Crit Face Button Set

Alberto Rigau created a set of buttons to keep his fellow NC State University graphic design graduate students perky during marathon critiques. They spread like a viral video… appearing on the t-shirts, lapels and bags of undergrads in my classroom. I too coveted the buttons. It may be superstition, but crits seem to go smoother when I rock a crit button.

The phenomenon spread to SpeakUp, Design Observer and Alberto even gave away a set of 50 free buttons on his website now long gone. Keep your eyes peeled to his site, I’m sure these will be making their way to a design classroom or client meeting near you…

Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore is hosting a AIGA Design Educators Conference this October. The focus of the conference is to address, “the social life of design.”

I’ll be giving an expanded talk on the Designerless Office, but there will be a whole host of interesting presentations and keynotes on where the world of design education is and where it is heading…

http://www.socialstudiesconference.org/

BLU DOT CATALOG: PHOTOGRAPHY & DESIGN FAQ

Q. What is Blu Dot?

A. Blu Dot is a modern furniture design & manufacturing studio, based in Minneapolis, MN it was founded in 1996 by John Christakos, Charlie Lazor, and Maurice Blanks.

Q. Who worked on the two recent catalogs (from 2007 and 2008)?

A. The catalogs were art directed and designed by myself. Dan Monick was the environmental/location photographer. Medora Danz handled the logistics (furniture transportation, locations, etc. etc.) and was the keeper of the “ Blu Dot Brand” — making sure we didn’t disappear completely down the rabbit hole. The three of us were the main creative team — as far as the environmental photography was concerned. We worked with two stylists: Janet Gridley in 2007, and Matthew Stenerson (aka Mr. Chips) in 2008.

Q. OK, so what’s the deal with the photographs — is there a plotline?

A. Yes, and no. To lead us through the weeklong photo shoot the creative team outlined a very loose structure. Each character and location had a specific role, and there was a story (at one point). But, I doubt I could re-tell it to you now even if I tried.

2007 Catalog Spreads:

2008 Catalog Images:

Q. So, did you storyboard the entire week out? Was there method to the madness?

A. Yes, and no. We had three, well, maybe four variables: (1) Locations (2) People (3) Furniture (4) Props. We knew which days we were at each location. We knew which days certain people could model. And, we knew the pieces of furniture we wanted to pair with each location. But, beyond that it was extremely stream-of-consciousness. One of my favorite photos, from the 2007 shoot, is of the aerialist jumping on the bed. We had set up the frame, with the furniture and then added in the two models. We weren’t quite sure what to do with them at first, so we shot a series of frames where she was just standing on the bed talking to the red jumpsuit guy. Then, someone (I can’t remember who) suggested she “ practice” her “ moves” by jumping up and down on the mattress. Which, by the way, was an air mattress. We told her to jump until it popped. It never did. I doubt we could have storyboarded that photo the way it turned out — some things just have to happen spur of the moment.

Q. Is the viewer supposed to be able to figure “ it” out?

A. Well, not really. Even though there is a story in there somewhere, the photographs are not presented in order from the first shot to the last. The narrative that guided our workweek played out — in order — from day one through day five. But, the image sequence in the catalog was driven by the images themselves — pacing, color, composition, and image parings were considered while the original story was largely ignored. The resulting narrative is left open ended, allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusions. (And, hopefully they’ll fall in love with the furniture along the way).

Q. So, what’s up? Is there an idea behind the book, or are you just messing around?

A. Yes, there is definitely an idea. First, I knew from the beginning that I wanted the design to rely heavily on photography more than Blu Dot catalogs had done in the past. Beyond that simple notion it was a broader reaction to the furniture catalog genre as a whole. My criticism of the typical furniture catalog you see (in the US, at least) is that the photographs are generally very neutral and safe. Very seldom do you see people interacting with the furniture — it’s as though the human race was wiped off the planet and the only thing that remains are these very beautifully propped dining room or living room sets. They seem very unrealistic. And while I wholeheartedly admit that the Blu Dot catalog is not based completely (or even loosely) in reality, it’s unrealistic in a more satirical way. Which was inevitable since it had to carry the Blu Dot banner: it had to be fun, and slightly irreverent; there needed to be a life to it; it’s supposed to make you smile. Blu Dot is a different kind of design studio, so obviously their catalog needs to be a different kind of catalog.

