Recently in design Category

I like zines, which is no surprise to anyone who knows me. I'm happy to spend money on supporting handmade art, and zines have a material quality about them that I find intriguing.

So, I found this zine at Cafe Vita or somesuch place last week (in the "free" area next to The Stranger). It's published by an artists' collective called the S.S. Marie Antoinette (SSMA).

(Strange note here: I just saw the movie Marie Antoinette on Saturday, which was good. Oh, and Sofia Coppola must have some pretty great music supervisors working with her. So, the zine - I'd picked it up a few weeks ago, but hadn't actually looked through it until today. Synchronicity?)

ANYWAY, the zine contains an engaging article about making art, which includes the following quote about "getting into the mood" for artistic creation:

Art is intense production. If you want to be cute and happy listen to a Belle and Sebastian record while knitting. That's crafts! We're talking Art here! It's intense! Start with a coffee!!! Preferably a Grande Americano, no room, at least four shots, and some intense music, like Daft Punk or Andrew WK on repeat! Something with a constant 4/4 dance beat is all you need. Okay, so now you're ready to make art!

This quote pretty much embodies the reason why I like reading zines - the creators always have strong opinions, with which I may not always agree, but I'm impressed with their intensity and drive to create.

BTW - while researching the SSMA, I found SeattleDIY.com, which publishes a great PDF guide to DIY spaces in Seattle.

David Silver, a professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco and former advisor of mine, has an excellent post regarding efforts to improve the Seattle Public Library's usability by enlisting the help of wayfinding professionals. I especially like that he takes umbrage with a Seattle PI reporter who suggested wayfinders just make signs:

my one problem with murakami's article is the way she patronizingly defines the growing field of wayfinding: Faulk is a professional "wayfinder" -- which is a fancy way of saying she makes signs. um, no - wayfinding is a lot more than that, as murakami should know, especially after writing such an interesting article about what's at play in this case of wayfinding. wayfinding is about what is being offered, what people are trying to find, and where and how the two meet. as our cities, spaces, and structures get more dense, complex, commercialized, and commodified, sometimes we need some help to just find our way. wayfinding, especially the kind i've seen lynne do with the gates foundation, seattle's parking meters, and now with the downtown library, gets us on our way and pushes us in the most interesting direction.

I have a lot of thoughts about the relationship between "designers" and "users," some of which I'll post here once they're a bit more fully formed. But I did want to point out that I wish there were more folks in communication/media studies interested in these sorts of issues. After all, design - whether it be architectural, graphic, experience, or otherwise - is about communicating to/with audiences. I think both the design community and media scholars have a lot to teach each other, and it's too bad they're not talking (yet).

So, I've been in Vancouver since last Thursday (3/23) for the IA Summit, which is part of my dissertation research. It was a good conference - lots of interesting things going on in the IA field that I will be thinking more about during the next couple of weeks. I attended a bunch of different panels, including one on research in the IA field (side note: it's amazing how many people only consider quantitative work valuable), and connected up with some UW geography students and one of my committee members. I also conducted two of my expert interviews: one with Peter Morville and one with Keith Instone. Both gave extremely thoughtful answers to my questions, and I am lucky that the IA community is filled with such generous people who are willing to talk to a total stranger in such depth about the work they do. The conference was a great opportunity to meet people whose work I've admired for a long time. I'll be conducting a number of interviews (via Skype or phone) over the next few weeks with some other folks who presented at the Summit.

I arrived early for the conference so I could enjoy a bit of the Pacific NW. I was reminded, again, of how much I miss this place, and how wonderful Vancouver is. I spent some time shopping on Main St. (between 12th and 24th), an area that reminds a bit of Capitol Hill and parts of Toronto. There are great coffee shops, cafes, ethnic groceries, amazing restaurants, vintage stores, and comic book shops in the area. I got a bunch of local zines at Lucky's and bought a bunch of other frivolous items at Voltage. I also ran on the seawall path along the water and gazed out at the beautiful mountains to the north. Sigh. I'm happy to be going home, but I really miss living in a (real) city.

A let me know about the horrible stuff that happened on Saturday in Capitol Hill. The Stranger has a very detailed article about the events. It's very weird, as I only lived four or five blocks from the crime scene. (via joygantic)

Oh, and I'm blogging from the YVR airport. For free. This place rocks!

