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Week 13

“Digital Aesthetic?” I don’t think there is one personally, aesthetic seems to be an abstraction when related to how the “New Media” uses design. The integration and advancement of technologies into an untraceable compilation of thoughtful content mixed with mindless change for the sake of change. I think Michael Bierut’s story of how the internet has both open and blinded design as a process illustrates well how the exchange of information is enlightening but not necessarily the process by which it is presented.

As I was looking over The History of the Internet in a Nutshell It became abundantly clear that there was a incredibly prescribed form of presentation. Information in text and mixed media is largely displayed with Roman style title fonts with serifs paired with the main body in almost always sans serif (Veranda, Arial, Helvetica). Images of simple condensed logos are standard on social media outlets (Facebook, twitter, youtube) leave something to be imagined if not examined closely. It’s a minimalist, functionalist approach to highlighting a single aspect of the multimedia digital display. Take for example a youtube trailer for the new Star Wars film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngElkyQ6Rhs) you can clearly see stylized text, camera shots, architecture. It highlights the video just fine and you can find more links about more snippets of semi related content but it’s all compiled by algorithm and money from sponsors. Many sites use advertisement and related subjects to bounce you around from site to site looking for something of interest. And while the open form of the websites allows for crafted videos it also often makes us sift through a sea of uninteresting or unrelated content. Like we talked about weeks ago planned obsolescence of is now gauged in an instance, like Bierut mentions, but often times it seems like it’s because we still lack the complete though of how things are presented.

Another example is this post (how do I change my font, change the formatting, add picture, video, sound) and present it with the right tags to get it some attention. Will my post be displayed correctly on all platforms it is viewed on? Mobile? Tablet? Computer? Television? The cross-pollination of form digitally and physically by what you read it on is prescribed but the control over aspects is difficult to fully comprehend or control because of limitations on time, funding, patience and size constraints.

This problem only compounds itself because of lack of extension in meaning we find because we simply move on to the next tidbit of information while the next tidbit becomes more complex to retain our interest for just a little longer. The “New Media” to me has been the mass media exodus, the craze of being the next trending item, the rubber banding of corporate approach from the iMac’s Bondi blue to sleek brushed steel, the degradation of what lasting importance means. It’s a definition I reluctantly put forward but it’s something that doesn’t mean anything to me.

Week 12

“Uh, sure,” the cheeky quote from Clifford Stoll’s article Why the Web Won’t Be Nirvana is the perfect way to sum up the advancement of design in the “New Media.” Importantly it seems to me in his article, the videos and the reading from the book this week that the idea of “New Media” is just that, variable. It is cross platform as described in the book, it’s the new ways of finding interdisciplinary methods of design on a large accessible scale. Or at least that’s how it makes most sense to me. The baffling aspect about it thought is that it defies succinct definition because of the instantaneous methods of communication and interaction.

Stepping back to look at where the “New Media” began is another sort of vague method of tracing importance. I’d gander to say that the elements that make up the new media have been around forever but the specific components to mix them started with the invention of the computer. In that regard the idea of machine doing some sort of work was largely formulated during the Industrial Revolution and continued into be refined,miniaturized and maybe most importantly economized. Mechanical processes led to digital a process somewhat attributed to Alan Turing in a successful attempt to decrypt messages from Germany in World War II. As the process adapted though out the second half of the 1900s. It is clear to me that the term new media really took off with the invention of affordable computer based technology starting in the 80s and 90s. This then blossomed as information exchange with internet (or rather dial up in the beginning) grew faster, cheeper, and was able to store more information. Leading up to me writing this here today.

The “New Media” as clearly created a new job market that is flourishing because of it’s undefined principles and adaptive nature to fill certain niches within the now global reach of design though the media. Graphic design, film design, web design, are all mixed positions now incorporating coding, fine art, digital art, advertising, photography and much more just to name a few. Broadcast television was another important developer in creating visual media that would later flourish during the .com boom. I think it’s almost fair to say that most jobs now at least have some aspect that relates to “New Media” or at the very least relies upon it in some way.

It’s a confusing subject to touch upon in regards to design because in many ways everything we use has been altered by design that we use daily. Our divisions of classification have been either blown out of the water or seem far too clear in regards to what we see as design in the “New Media.” Like Mr. Stoll said in 1994 there are a lot of voices but unlike him I think that in a lot of ways we now have the tools to find what is important to us more efficiently and will continue to become more apt at finding more.