2008 Catalog Outtakes:

Q. What inspired the concept/idea?

A. I wanted there to be a twist to the photography approach — that was ground zero. And, of course, Cornell Windlin’s Select, Arrange catalogs for Vitra were definitely an inspiration. But, I felt there was something we could do — something that we could add to the conversation — that would be inherently Midwestern, and thus, completely different. Beyond that there’s the whole loose-narrative idea and the mystery/mythology behind the images that was definitely influenced by the band Lifter Puller (which just happens to be Dan’s former band) who created an alternate universe within its lyrics that were based on real people, places, and events in Minneapolis. The spirit of the Coen Brothers’ films (Fargo was definitely talked about more than once on set) and the work of David Lynch (especially the Twin Peaks series) were also reference points throughout the process. When I was younger I was obsessed with Twin Peaks — trying to decipher all the hidden clues and such — so, for fun, we added in our own little secrets throughout the narrative.

Q. Clues? Secrets? Like what?

A. I can’t tell you.

Q. Who is Dan Monick and how did you decide to hire him as the photographer?

A. Dan is known (around Minneapolis) as the drummer of the seminal Minneapolis rock band, Lifter Puller. But, nationally Dan is known as an LA-based rock n’ roll/fashion photographer. Around the time that we were searching for a photographer Dan happened to be putting on a solo exhibition of his art photography at the SooVac just a few blocks from my house. While looking at his work again — in person and all at once — something clicked. His approach to photography was exactly what I was looking for — his work is fun and raw, but it’s not amateurish, in fact it is quite the opposite and extremely well crafted. It was perfect. The only thing that was missing was the furniture. My main collaborator from Blu Dot, Medora Danz, was at Dan’s opening as well — and that night she had the same epiphany. We knew we had found our photographer.

Q. So, you had a fashion photographer shoot furniture?

A. Yup. Luckily, at the time I was making the pitch for such an unlikely combination Dan had just published a series of architectural photographs in Dwell. I presented his rock photos as one end of the spectrum and his Dwell photos as the other end, saying simply: I want the Blu Dot photos to fall somewhere in between these two points. The rest is history.

Q. What was it like working with Dan?

A. One word: Awesome. Dan weaves these amazing stream-of-consciousness narratives for the models in order to extract the expression or mood out of them that he wants. These stories are so amazing I can’t even begin to explain them. I took a bunch of video footage on my digital point-and-shoot this year, but the videos do not do Dan’s amazingness any justice either. Although, it’s still kind of fun to watch:

2008 Behind the Scenes:

Q. Where are the locations? Those are some sweet houses.

A. With the exception of one location, they are all houses or businesses in the Twin Cities area. The one exception is John Christakos’ modernist cabin, which is in Wisconsin. In 2007 we shot at five private residences, the Walker Art Center, and Bower Brothers in NE Minneapolis. In 2008 we shot at three more private residences, but we also added a few commercial locations into the mix: Nick & Eddie and Jetset.

Q. Can I have the names and addresses? I’d like to go check them out for myself.

A. Nope. Sorry . . .

Q. Who are all those people?

A. Everyone in the two catalogs are friends with either Dan, Medora, or myself. There are a slew of local artists (Ben Olson, Jennifer Davis, Todd Norsten), local musicians (from bands like Dillinger 4, The Dynamiters, Roma di Luna), and just plain locals (who you may recognize from your favorite hang-outs: the Walker Art Center, Bryant Lake Bowl, Caffetto, Nick & Eddie).

Q. Is that Ralph Rapson I see in there?

A. Yes, it is. Ralph won the Dwell/Blu Dot Lounge Chair Design competition last year. Blu Dot then worked with Ralph to put his winning submission into production. Mr. Rapson was gracious enough to come hang out with us and get his portrait taken. He was a total sweetheart and an extremely good sport. Sadly, as you know, Ralph passed away just a few weeks after the photo was taken. Here’s to Ralph, a local legend.

Q. This seems to be an ongoing series. Will you continue it in 2009?

A. I have no idea. . . Ask me again 4 weeks before we’re supposed to do the next photo shoot.

Q. You mentioned the Midwest earlier. Does the fact that you are based in the Midwest play into the look and feel of the catalog?

A. Yes. We all take great pride that we are situated here in Minnesota. And, we are all here by choice. So, of course, the quirkiness and mythology of the Midwest is celebrated to the nth degree in these photographs. I see these two catalogs as a love letter from myself, Dan, and Blu Dot to Minneapolis (and the Midwest). So, here’s to Minneapolis! Now, let’s go enjoy the spring weather before summer hits.

