formgiving: DP's 1&2

on request, images of my homework:

creating forms that represent "hidden" and "exposed."

















"secular" and "sacred"

















A pen in the design language of Tom Dixon.












it's made out of steel rod, which led me to convert the gas stove in the french house kitchen into a smithy for sixish hours.








































Briefly explaining myself: it pulls from his style/use/habits of line-->3D, symmetry/assymetry, and a deference to material. here are some of his pieces:





















there were some really really cool pens in class. i'm sad i don't have pictures.

for all the germaphobes and vacuum enthusiasts

this seems like an obviously good idea.



















UV-C lights kills "99.9% of potentially harmful, otherwise invisible things that standard vacuums (even pink cyclone based cleaners) are powerless against – such as dust mites, mould, flea eggs and even viruses and bacteria."

retails for $499.95

Battles

I got to see them in new york (for free!) and they were amazing. stefan showed me these videos this week. it was happiness in the midst of pen-making misery.

"Tonto" by Battles



"Atlas" by Battles

another reason to like the economist

great illustration. everything comes together nicely. plus, has a nice 70's air to it.




















"Because it isn't only six-year-olds who don't want to be left in the dark." see more ads from the campaign here.

more blog/reality crossovers....

was superpleased to see "flip and tumble" bags on notcot, the product of a stanford PD thesis project. the post follows after a series that is focusing on "reusable plastic bag" culture and i'm totally objective in saying that eva's and hetal's product is the best.






































the site looks great, the branding is much improved. and, having tried out the prototypes, i can confidently say that bunching up these bags is seriously as simple as the site claims. two seconds, max.

this is pretty exciting: people i remember from school going on to do things in life. i suppose this will become more and more common; and maybe i was expecting it from the beginning. but i couldn't have predicted how significant it feels to see people's designs out there in the world. i wish i could type out deeper thoughts than this, because what i'm thinking feels a bit more complicated/profound. hrrrm.



in other news, twenty seventeen was featured on some girl's blog. we've had that happen once in the past, but this is nice too. so now, my amateur modeling/boobshot is on the internet again. and our post follows one that has a picture of lindsey lohan. i think i've finally made it, guys.

entertainment.

watch this.



david, ed, and joe made it for one of those 24 hr film competitions. hi-larious.

i don't know why this one isn't up. david made it way back in the beginning of the summer and i guess i was just too lame to post it back then. its a movie explaining "design."

a london calling

from creative review: "unidentified flyposted objects"

a print campaign that is targeted at graphic designers. posters & mailings. screenprinting and letterpress makes me happy. nice colors, also.

i would write more, but for midterms.

Bitforms

The other day, I was trying to explain a mindblowing exhibit i saw at a gallery in the meatpacking district this past summer-- Daniel Rozin at Bitforms. we came across it totally by accident, when we were trying to visit a gallery in the same building. it was not only incredible to see, but lucky too, since it really affected/helped andreas out with thesis thoughts...




















So there's a picture of Joann and me. It was amazing to be interacting with his work, which all sensed a person and behaved like "smart" mirrors to give us feedback of our own presence.




















here's a shot of the mechanisms that went into making it work: the colors are created by rotating the position of a ring with a gradient on the outside. the motors would make these amazing insect-like sounds....














You can't really see in this picture, but this work with wooden pegs is incredible. the pegs are cut with a slanted edge, so that a slight ledge created shadows. by rotating the pegs, rozin could control lights and darks in the image as a whole. plus, they moved totally silently... so seeing them move was really surreal-creepy-beautiful.

Here's a photo from his site; maybe it explains things better:















I don't have too much time to write something out about rozin himself, but here's the copy-paste from bitforms:

Daniel Rozin (b. 1961, Jerusalem) creates interactive installations and sculptures that have the unique ability to change and respond to the presence of a viewer. Although computers are often used, they are seldom visible. Mirrors and mediated perception of the self are central themes in Rozin’s recent work. In most of his pieces the viewer takes part, actively and creatively, in the performance of his art.