Week 11

“Citizen Designer”: the distant successor of William Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement that promotes design as a force for social change and reform through progressive multidisciplinary means. That’s the definition of “Citizen Designer” as I understood it. It’s an intriguing proposition for how design should be utilized to create a conscious lasting purpose and meaning. It must be said that the “Citizen Designer” also uses methods for producing the design by using innovative processes to influence the multidisciplinary aspects of the design as a whole.

It seems to me that it’s a broad philosophy that encompasses elements of designs I in my everyday life. I think it’s wonderful that it’s an acknowledged feature of present design and that we can look retrospectively and access where we need to improve. In the case of Mau I think his message that design can come from anyone and information exchange is an invaluable tool to the sustainability of finding better design. I think it’s also important that Mau has distanced his theory from movements like De Stijl etc. on the basis that he’s not strictly looking for an utopian solution. He’s created an incredible positive tool that can be used as reference to many disciplines and that alone is nothing the shake a stick at.

On the other hand Barnbrook is an equally important counterpart with his pessimistic criticism and actions to incorporate change. His work at deconstructing corporate branding and consumerism by creating designs and works feeding upon condemnation of institutionalized design serve incredibly well at meeting the adversary. I think my largest qualm with the ideas presented by both Mau and Barnbrook is the fact that while they both fall under the category of “Citizen Designer” they use incredibly prescribed methods to further the field of design. In Mau’s case his rejection of designers as a prophet but the designer as “public intellectuals with profound responsibilities to shape society is a welcome addition to the ethos of the profession,” seems a minor change and one that only transfers importance to a new group to be idolized. Equally frustrating was Barnbrook’s branding of his own design with Virus and Barnbrook Design that is already being characterized by images and slogans. While I understand that a lot of information that seems contradictory in full context can be a modifier it seems that the philosophy of learning from different disciplines to critique one’s own work seems a little muddled. Like Mau I think compartmentalization and comparison add to new design and embracing differences make for specific usefulness. Like Barnbrook I think that critique of the over generalized makes for more specific design. However, their ideas still seem to factionalize themselves into importance. I suggest maybe the next step on the path to “citizen designership” be simply creating out of an informed point of view.

Week Ten

Call me old fashioned. Typography has always been of a particular interest to me because my mother dabbled in calligraphy. It’s only natural then my tastes are reflected in that. My personal tastes reflect some of the more conservative typeface. For example I like serifs, use of color and different typeface, relatively proportional x-heights (wide lettering seems much more accessible to me), Old Style German blackletter and Fraktur, I like the ornamentation of the mixture of styles used in the Nineteenth century posters (especially the fact that not all of it worked compositionally), I liked Baskerville’s distillation of roman, and more than anything else I enjoyed the curvilinear introduction back into Modern typography.

However, in reading the textbook I started to notice my personal preference was not only based on the forms I find pleasing and readable but the philosophy mentioned beyond the text itself. Particular forms I found “too sharp,” like Tschichold’s New Typography, tended to be aligned with ideas that I couldn’t seem to make sense of. I found that the New Typography really emphasized departure of uniform layout but didn’t mirror that strong desire in the typeface. Tschichold’s sense of an “Universal” standard seemed to contradict his efforts to break the mold, so to speak. Again, his acknowledgement of the fact when he emigrated to Switzerland his refined process shown in his Typographic Design (I thought the slab serif usage was wonderful in conjunction with his more stylized name) was a more sensible reconciliation with his idea that form should be situationally adaptive. Again this type of reimagining of texts based on technology was evident in Licko’s work with the digital typefaces and the evolution of Emperor to Modula to Template Gothic.

Week 9

I’m wildly fascinated with the idea of Industrial Design and I think that after learning about Brooks Stevens that he paramount figure in where the Industrial Design concept came from. Milwaukee could not have served as a better testing ground for the ever increasing practical and aesthetic changes that occurred throughout the 1900s.

