Communication Design Department Blog / Glasgow School of Art
Following up our recent post on the ‘Scotland with Style’ Brand for Glasgow, this Wolff Olins opinion piece states their ideas about what makes a great Place-Brand. In amongst it there seem to be some valid points, (and undoubtedly this is a million miles ahead of what Glasgow is doing), but as always with this kind of stuff, it’s pushing at the borders of credibility, and has a tendency to become lost in a world of brand induced double-speak.
This is the view of the new M74 motorway extension, currently being built through the Southside of Glasgow, looking from Cathcart Road, near Eglington Toll, towards the City Centre. It’s used to illustrate the contrast between a regressive ‘rear-view mirror‘ approach to urban design (above), and some possibly more productive, definitely more progressive, and certainly more democratic approaches to planning, referenced online.
The first is Pop-up Landscapes, a collective of artists and designers using interactive installations to address issues of urban survival, and provide a tactile, hands-on way for people to engage with the design of their environment.
Planners Network UK (PNUK) are creating a ‘disorientation guide’ — a wiki of progressive planning resources — and in a similar vein, this article logs some of the ways online tools can be used in democratic Urban Planning.
While on the subject, likeminds have attempted to look at how cities could be designed ‘by wiki’, and more firmly in the visual communication realm, zucker und pfeffer have created these posters and promotional materials for this conference, the posters being infused with the smell of gasoline.
To round up, Brand Avenue is one of the best blogs I know of, covering the intersection of the design of cities and visual communication, and offline, Carchitecture is an eminently readable introduction to the car and the city, and the problems and delights therein. As McLuhan observes; “The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.”
And this is an idea about what you could do with the M8.
Designer and Vis Com person Gordon Carmichael is travelling through South America for the next few months, and has kindly agreed to be our foreign correspondent and ‘send back’ some posts and pictures of the visual culture there. Look out for posts over the coming weeks.
News from King Street of some upcoming events and useful resources. Firstly Streetlevel and some of their talks and exhibitions, plus their handy email bulletin which you should email them about signing up for, as in true organised-artist fashion you don’t seem to be able to sign up to it from their website.
Secondly, another opening on the 20th Feb, this time at the Project Rooms just round the corner on Osborne St, featuring Yvonne Mulloch.
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