Displayed at the gallery doorstep, Rozin’s Weave Mirror assembles 768 motorized and laminated C-shaped prints along the surface of a picture plane that texturally mimics a homespun basket. A seemingly organic smoky portrait comes in focus to the sound of clacking steps made by the sculpture’s moving parts. Informed by traditions of both textile design and new media, the Weave Mirror and paints a picture of viewers using a gradual rotation in greyscale value on each C-ring. A playful juxtaposition between the rustic and photographic, this sculpture is suspended from the ceiling. Its functional circuitry and wiring is visible behind the picture plane, exposing its genius craft.

Also exhibited for the first time, Rozin’s Peg Mirror comprises 650 circular wooden pieces that are cut on an angle. Casting shadows by twisting and rotating in unison, wooden pegs forming concentric circles surround a small central camera. The mirrored image produced in this work is activated by software authored by Rozin that processes video signals and breaks up imagery geometrically, seemingly pixel by pixel. The silently moving wood components in this piece flicker like jewels or coins in the spotlight, challenging our notions about what constitutes a “digital object”.

For more than a decade Rozin’s art has employed a wide range of materials including chrome spheres, flat wood panels, and city trash from the streets of New York. Software art that links screen-based performance with real-time video processing has been another focus of Rozin’s efforts since the mid-1990s. The Snow Mirror, which uses an artist-authored algorithm that floats site-specific visual imagery of the immediate past into the present, hovers in the gallery mid-air as a projection on silk fabric. Exhibiting for the first time in the United States, the Snow Mirror debuted at bitforms gallery in Seoul last year.

coming back from kairos at 2 am

now that mary has been spreading the gospel, i feel very very bad about not having posted much since school started. a combination of school kicking my ass and my computer monitor being (a) tv static or (b) distorted in the x-axis has dissuaded me from looking at pretty things on the internet as well.

here's a nice line from papercuts today:

When my wife and I got married, we combined our book collections and made a deal. It’s the kind of brutal arrangement that pretty much guarantees we’re sticking it out until the end. Here’s how it works: If she ever leaves me, I get to keep all her books. If I ever leave her, she gets mine. Loser take all. More things in life ought to work that way.

and for no reason at all than that paragraph from mr. dwight garner, a few life ambitions: 1. tree house. 2wedding registry at phaidon to accumulate all expensive design books that i want. 3. octagonal-shaped library (in which to house all my happy books).

i've been taking a seminar that bill burnett is calling "voice lessons." it's a predicatably "bill" class, i suppose, one to teach us how to maneuver around the world as ambiguously-degreed PD people and how to "find our voice." how to be smart about it, how to articulate it, and figuring out what "it" is exactly and what "it" is that you want. it's the class i look forward to the most-- for the people, for the break from the present, for the self-reflection... we watched a clip of the film version of the fountainhead today and also did some elevator pitches, which got me to thinking about tall buildings.

with this seminar in addition to a negotiation class i'm taking this quarter, i feel like everything is starting to get directed "up." going up elevators is more than just 30 second pitches... it seems to be a lot more about some literary motif... elevating life in a wholly practical way that is a little depressing, a little resigned. most definitely mundane. but today, standing in an "elevator" created by pushing some chairs around, it felt positively terrifying-- and without even leaving the ground.

i remember having written in people's high school yearbooks about being at the unsteady cusp of something in our lives. some sort of precarious place that's either at the top of a peak in a thrilling way, or maybe in an intimidating way. well, that was all bullshit back then. i'm really feeling it now. today in the seminar, we jotted down some thoughts on "workview" (that's it, just the word and what it feels like in your head). i decided to type it up here. (indulge me.)

I'm realizing that work is increasingly about setting out to do something. And only after that, it's attending to the details. Details can drag you down and details are most often about people. Details carry everything else out; so it seems that ideas are in setting out and details are the means of execution. Those details form the "task."

But something I didn't expect was "setting out" being work; getting started and even starting over-- it's the ideas that get you out of the details...

Work, versus school, is to become a specialist. I think that work means becoming the person who is responsible for something, someone the others turn to for x. It's training yourself for longer attention spans and more and more reliance on others. It's hurrying and waiting, because you're part of something bigger-- and only sometimes more empowering-- than yourself.

So i wrote that down in class, but i think what i hit on was the insight that what i most fear is the stopping of growth. i never want to stop being a generalist. i never want to have become an authority on something. but it seems like the elevators are only going up sometimes, not in or out or slightly bearing left.

have you seen hotel chevalier yet? i wish an elevator could take me to live in a wes anderson movie.