » Higher ground. Occupy Design is an opportunity to change design, and design for change..
According to the students at NID, Seb is really Bill Gates in disguise. And Ross, obviously, is Tom Cruise. The boys seem to have survived their stomach bug and are back in school, hopeful they will be well enough for the eight hour bus ride to the desert tonight
highlights so far:
beth – cheap fags
lydia – her cheese sandwich
callum – photographing EVERYTHING
seb – becoming recognized as the worlds richest man
ross – becoming recognized as a worldwide heart-throb / scientologist
yours truly,
bill (seb) and tom (ross)
“All the boys are feeling a bit wobbly today, just left Ross hugging a bucket in the hotel room, the intrepid Lydia and Beth are off filming somewhere and me and Callum are just catching up on emails. (Having a good time for the most part, but being a voyeur on slum life can be a bit unsettling). Here is a video of one of our many chauffeurs.”
Creative Review surveys The Occupied Times of London. Obviously, whether the protest and occupation are ‘nicely designed’ is missing the point, but nevertheless, its interesting to see something that is in someways more imaginative than the standard fare of left-of-centre graphic clichés, I think. And also good, regardless of what you think of the aesthetic/ethics, to see people deploying their design skills in a hands-on way, rather than the obscure and meaningless distant quest for a logo of this approach.
For more information on Occupy Glasgow, click this.
Glasgow 1980, as viewed by Oscar Marzaroli, from 1971. In reference to Nostalgia Now brief.
Friday 21st October, 2-30-4.30. Clubroom, Upstairs at The Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD
The Commonwealth Games 2014: Whose Legacy?
Short introductory talk by Dr Libby Porter (Urban Planner and Researcher, Glasgow Uni) and Neil Gray (Writer and Researcher, Glasgow Uni) about the Legacy of Mega-Events, and large-scale urban regeneration plans in the UK and worldwide.
A discussion will follow with a series of live accounts by residents – including carers from the Save the Accord centre, who are campaigning to retain a day care centre for people with learning disabilities, and Margaret Jaconelli, who has recently been evicted from her home. The residents will talk about about the impact the Commonwealth Games development is having upon their lives.
This discussion, focusing on media portrayal and the right of residents to ‘stay put’ in the face of large-scale urban transformation and displacement, will be interspersed with a series of short films that highlight recent experiences on, and nearby, the site of the Commonwealth Games Village
Includes special screening of a short film about Margaret Jaconelli and the forthcoming Commonwealth Games by Glasgow documentary photographer and filmmaker, Chris Leslie. (14 mins) www.chrisleslie.com
An interesting article on the Design Altruism blog by Daniel Drenan on the role designers and design education could play in helping communities to resist Gentrification and the numerous negative affects Mega-events such as the Olympics and Commonwealth Games have on their host cities.
Amongst many interesting observations the article gives an account of a series of workshops that happened in a college in Beirut in which students were given four groups to research in terms of particular Olympic games cities and their communicated messages: The Olympic Committee itself, the host city government, the design firm responsible for the corporate identity, and any protesters they could find. The article then goes on to discuss the information gathered by the students research and the work that was created in response to it.
For up to date information on the London Olympics the Gamesmonitor site is worth a visit. I would also thoroughly recommend watching Five Ring Circus a film about the Vancouver Winter Olympics available to watch free online and Olympicfield a film found in the year 2015 near the London Olympics site.
On 911, identity and architecture. Also, an interesting take on this from the perspective of the pervasive influence of the vivid visual image.
This really interesting post; Tahrir Square: Social Media, Public Space (on Design Observer), looks at the parallel role of virtual and physical space in recent events in the Middle East. With #Jan25, #Bahrain and the like ’trending’ on twitter, (not to mention the implication of Wikileaks earlier in the story), there’s much talk of this being a ‘communication’ revolution, but the article contextualises this nicely alongside some analysis of shared public spaces.
1st Year Department of Visual Communication
London Study Trip
24-27 January 2011
25.1.11
DAY 1
VISIT / 10.00am
- Company / Alex Swain
http://www.company-london.com/
- An informal insight into business acumen combined with how to take a client on a creative journey.
VISIT / 11.30am
- The Association of Illustrators / Paul Ryding
http://www.theaoi.com/
- There is very little former graduate Paul Ryding does not know about contemporary illustration.
VISIT / 1.00pm
- Tomato / Michael Horsham
http://www.tomato.co.uk/
- An intimate sharing of large and small projects from one of the most influential agencies. There portfolio goes back to 1991 and are continuing to work with Underworld.
VISIT / 4.00pm
- Pentagram / Jane Pluer
http://pentagram.com/en/portfolio/
- One of the most impressive offices in the creative industries with a workshop to match. Imperious work delivered with style and elegance.
26.1.11
DAY 2
VISIT / 11.00am
- Browns Design / Jonathan Ellery
http://brownsdesign.com/
- Jonathan engaged with the students immediately by asking how they defined art compared to design. Award winning work from a man who applauds the students form outside London including The Glasgow School of Art.
VISIT / 1.30pm
- Field / Vera-Maria Glahn
http://www.field.io/
- A German duo working with all the latest programming software and code to produce really beautiful ‘cross-media’ work. Cool rooftop garden with views over to the City of London.
VISIT / 4.30pm
- Build / Nicky and Michael Place with former graduate Lynne Devine
http://wearebuild.com/
- Michael allowed us to touch, feel and sniff the quality of his best design for print. Designers Republic guru happy to be working in a small agency with one of our best graduates.
Yet another quick link to a great video resource on the AA website. As with so much, it’s via Manystuff.
Dead Drops is a fantastically clandestine and covert way to share information. Thanks to Philip Blakie, PD.
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.
Image: Another Shadow Fight — David Osbaldeston (2008).
Digital prints in Vorticist mannerism originated from woodcuts based on
Sidney Noland’s Ned Kelly series (1946-7). Newspaper kiosk design by Herbert Bayer, 1924 (unrealised). Variable dimensions. 3rd installation
If you’re in Edinburgh or the general Scottish environs on monday ‘Investigating Premodern Futures’™ : 9th August 2010 will investigate the following questions:
Is Edinburgh a ghost city? What future awaits its ‘new‘ quarters (Quartermile, Fountainbridge, Edinburgh Waterfront) areas that have no past and that are yet to be occupied? What fate awaits older buildings that have fallen empty? An Unco Site! is focused on the way in which a fantastic neomedieval ‘history’ is routinely injected into Edinburgh’s Old Town (e.g. Auld Jock’s Pie Shoppe, Frankenstein’s, Armstrongs, etc.) Is there a space for the ‘new’ in Edinburgh? As the future shuts down does the past become all that’s left to sell? ‘Zombie capitalism’ and hauntology are key themes that our panel of experts will explore here.
Part of the ongoing works of the Confraternity of Neoflagellants.
If you’re in Glasgow over the summer, you might be interested in Futureproof at Streetlevel. It’d also be worth taking in Fields, Factories and Workshops by Simon Yuill at the CCA and other venues. Lucy Duncombe (grad vis com 2010) will be performing as part of a sound/music event on the 16th September, alongside a whole range of interesting discussions, film showings and other cultural and political events. In a slightly tangentially linked article (space, politics, sustainability, urbanism etc), other vis com person Alec Farmer and his ‘Nomadic Redux‘ were featured recently in treehugger.
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