It was hinted at in the articles we had to read for this week that Stevens was always more interested in cars, a childhood interest that was fostered in Wisconsin, than architecture when he went away to Cornell. I think it may be accurate to say that Stevens may have been simply aimed at doing something he loved in a place that he didn’t. I can certainly sympathize with following an notion of furthering interests only to be disappointed and then distracted by our real passion. I think it was probably a large portion of why Stevens decided to head home and work at creating his dream in a place he loved.

I think Milwaukee is a city that even today bristles with promise of a mixture of rural and urban. This had to have been particularly true when Stevens was cultivating his career when Milwaukee was growing as one of the Rust Belt’s industrialized cities grew because of war, economic prosper and environment of political intrigue in moving “forward.” From my understanding Milwaukee history the world wars greatly increased production of consumer products produced and spurred creation of unions. Sewer Socialists created an emphasis on industry and public works. While Milwaukee was just large enough to compete with the powerhouse center of industry in Chicago but just small enough to mix with the more predominate rural culture in the rest of Midwest. No where is it more evident in some of Stevens’ designs for lawn mowers and station wagons which are frequently portrayed in the advertisements alongside rural settings. This created an unique opportunity for Milwaukee to have an environment cohesive to prototyping and adapting technology for more universal use. I think the atmosphere of creating a progressive and pleasant urban environment filled with functional and beautiful industry is what drove Stevens to work so effectively from Milwaukee.

Week 8

I threw a few more pictures on as I missed last week’s post.

#photography #photographers on tumblr #design #architecture

Week 6

It's been chilly here in Minneapolis! Grabbing pictures of buildings and has been hard I've had to resort to pictures from my home mostly. Have to keep my hands out of the cold because I severely frost bit them when I was young. Alas this was the best picture of anything architectural I hadn't already take a picture of. This is St. Mary's Basilica which is right across the park from my apartment, it's always caught my attention at night, much like almost everything else I take picture of because of it's really stark stone that appears exceedingly pale under light. It creates quite an imposing feeling as it always peaks out behind everything. I did a little digging as to who designed the building and French architect Louis Masqueray. He designed the structure in the early 1900s with the influence of Baroque, Romanesque and Renaissance architecture. You can read more about it if you like from my source below: http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/47/v47i02p042-056.pdf

One of the things I particularly like about the design is that the rest of the buildings around it seem to contrast it with dark stone or glass and steel. It makes the eye get drawn to the building naturally because it's the odd building out. The original design concept of making churches meeting places that you hear about all the time I'm sure was part of making it distinguishable from it's surroundings to literally draw people to the structure, regardless of if they needed a place of worship. Dark stained glass, bell towers, and roof contrast make you look up the enormous scale of the building.

I'm going to sneak in my public sculpture here because the two are located close to each other it seems important to mention that.

PUBLIC STATUE

This is a stature of Ole Bull in Loring Park (which I've mentioned before but upon further inspection I found the statue). It's a bronze statue of a man (Ole Bull) playing a violin on a heavy stone plinth with only bland stone letters reading "Ole Bull" and on the other side "Erected by Norwegian Americans" in all capital letters which is partially obscured by bushes. That's it. No plaque. No benches. No explanation to why he's there at all. He literally faces the towards the following picture:

Yes, ladies and gents, that is a literal dog pile statue in a dog park. Completely bewildered I took the picture of the Basilica not too far from both of these statues and got out of the cold.

Well I took the liberty of looking up Ole Bull and found that the statue was erected in 1897 slightly before the Basilica. It was done because Ole Bull was considered a great violinist because he drew on his inspiration from his Norwegian heritage in a time when people of Scandinavian descent started to make Minneapolis their home. The design was made to welcome more Scandinavians who were before a minority. My source below also mentions that Minneapolis still is keen of it's ever growing minority populations such as the Somali and Hmong. Check it out:

http://www.minnpost.com/stroll/2012/10/checking-out-loring-parks-ole-bull-and-other-twin-cities-statues-cultural-figures

End Public Statue Portion of this week

The rest of the design I noticed I had to do from the warmth of my own home. Home being an old light brick apartment building.

Here's a really rudimentary floor plan that I drew to scale to help visualize how my girlfriend and I were going to lay out our furnishings for the main living spaces. We're lucky because we have a lot of anomalies to design our layout around which we find creates interest. For example we're trying still trying to figure out are that we want to hang on the walls and there is a window with full trim in the dining room that once opened into the hallway. It breaks up the wall nicely and leaves us pretty uniform spaces to fill with other wall hangings.

