Made In Queens
Two 12” bass speakers and two 10” mid-bass speakers mounted on rear cabinet. Custom-welded support brackets. Four 6×9” mids speakers up front. 2000 and 1500 watt bass amps and 1000 watt mids amp. DVD player and equalizer on handlebars.
Cassius lampshade by Fluidforms
A punching bag and a pair of boxing gloves are the only tools – waiting for the customer to form his or her individual lampshade CASSIUS. The initial form for the customer to beat into shape is a cylinder. Sensors in the inside of the punching bag transmit the punches to the computer, which morph the cylinder according to the positions of the blows. Each punch changes the shape of the object. The vision in the mind of the customer comes to life through physical power.
Cock. Bull. Story. by Nikki Farquharson
My book of 30 simplified idioms, proverbs, phrases and quotes.
I find it interesting that we are able to understand a message or meaning from a phrase that should not be taken literally.
Reducing these idioms to three simple nouns doesn’t remove our ability to understand the meaning connected to these words.
We'll be back...
I’ve spent some time this afternoon appreciating all the good sign painting over on Jeff Canham’s website.
Parisian trash rings
They are green trash bags on a green halo of steel attached to a post or freestanding. They are not bins. Nor are they trash cans. I guess I’ll call them trash rings.
I was in Paris the week before the U.S. launched the Iraq War. I found myself aware of these receptacles placed throughout the city. Their shape and the fact that they did a surprisingly poor job of actually keeping the city clean struck me immediately. The trash rings’ design is largely a society’s reaction to the threat of terrorism.
So as a given, these perform their container functions poorly. The bags tear, they overflow, they spill, they keep our refuse constantly visible. They do, however, do their part to minimize the ease with which a person could discretely place a bomb in a public place. And if a person did place a bomb in one of these containers, the bags’ transparency makes it more likely that the bomb might be discovered in time to avert a disaster. The lack of real structure would make reaching the bomb to defuse or contain it somewhat less complicated. Or if, the bomb was not discovered in time to disarm or at least clear the area, the relative lack of metal structural elements would minimize the shrapnel sent about after an explosion.
In this trash ring you find an important trade-off between functions. The public refuse container evolved out of necessity to organize and conceal the things we discard – to keep them out of sight and out of mind as soon as possible. The trash container must now also protect people from a threat as both immaterial and real as these trash rings themselves. In terms of designing for function, the latter purpose is opposed to the former. So we get trash cans that contain and hide our trash poorly as they have to assume a part in a public’s defense against terrorism.
Although you can’t tell from the photographs above, the bags have the words “vigilance” and “propreté” printed on them – placing vigilance before cleanliness (the similarity between “propreté” and “property” is interesting if nothing else).
Gosh, 2003 feels like so long ago. I am not sure that these are still in use in Paris today. Somebody, holler at me and let me know.
Brno Biennial 2008
Interesting installation view of the main exhibition hall at the 23rd biennial of graphic design in Brno, Czech Republic. Books on chairs, I like it.
No Small Change: How Obama Revinvented Campaign Finance @XPlane
Barack Obama is the first major candidate to decline participation in the public financing system for presidential campaigns. He’s found a more effective way to raise money — by leveraging the power of the American people through online Social Networks.
→ Something from Nothing @The Boston Globe
Why would a company want employees diving into its trash bins? Because at Sasaki Associates, one of the country’s hottest landscape and urban-design firms that’s shaping the Olympic village in Beijing, life is all about salvaging good from bad.
Design for the Other 90%: Pot-in-Pot cooler
The Pot-in-Pot system consists of two pots, a smaller earthenware pot nestled within another pot, with the space in between filled with sand and water. When that water evaporates, it pulls heat from the interior of the smaller pot, in which vegetables and fruits can be kept. In rural Nigeria, many farmers lack transportation, water, and electricity, but one of their biggest problems is the inability to preserve their crops. With the Pot-in-Pot, tomatoes last for twenty-one days, rather than two or three days without this technology. Fresher produce can be sold at the market, generating more income for the farmers.
I Am Still Alive
I Am Still Alive is a design practice located in Brooklyn, NY.
- Address: 310 Atlantic Ave, Floor 2, Brooklyn, New York, 11201
- Cross Streets: Hoyt & Smith
- Website: I Am Still Alive
- Email:
- Directions: via Google Maps
→ WorldChanging: Intent Shapes Environment, Environment Shapes Life
When we examine the physical environment, we find a set of patterns emerge of what works and what does not. Architect Christopher Alexander codified many of these patterns into a book in 1977 A Pattern Language so we can use it as a quick reference to anchor any attempt to design a physical environment.
In order to secure a relatively high-density environment where everything is within a ten-minute walk, housing needs to be close with shared walls between buildings. Yet people who grew up in detached housing (the quarter acre section) express concern. “Kiwi’s won’t like that” said a New Zealand developer. Why not? It turns out the problem is not proximity but an aversion to neighbour conflict. The closer two neighbours are, the more they get on each other’s nerves. It turns out that it has to do with the physics of noise through air. The quarter acre section gives enough distance that the decibels of the noisy neighbour drop enough to be comfortable. The alternative is to use design so neighbours do not make irritating noise that travels. For a start, place the outdoor activities somewhere else: on the plaza or in the greenbelt rather than next to the house. Do not have a back lawn that needs mowing with an 85 dBa mower. Do not have a back yard where people curse each other. Build the row houses wide rather than deep and make the common wall soundproof. The developer listened, considered and replied “Yup, that should do it… you’re right. I had never considered why.”
→ Paola Antonelli & Charlie Rose - Design and The Elastic Mind
Function truly is also to elicit emotions.
→ Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design
Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design is a manual aimed at helping NGOs and advocates strengthen their campaigns and projects through communicating vital information with greater impact.
The manual was designed and produced as a collaboration between Tactical Tech and John Emerson of Backspace – a design consultancy dedicated to research, development and promotion of design in the public interest.
→ "Down with Innovation" by Rick Poynor
A moment ago I used the word culture, a notoriously awkward concept. According to the critic Raymond Williams writing in Keywords, his classic lexicon, culture is used in two crucial senses. In cultural anthropology—now there’s a word the innovators love to bat around—it refers primarily to material production, while in history and cultural studies it refers primarily to signifying or symbolic systems. Combining these usages, we might conclude that culture is about things (which have a look) and meanings (conveyed by how they look). Whichever way you look at them—so long as you do actually look—these products of our culture tell us who we are. There is bound to be a relationship between impoverished ways of (design) thinking and impoverished visual form.
→ NYTimes Magazine » The Green Issue
Some Bold Steps to Make Your Carbon Footprint Smaller
→ Canoe made from disposable chopsticks
“A former city employee in the Fukushima prefecture town of Koriyama has built a 4-meter (13-ft) long canoe from thousands of used disposable chopsticks recovered from the city hall cafeteria. Bothered that perfectly good wood was going to waste after a single use, Shuhei Ogawara — whose job at city hall involved working with the local forestry industry — spent the last two years of his career collecting used chopsticks from the cafeteria.”
- via SVN
→ 2008/2009 Walker Art Center Design Fellowship Applications
Since 1980, the Walker Art Center Design department has maintained a graphic design fellowship program that provides recent graduates (both undergrad and grad) the opportunity to work in a professional design studio environment.
Fellows are employed full-time for one year and are assigned a wide range of graphic design projects from developing graphic identities for specific programs and exhibitions, including the design of all related collateral materials, to assisting the design director and other designers with long-term projects such as exhibition catalogues and promotional campaigns. Fellows are involved in all aspects of the design process, including client meetings and presentations through production and supervision of printing.