Q. Wait, one more thing: I totally want one. Can I have one?

A. Yes. Go to bludot.com and sign-up for the mailing list.

CalArts is a small school. With a population that averages around 1332 students in 6 different departments that include: Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film-Video, Music, and Theater, each department is its own intimate microcosm. Its faceted nature is eerily similar to the Walker’s own interdisciplinary model, both sharing many of the same departments. The campus is basically a one building compound composed of bits and pieces that form their own semblance of a whole that evokes Lawrence Weiner’s work on the face of the Barnes Building. This unity makes walking around CalArts a frenetic fission of dancers, designers, artists, filmmakers, composers, choreographers, vocalists, dogs (CalArts is a dog friendly campus), and of course posters. They are made by all stripes of students, from those announcing their own shows and performances to figuring out a summer sublet.

But the smart ones get a graphic designer to design and silk-screen their posters. There is a long tradition of the second year Masters students in Design producing all the posters for the Visiting Artists and Designers that frequent CalArts so often. The MFA candidate class of 2008 is currently selling groups of posters on Ebay for those of you who lust for tactility and Day-Glo or metallic inks.If you are interested in taking in more of the history of the posters at CalArts then go take a look at the web version of the exhibition and catalogue for Earthquakes and Aftershocks: Posters from the CalArts Graphic Design Program 1986–2004 edited by Jérme Saint-Loubert Bié with Texts by Michel Bouvet, Jeff Rian, Louise Sandhaus, Somi and Sojin Kim, Jérme Saint-Loubert Bié and a delightful book design by Yasmin Khan and Jon Sueda.

During my stay in Raleigh I had the opportunity to do a presentation to the Masters students in graphic design about the influence of design in cities. It took me six months to articulate some of those ideas a little better, which I’d like to share with you. In my presentation, we talked about how designers tend to concentrate in economically prosperous areas and how some cities develop a specialized work-force in design, while other cities tend to have a diverse design workforce. I mentioned the example of the Lombardy region in Italy, where various product and lighting manufacturers like Alessi, Kartel, Flos, and Artimede are concentrated. In contrast, other cities like Toronto, Canada, have a more diversified design workforce. I showed them the maps by Yale University professor William Nordhaus, who has paired economic activity with geographic areas. It was evident that the design powerhouses in Canada and Italy were located in the prosperous regions of both countries’ biggest urban regions (see Figures 1 and 2).

Figs. 1 and 2. Geographically based Economic data (G-Econ) maps for Canada and Italy. Peaks highlight the economic predominance of Toronto and Lombardy. Maps by Prof. William Nordhaus, Yale University.

Figure 1. Economic activity in Italy.

Figure 2. Economic activity in Canada.Governments have become big promoters of design and creativity.

Gordon Brown, Britain’s Prime Minister, recently asked the Design Council to find ways for Britain to enhance the country’s business competitiveness through its creative talents. A few years ago, India drafted its first national design policy, following other Asian countries. This year, the city of Turin was designated as the first World Design Capital. The city is proud of its diverse economy hosting a variety of industries, from aerospace to wineries. Seoul has already been designated as 2010’s design capital, riding on the success of its global brands like LG, Samsung, and Daewoo.

Design’s love affair with government perhaps began in the 90s. The Creative City book was released, following a 1995 article by Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini. Demos, the British think-tank began advising policy-makers to look at creativity as an enabler of regional economic prosperity in face of globalization. In 1998, Peter Hall’s Cities in Civilization also built the foundation to what Richard Florida would later dub the “creative class,” a term that includes designers, as well as workers in IT, science, financial sectors, among others.

I have not seen how these design policies are drafted, but they lead me to believe that they are based on theories regarding the diversity of design activities in urban regions and their connection to regional economic drivers. As designers, we lack economic tools to draft these theories, so it is very likely that design policies are drafted largely by non-designers. Regional economic theories for design that include designers’ perspectives are needed.

I can only speculate on the content of design policies by doing some reverse engineering. To draft such policies, I would start by quantifying the contributions of all the design industries in the local economy such as graphic design, product design, and so on, and do an inventory of the local economic output. I would look at the design workforce, based on designers’ supply and demand, the annual number of design students graduating each year from local universities and new hires. If the number of design students exceeds the number of local design jobs, a city is likely to experience a “brain drain” of designers.

Based on an economic theory of design diversification and specialization cities could also invest in the development of new design areas and diversify their design economies. Concentration of graphic designers, for example, has a direct relation to the advancement of profession and the economic value that they create for a city. A desired concentration of designers, based on the number of institutions, organizations, companies, and gross domestic product (GDP) of a city could be calculated. I imagine the visual output of such estimate would look like slightly like a bell curve. (see figure 3).

