Design

16 Jul 2008 0814H

Design Can Change; Interaction Design Supporting Sustainability

Maybe you all have seen this site, Design Can Change, from SmashLab in Vancouver, but I just tripped over it the other day. It’s a good read, and I think we’re all looking at ways to make changes as we can in the work we do.
A new society will require all kinds of people, [...]

Read the rest of Design Can Change; Interaction Design Supporting Sustainability


09 Jun 2008 0850H

Destroy the Web 2.0 Look and Feel

By way of my colleague Mark. Wholeheartedly agree.

Read the rest of Destroy the Web 2.0 Look and Feel


04 Jun 2008 2214H

Do you make things? Real things?

So I get this email from this guy today. I usually don’t help out grad students generally. As a former academic I try not to get involved now. But the ghost of Victor Papanek won’t let me ignore this one. He said once, “There are professions that are more harmful than industrial design, but only [...]

Read the rest of Do you make things? Real things?


03 Feb 2008 0942H

Painting with ice

One of the great pleasures, or so I’d like to think, of living in a city that experiences four distinct seasons, is that you get to experience things that only happen in that season, and that tends to contribute to the richness of living. I think it would be a great thing if we were [...]

Read the rest of Painting with ice


14 Dec 2007 1231H

Theme Interview with Kenya Hara

I’m posting here a link to an old 2005 interview that Theme Magazine did with Kenya Hara, MUJI’s design director, and the author of a pretty important book, Designing Design. Theme Magazine, a journal of global Asian culture, is awesome in and of itself, so definitely dwell more when you’re done reading that interview.

Read the rest of Theme Interview with Kenya Hara


05 Dec 2007 0819H

Tokyo Designers Week

Check out this video at Monocle on Tokyo Designers Week. Why can’t we do something like that here, in every city, so we can promote the ideas, the thinking, the power of design?

Read the rest of Tokyo Designers Week


28 Nov 2007 1030H

NYC: Muji, Uniqlo

Need to break out the category ‘design’ into multiple categories: print design, packaging design, interaction design, information, retail presence, blah blah blah. Having said that let’s talk about MUJI and Uniqlo, Japanese retailers that have landed, where else? Manhattan. Details about my next big shopping trip follow:
While I was working in Hong Kong during the [...]

Read the rest of NYC: Muji, Uniqlo


08 Nov 2007 1400H

Arrow to the Sun

In the middle of a presentation today, I saw something that brought me back to 2nd grade, a book that probably influenced me as much as any other to try and become a designer someday, which is Gerald McDermott’s Caldecott Award winning book of 1975, Arrow to the Sun, a retelling of an Pueblo Indian [...]

Read the rest of Arrow to the Sun


23 Oct 2007 1121H

Artifacts during the visual communications design process

So the other day I ran into discussion about several different kinds of design artifacts, namely, mood boards, theme boards, and design keys. What are these things, when do we use them, why, how, who, blah blah blah?
To understand the contexts which forced these artifacts into being, we need to step back and remember the [...]

Read the rest of Artifacts during the visual communications design process


15 Aug 2007 1135H

How not to design a form, part 2

As reported back in March, when my third Xbox 360 failed and I was sent a box with instructions on packing it in and sending it back for repairs at the UPS facility in McAllen, Texas, we looked at the form and tried to figure out how to make it better. Well, I have mixed [...]

Read the rest of How not to design a form, part 2


« Older entries