Kwame Nyanning

Dangerous

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Design for Dialectics/

Jumping back onto Tumblr. Lots to think about lately... and lots to do. 

I really enjoyed the interplay of ideas and themes expressed across these three videos. Together they resolve into a holistic articulation of how deep design can go when practiced with intention, resolve and a point of view. 

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"A class at the School of Visual Arts was recently tasked with designing for protest culture in a class called "Product, Brand and Experience," for which the subtitle is the brief: "Consumer Products for Protestors." Damon Ahola and Richard Clarkson were among the students who took the class last semester, teaming up to design B. Super—a collection of transformative tools (including a utility belt) that transform the wearer/user into a superhero in minutes." via Core77

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Design for The Whole Story

"My approach to interviewing has always been to let the subject talk about whatever they think is important about the topic, not to simply answer a pre-determined list of questions. So I don't prepare questions in advance, and the result is that the conversations are fluid, wide-ranging, and fun. We talk about their creative processes, design philosophies, personal stories and background, and much more. But in the documentaries, we only used the bits that worked within each film's narrative arc. So if you enjoyed what was in the films, now you can get the full stories and the full context." - Gary Hustwit 

(via Kickstarter)

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Design for Natalia/

"Swedish communications agency RBK has created an alarm system for human rights workers that is powered by social media. 

The “Natalia Project” – named after Natalia Estemirova, a Russian human rights activist who was murdered in the North Caucasus in 2009 – is a GPS-equipped bracelet that when triggered, emits an alarm that informs staff at human rights group Civil Rights Defenders of the wearer's location. It also notifies people who like or follow the project online so they can send out alerts and calls for help on social media.

Each bracelet is set up with individual security protocols based on the wearer’s protection needs – the alarm response will depend on their location, the type of work they are involved in and the infrastructure in their local area. “The idea is to be able to react in the best possible way, if an alarm is triggered, depending on these factors,” says Mathias Wikström, chief executive of RBK."

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Design for Analogy/

"This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize–winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over thirty years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition. We are constantly faced with a swirling and intermingling multitude of ill-defined situations. Our brain’s job is to try to make sense of this unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do so? The ceaseless hail of input triggers analogies galore, helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often this means the spontaneous evocation of words, sometimes idioms, sometimes the triggering of nameless, long-buried memories. Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim, “I undressed the banana!”? Why do people who hear a story often blurt out, “Exactly the same thing happened to me!” when it was a completely different event? How do we recognize an aggressive driver from a split-second glance in our rearview mirror? What in a friend’s remark triggers the offhand reply, “That’s just sour grapes”? What did Albert Einstein see that made him suspect that light consists of particles when a century of research had driven the final nail in the coffin of that long-dead idea? The answer to all these questions, of course, is analogy-making—the meat and potatoes, the heart and soul, the fuel and fire, the gist and the crux, the lifeblood and the wellsprings of thought. Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights. Like Gödel, Escher, Bach before it, Surfaces and Essences will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own minds. By plunging the reader into an extraordinary variety of colorful situations involving language, thought, and memory, by revealing bit by bit the constantly churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden from view, and by discovering in them one central, invariant core—the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to past experiences—this book puts forth a radical and deeply surprising new vision of the act of thinking."

Buy Surfaces and Essences here

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Sturgeon‘s law is usually expressed thus: 90% of everything is crap. So 90% of experiments in molecular biology, 90% of poetry, 90% of philosophy books, 90% of peer-reviewed articles in mathematics – and so forth – is crap. Is that true? Well, maybe it’s an exaggeration, but let’s agree that there is a lot of mediocre work done in every field. (Some curmudgeons say it’s more like 99%, but let’s not get into that game.) “A good moral to draw from this observation is that when you want to criticise a field, a genre, a discipline, an art form …don’t waste your time and ours hooting at the crap! Go after the good stuff or leave it alone. This advice is often ignored by ideologues intent on destroying the reputation of analytic philosophy, sociology, cultural anthropology, macroeconomics, plastic surgery, improvisational theatre, television sitcoms, philosophical theology, massage therapy, you name it. “Let’s stipulate at the outset that there is a great deal of deplorable, second-rate stuff out there, of all sorts. Now, in order not to waste your time and try our patience, make sure you concentrate on the best stuff you can find, the flagship examples extolled by the leaders of the field, the prize-winning entries, not the dregs. Notice that this is closely related to Rapoport‘s rules: unless you are a comedian whose main purpose is to make people laugh at ludicrous buffoonery, spare us the caricature.

- Dan Dennett, Intuition Pumps,and other Tools for Thinking

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Design for Reactions/

"Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral candidate at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has grown a collective of microscopic crystal flowers by dissolving barium chloride and sodium silicate into a beaker of water. In a chemical reaction, barium carbonate crystals are formed as carbon dioxide from the air to diffuses the solution, creating intricately jagged forms and patterns. 'In nature, you see many complex shapes and patterns,' says Wim Noorduin 'There’s a huge interest to grow complex shapes at the microscale,' in response to differences in the environment, the structure of a shell dramatically changes as the acidity of the solution and the temperature become modified. Images are then taken using an electron microscope - which capture details of the composition."