Figure 3. Regional economic benefits of design are diminished as design workforce grows beyond demand. After a peak in optimal density has been passed, the addition of new graphic designers would not greatly benefit the economy of a city, nor the advancement of the profession. After the peak is passed, it would be recommendable for graphic designers to diversify their skills, or to specialize their skills even more, depending on the economic activities of the region. Graphic designers could focus on type design, or editorial design, for example. Designers could develop a new specialization, such as gene sequencing visualizations.

A city like Raleigh already has most of the criteria found in the “creative economy” principles. Raleigh-Durham is the sixth city with most “creative” workers in the U.S. according to Richard Florida’s Creativity Index (2002). It also has a highly educated population. Masters and PhD programs in design are available at NC State University, for example. There is a large number of companies with large Research & Development budgets, as well as connections to global markets. I don’t know if the region will become a creative economy driven by design, like the ones I mentioned earlier, but if Raleigh-Durham does draft a design policy for the region, I wonder how involved designers will be. Can design organizations drive such change?

Stand Up Comedy

And of course the “good” stuff:

http://webspace.newschool.edu/~beckn977/index.html

In a world where writers strike for online royalties and internet radio (temporarily) escapes paying crippling copyright fees, UbuWeb is a rare bird. Founded in 1996 by artist and poet Kenneth Goldsmith, it’s an extensive and entirely free online archive for avant-garde poetry, writing, film, and sound compositions. Remarkably, not one of the artists, obscure or famous, gets any financial remuneration for their work. Although much of the collection is out-of-print, the editors often post first and ask for permission later (or, perhaps, after the cease-and-desist letters start arriving). Their saving grace is that it’s primarily a site for the un-marketable–the aggressively avant-garde has never had much of a place in a goods-and-services economy. UbuWeb emphasizes free access to information, and in the process creates an online utopia for art and poetry.

[fig. 1 Edgar Varse and Le Corbusier, Peme électronique, 1958]

UbuWeb’s interests are far-reaching, and the site acts as an umbrella for several curated projects. One portion is devoted to Ethnopoetics (where you can see Shaker visual poetry or listen to Inuit throat singing) while another section is called “Outsiders” (former title: “Found + Insane”).

[fig. 2 An example from Kenneth Goldsmith's collection of Assorted Street Posters.]

Not to be missed is the complete archive of Aspen, a multimedia arts magazine published from 1965 to 1971. Each of the 10 issues, edited and designed by a different artist-designer team, came in a custom box filled with booklets, records, posters, and postcards. (And, in the case of one issue, a super-8 reel.) Contributors included Roland Barthes, Steve Reich, Ed Ruscha, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (One major drawback is that while a lot of the artwork was scanned in most of it remains at thumbnail size. However, someone did spend a lot of time re-typing the text so it could be read online.)

[fig. 3 Selection of Slides from 'Northeast Passing' by Yvonne Rainer, Aspen no. 8, 1970-71]

Last June, Archinect chief editor John Jourden conducted a great interview with Goldsmith, where they touched on a brief history of concrete poetry, “uncreativity as a creative practice”, and the origins of UbuWeb. A tidbit:

“I still believe what the Web does best is what it does originally, and that is just a way of getting things out and disturbing things. That is what’s new about the Web. Programming, you know, making computers jump through hoops isn’t really very interesting to me. UbuWeb is a flat HTML 1.0 site. There is no programming behind it, absolutely everything is written in BBEdit by hand. You know I want to keep the site very basic, because what really is new is this radical sense of distribution. We are in the business of radical distribution … That is what it’s about! It really is about free and unfettered access for people to materials that were relegated to museums or relegated to a specialist. And now are available to everybody free of charge.”

[fig. 4 On the Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1956-1972, 1989. View it here.]

Who knows how many would end up seeing a video piece by Richard Serra, hearing the voice of Guilliaume Apollinaire, or reading crazy found street flyers from New York if these weren’t readily available online? There are many, many more artists on the site, both hugely famous and completely unknown, and the list is growing. Be prepared: wandering through UbuWeb is an addicting way to spend a few minutes, a few hours, or a few weeks.

Can research be defined independently or does it simply arise from and belong to practice? Is research a way to think about and redefine the position of the designer?

As a current design researcher at the Jan van Eyck, I’m working on answering these questions for myself. I’m crafting another post that will collect some of my notes and remembrances from the day’s events. In the meantime, Daniel van der Velden, one of the event organizers and also the moderator, has kindly agreed to allow us to post the excellent introductory remarks he made at the beginning of the symposium.