As you can probably tell the layout is fairly spacious for a 1 bedroom which helps with the big pieces of large furniture and still leaves us plenty of space to spread out a little.

Here are a few picture I took out the window in our bedroom our back entrance and balconies, which would be a nice feature if it ever warmed up. This point leads me to the biggest design flaw that we've noticed with living in an older building. Heat. We have radiators and pipes that heat the apartment almost too well. It's hard to control the heat. New windows were installed as well. This leads to the apartment temperature fluctuating frequently from being too hot to too cold.

Another thing to mention about the view from the balconies is that it's obvious that they were newer construction. As is the case with the other buildings on the block. It really makes me wonder what the view of downtown might have looked like with that building with the light on gone from our level, or what other building might might ours have met up with to create a courtyard?

History of Design

This particular Star Wars poster design is heavily inspired by German Expressionism specifically Heinz Schulz-Neudamm's Metropolis poster. I know that the character C3PO original design by Ralph McQuarrie was heavily influenced by Shulz-Neudamm's robotic woman esthetic in both the initial design and construction (Link to Gallery of McQuarrie's early designs for the original Star Wars http://www.starwars.com/news/an-annotated-guide-to-the-star-wars-portfolio-by-ralph-mcquarrie). Not only was this utilitarian approach used in the initial design but was carried through into other characters as well(Here's a link to some early production photos of C3P0 http://www.starwarshelmets.com/original-c-3po-costume-threepio.htm). Star Wars in general has some very interesting industrial art that leads me to believe that the view that machine could help build a better society was ever present in many designs in the Star Wars universe. In general the design process that I imagine was akin to the Constructivist Congress in that more than one ideological methods of design were presented.

This photo is of some of my block lettering practice for drafting which reminded me of continued changes happening in typography. While not exactly in the school Bauhus type it does make heavy use of sans serif. It noticeably different in that Tschichold, Renner and Albers all made use of lower case type while the architectural style taught to me in Theatre excludes any lower cases. It was however encouraged in class to widen letters, embolden and stylize lettering to fit the subject matter to highlight the utilitarian purpose of the drawing itself.

I found both the trunks (not the elephant's) and the radiator to have basic design principles utilized in Constructivism and German Expressionism. The use of montage in the trunks is a clear nod to it's utilitarian purpose for travel. It also uses overlapping texts and image (and vise versa) mentioned again in reference to De Stijil and Dada. The radiator while I think embracing the utilitarian design differs a smidge because of the superfluous design (I like it) but still harkens to how elegant and useful an utility can be.

Found Object

Loring Park is a place I walk in and around almost every day on my way to get my car out of my parking garage which is about a block or two away from my apartment. As I pass it everyday I hardly ever think about the park's design since it's cold out and people don't have much use for parks during the winter. Point being, a park being designed specifically for winter in the middle of the city is a hard set of parameters to follow. That being said I do notice familiar faces of people utilizing the paths, mostly walking dogs or motoring onto the college campus. After walking around the paths which are somewhat curvy due to the fact that there are small rolling hills I found it connected to the sculpture garden near the Walker and the Loring Park Greenway. I find it has a nice contrast to the relatively flat concrete blocks that surround it on all sides. Once I started to notice the obvious design choices that were implemented, the large frozen over garden beds, the small adobe-esqe looking Community Arts Center, the grills placed near the community college campus, metal benches on the hills overlooking the small lake and cathedrals in the distance, the evenly spaced round, dated looking path lamps, basketball court and playground, that the park was incredibly designed to anticipate the needs of those who use it. It's hard to incorporate nature and recreational areas into high population density. I think Loring park does that even in winter which is an incredible feat of design, even if it mostly caters to dog owners.