(Pictures and other conference thoughts to come when I can figure out how to get my stupid cameraphone to send photos to Flickr at a higher quality.)

In preparation for my dissertation work, I attended one of Edward Tufte's Presenting Data and Information workshops in Austin on Friday. His talk, while not exactly earth-shattering, was interesting and provocative. There were places I found myself vehemently disagreeing with the information design guru, particularly when he said, "you don't need to have to know your audience, you just have to respect them." Hmm. Yes, respect for your audience is good. But what about respecting those individuals with vision issues? One of my problems with many of Tufte's design suggestions, especially his recently-debuted sparklines, is that they specifically require a certain level of visual acuity to decode. While I can see these types of mini-graphs being useful for financial pages and the like, it's hard to believe they will become de riguer Web design patterns.

Tufte's workshop is pretty much the same whenever you attend it, at least if 37 Signals' review is any indication.

I actually had my books autographed (sigh, such a nerd!) and talked with him for a few seconds. Actually, it was more like he talked to me. Based on our conversation, I determined that Tufte is definitely not a fan of postmodernism, and has little regard for the turn academic inquiry has taken in the last twenty years. I'm not sure how I feel about all this.

I'm thinking that this blog really needs a new look, but, as usual, I'm having trouble coming up with something that doesn't look totally lame. I may have been inspired by overstated's recent redesign, or it may just be that I'm growing tired of the vanilla MT template I've got going on right now.

So, I've been browsing around, looking for inspiration. Here's some stuff I've (re)found:

• Some great looking parody ads. I especially like the one for Pimp My Garden.
  
• A new industrial design Weblog that makes me want to make something. Anything. (via xBlog)
  
• A couple of graphic design firms: The Chopping Block promises "oranges and graphic design." Mule Design sells some sweet t-shirts - check out the one for Philadelphia.
  
• The Tate Gallery's agoraXchange is "an online community for discussing and designing a massive multi-player global politics game challenging the violence and inequality of our present political system." Ludicorp's The Game Neverending doesn't promise to change the world, but it does promise a "big, big, big, big world" and a real economy.
  
• A few weeks ago, I went to see the Christian Marclay exhibit at the SAM. His stuff is amazing.

Inspire me.

For your amusement - Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness (via xBlog).

Here's another great find, a film about the 1962 World's Fair that features some amazing footage of rude teenagers and a bunch of rotary phones.

I love Frontline on PBS, but I often miss it. Fortunately, I've just discovered that a bunch of episodes are available online, including some of my personal favorites - Merchants of Cool and Dot Con.

In other news, I'm reading Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness, which is finally out in paperback. It's a great piece of journalism, and it makes me want to write stuff like it...or just write, period.

Oh, speaking of journalism, there was also an interesting interview in this week's The Stranger with Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass. I still haven't seen Shattered Glass, but it's on my list.

And here's a random link that's too good not to share - a bunch of Flash art pieces (I especially like the black ribbon one) by Yugo Nakamura.

While wandering around the city today, I noticed that a surprising number of gratings have the words "Urban Accessories" printed on them. Lo and behold, there is a company that makes custom city accessories. It's like an Urban Outfitters for tree grates, drain covers, and trenches. Maybe I should mount some bollards to the walls in my apartment.

In other urban planning-ish news, check out this collection of hand drawn maps. (via xBlog)

In 1997, I was a newly-minted graduate in geology from a small liberal arts college in North Carolina. I was hoping to find work as an environmental scientist, but without a graduate degree, I was looking at an unfulfilling life as a bookstore employee. That is until I emailed one Andy Brewer, a multimedia producer and Web designer who was working with a small start-up called KOZ.com, which fell prey to the dot-com crash long ago. He hired me, gave me a huge book about HTML, and showed me Wired's Webmonkey site so I could teach myself how to code (or markup, since HTML isn't really "coding" - as I was frequently reminded by many of the developers with whom I worked).

So, it is with a heavy heart today that I announce that Webmonkey is shutting down. This is truly the end of an era.

(via Boing Boing)

These pictures of hand-painted/hand-crafted signs made me feel like I did when I first read Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan - heartbroken and nostalgic for a past that lives only in someone else's imagination.