Images © Sea Shepherd, www.seashepherd.org

Design Practice Research

Daniel van der Velden

The unpleasant picture shown here is important for a number of reasons. Ecological, environmental and ethical ones–yet just one of those reasons concerns us today.

What are we looking at? In fact, the picture’s taken from aboard one of the ships of an organization called Sea Shepherd. Sea Shepherd is a radical conservation society, founded by Paul Watson, a co-founder of Greenpeace.

Sea Shepherd, contrary to Greenpeace, when it encounters a ship hunting for whales, it will warn once, and upon ignorance of that warning, will attempt to disable it. And that’s what is about to happen here. This picture was taken while Sea Shepherd was pursuing a Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean. The targeted ship was the Nisshin Maru. It was the last remaining one of the so-called factory ships. These ships are used to process whales into canned meat while at sea.

Now since commercial whaling is forbidden, the Japanese had tried to do something to prevent their mothership, the Nisshin Maru, from being targeted by the international treaties. They had painted a text on the ship’s side. The text read:

Research.

Now I would wholeheartedly agree if you would claim that this is far from the ideal way to start today’s symposium about graphic design. However, what I want to isolate from the case just outlined is the particular usage that the term Research’ is getting here.

It is of course used as a sign or logo that lets the ship, its crew, and its fleet, be exempt from rules and laws that define commercial whaling as a punishable crime.

It is a way to dissociate the ship and its crew from their true intentions.

This is, I think, comparable and analogous to one what is at risk of happening in art and design practices today. That risk is that we start naming them research’ practices while what’s going on below the surface is business as usual’.

Not every practice is a research.

On the other hand: not every research is a practice.

If we want to describe how design practice at present tends towards research, or defines conditions for it, one way to start is by looking at what it is designers are doing, and how they bring their interests and their obsessions into the work they do, and how their working methods are changing, and how, in fact, all-embracing definitions of design practice are increasingly hard to draw.

It is still quite normal to assume that actually, designers are pragmatists and all they want to do is solve problems.

But under the influence of the information revolution, graphic design is set adrift and has begun finding new mandates and possibilities: simply because the computer has brought typesetting into the designer’s studio, and that computer has email in it and is connected to the internet, many different faculties of and in designers are potentially being activated and developed.

For example, many graphic designers nowadays are writers and work extensively with forms of discourse and written exchange as part of shaping practice. The works they produce visually, as designers in the classical sense, cannot be seen independently from these writings. In that, they are not unlike some of their avant-garde predecessors from the modernist movements.

Some designers have changed what used to be the common design practice of stealing from each other’s work: they have started referencing their visual sources instead, which is indeed a meaningful departure from the implicit notion of competition and appropriation that underpin design as a fashion and trade.

The agency of designers in other fields than their own craft, results in many designers being invited into their context with a clean sheet, no agenda, a carte blanche. Here, in a way, they can design their own role from scratch. Rather than being asked to serve a pre-defined objective, designers often become wildcards, chameleons, adaptively changing color by the minute. Solving a traditional design problem is just one out of many roles that the designer is performing simultaneously.

One of the other consequences of our changing tools is that we can set up a studio now anywhere we want. There is no need to be contained within the four walls of an expensive metropolitan office space stuffed with Vitra chairs.

Many examples of cutting edge design are now being produced by collectives and entities who are not studios in the classical sense, and who operate from the unlikeliest of places, often mobile, sometimes unglamorous, and even at times from remote natural resorts where life is still good and affordable.

Other designers have started expanding their skills to formulate models and speculative scenarios. As such, they are bringing design thinking into areas off-limits to the strictly productive reach of what it is designers do, into a more strategic understanding of what design might become. They actively seek for an involvement in issues which are none of their business’, in which they are introducing an outside perspective.

We can say that a lot of conditions to speak of graphic design as research are in place. Writing, agency, authorship, mobility, post-studio field work, new collaborations, strategic and theoretical activities, are all transforming design into a knowledge-intensive multi-disciplinary discipline’.

But just like the commercial whaling Research’ shown here entails a risk, so does what I just briefly spoke about. The manifold positions which designers find themselves capable of occupying, eventually bring the risk that there’s no time left to actually make work. We may become so incredibly smart that we will be left in between all our knowledge-intensive networking activities with nothing to show.

Let this never happen. Do research. Make work. And let’s talk about it.