In an effort to familiarize myself with my new home in Minneapolis I've been driving to an from the downtown area a fair deal. In particular I've been to and from work a lot lately in the evenings. This is a fairly lengthy process seeing as my car is parked in a garage a few blocks away. This results in me walking around a lot in my process of transit. I like to notice the designs of the new construction and restoration projects which I think look particularly striking at night. I've noticed that in a lot of the Theaters typeface is in the bold sans serif styles (in The Guthrie and Orpheum pictures 1-3). Aside from the Mill District most of the buildings make extensive use of glass and metal in their construction reminiscent of Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace. This is clearly illustrated in images 4, 8 and 10. I'm finding that most of the designs have utilitarian purposes like the skyway in image eight which serves as a shelter against the harsh winter conditions. Also, in regards to The Guthrie's design I'm frequently told that architect Jean Nouvel had a desire to use glass to make the work inside the theater transparent to the public. The Riverside Plaza, aka "The Crack Stacks," or "Ghetto in the Sky," (9) in contrast to the new construction has the appearance of a concrete version of Piet Mondrian's Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow (see link about bottom of the page for source). Unfortunately, the Riverside was a wayward design by modernist architect Ralph Rapson (also incidentally the architect of the 1st Guthrie theatre). In the course of my research I discovered The Riverside was originally a government funded operation that aimed at a large scale all inclusive complex that catered to a variety of potential residents. However, due to a great deal of social, political and economic issues the project was downscale and was never fully completed.

Sources:

http://www.docomomo-us.org/register/fiche/riverside_plaza

http://spoonfedminneapolis.blogspot.com/2010/07/ghetto-in-sky.html

Design Thinking

If I had to give a definition to design it would be something like: The constant process though which aspects of life are altered to meet certain social, physical or metaphorical constraints. I like to think about it as the stereotypical pursuit of your "dreams." Your personal aspirations are something you idealize without fetters but the process you take to make the idealized "dream" a reality has limitations. Design is about the nebulous consolidation of the ideal and practical.

I tend to find irksome design changes. Notably negative ones that I've notice very recently are web based. Just today I've noticed that the layout of tumblr we site has changed while you compose text. You now only get formatting options when things are selected which I find cumbersome because it does not fully display the functions that are fairly important to making the finished readable product. Speculatively, I believe the change was made to streamline the process of capturing the text, with the idea that one has to make revisions after the user is done writing. I don't believe this is a good compromise between fluid writing and progressive editing. Changes like this are always in effect on social media in order to evolve. Facebook also just implemented a change in the orientation of the chat bar that is fairly substantial in figuring out the new layout. It's not a big deal to me per say because I hardly ever use that function but it does make someone I would want to talk to more clicks away. The chat now utilizes the profile pictures, which I have to mention are tiny, to open chat and has no ability (at least that I've found) to minimize the chat.

The most interesting part of the reading this week (Design Thinking by Tim Brown) I found to be the way the nurses took an active part in making their job better. It just amazes me when people are freely given the opportunity to better their own lives through the quality of their work they contribute so fervently to create change. The collective atmosphere of change is what struck me and it make me really appreciate environments that embrace that way of thinking. On a not so light note, the article also made me reevaluate personal situations. I've been in situations where constraints limit both personal and public design process because not everyone is on board with the continuous "prototyping" of change for the betterment of a number of people within the organization. It's not beyond comprehension but it still very frankly blows.

About Me

My name is John Leahy. I'm a 22 year old student living and studying in Minneapolis trying to make a living in technical theatre, which is what I'm studying for at the PSOA, and any other means possible. I just recently moved and I've been commuting two and a half hours to work in Wisconsin (nothing can stop my love of the cheddarheads) on a fairly regular basis. I'm in my super senior year.

To be quite blunt about the class it's the only one that remotely interested me that was open that satisfied my GER arts credit for me to graduate. That said design is a thing very near and dear to my heart.

The entire basis of my chosen profession at the moment centers on design. I help create theatrical designs and some day I hope to create (more) lighting, set and sound designs for plays. I've worked in many areas of on the "production" of a design for shows including scenery, properties, lighting and sound. These all center on a conceptual vision, the design, for that specific area. I've both built, painted, programmed, manipulated, welded, created paperwork, re-engineered and drafted specific portions working for a theatrical designer and been the theatrical designer who comes up with the initial vision.

Candidly, I think the thing that inspires me most is intricacy that I can let my imagination run away with. I love when pottery has cracks in it because of imperfections in the clay that an artist has acknowledged and worked into a piece. I love when buildings are conscious of their surrounds and have to make concessions to allow a tree to grow through the shingled roofline. More than anything else, I love poetry. I like to be immersed in my senses and my thoughts on an endless excursion, and be able to come back to it if I have to leave. Those are the things that inspire me.

Cheers!

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