(via designboom)

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Design for Geek Brands/

“Called H Tokyo, the new store targets the demand for upscale, almost bespoke brands with a focus on a single product and craft, particularly from men in their 30s and 40s with the cash to pay for them. Brands like this, which offer a depth of expertise and specialisation, are being well rewarded whether in apparel, sports, interiors or gadgets, thanks to the rise in spending by men on themselves. There are other examples in Kitte, too, such as Urban Research’s Work Not Work.

H Tokyo itself is a tiny 45 square metres store in cool concretes and warm woods dedicated entirely to selling men’s handkerchiefs. It offers over 200 SKUs in high quality cotton, but claims to make only 30 units per style, with new patterns abusnd styles introduced every two weeks. Designs include collaborations with artists and illustrators, and emphasise originality and uniqueness. Prices range from ¥1,200 to an impressive ¥4,000.

Old Fashioned says that, in a market dominated by two major players selling a plethora of licensed brands, it is aiming to create a market for fashion and custom handkerchiefs. The store offers a monogramming service (in one of 10 selected fonts) for ¥315 as well as add embroidered motifs, and shows customers how its handkerchiefs are made. As in its Setagaya store, H Tokyo likes to showcase manufacturers with a similar upscale artisanal philosophy, and includes a selection of men’s boxer shorts from high end men’s brand, Tokyo Trunks, starting at a mere ¥3,150, as well as soaps and other grooming products. It also sells Next Gravity Revolution, a men’s footwear brand, with price points of around ¥70,000.

H Tokyo is a good example of the growing popularity of what can loosely be called Geek Brands. Characterised by an obsession with detail, craftsmanship, materials and presentation, they are the antitheses — and a reaction to — both mass market chains and mass market luxury, at least for men. This same demand can be seen in the strong sales of men’s lifestyle magazines such as Leon, Uomo and luxury titles like Oceans – up 30 percent in 2012 amid a contracting market according to trade reports — which offer deeply encyclopaedic reviews of gadgets, clothes, and accessories.”

(via The Buiness of Fashion)

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Design for Anti-Gravity/

"Plastic extruded from this robotic 3D printer solidifies instantly, allowing it to draw freeform shapes in the air extending from any surface.

Petr Novikov and Saša Jokić from Barcelona's Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia created the machine during their internship at Joris Laarman Lab, where students are given a platform to experiment with new digital fabrication methods.

Unlike normal 3D printers that require a flat and horizontal base, Mataerial prints with plastic that sticks to horizontal, vertical, smooth or irregular surfaces, without the need for additional support structures. 

The process, which the designers call "anti-gravity object modelling", is a form of extrusion that instantly creates chunky three-dimensional rods, rather than slowly building up two-dimensional layers like a standard 3D printer."

(via dezeen)

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Design for America/

This General Motors industrial film by from 1958 is a fascinating example of nationalistic propaganda wrapped in design porn.  

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Design for Bookends/

"The way the game is set up, it’s kind of infinite. What I mean by that is that you could play it so many different ways that it’s basically impossible to storyboard or have a defined set of narratives for how the player will play it.

Instead, what I did was that I came up with two extreme cases—around the office we call them “Berkeley” and “Pittsburgh,” or “Green City” and “Dirty City.” We said, if you are the kind of player who wants to make utopia—a city with wind power, solar power, lots of education and culture, and everything’s beautiful and green and low density—then this would be the path you would take in our game.  But then we made a parallel path for a really greedy player who just wants to make as much money as possible, and is just exploiting or even torturing their Sims. In that scenario, you’re not educating them; you’re just using them as slave labor to make money for your city. You put coal power plants in, you put dumps everywhere, and you don’t care about their health. 

I made a series of panels, showing those two cities from beginning to late stage, where everything falls apart. Then, later on, when we got to multiplayer, I joined those two diagrams together and said, “If both of these cities start working together, then they can actually solve each other’s problems.”  The idea was to set them up like bookends—these are the extremes of our game. A real player will do a thousand things that fall somewhere in between those extremes and create all sorts of weird combinations. We can’t predict all of that.  Basically, we figured that if we set the bookends, then we would at least understand the boundaries of what kind of art we need to build, and what kind of game play experiences we need to design for."

 - Stone Librande SimCity Designer

(via BLDGBLOG)

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Design for Critique/

“Hello World” is the test message that pops up on to screens when programmers have successfully executed a given project. It’s also the title of Alice Rawsthorn’s new book, which presents a sweeping survey of design’s role in contemporary culture, and the ways in which mankind has sought to improve its daily existence. The shop-talk term also refers to what happens when the design process ends, and its usage and dissemination to the wider public begins.

The range of topic, and the task of pinning down the ever-elusive discipline of design is ambitious, but Rawsthorn’s plain-spoken confidence meets the difficulties of conducting that discussion head-on. Rawsthorn has been the weekly design columnist of the International Herald Tribune for over six years and is a former Director of the Design Museum in London. She draws upon her strength as a storyteller to tackle the challenge with accessible, clear prose, common analogies, and amusing anecdotes. Although Hello World is designed by Dutch superstar Irma Boom — best known for her conceptual and sculptural approach to print media, and “fat books” in particular — the text itself is notably and refreshingly free of any design world esoterics.

Broad-stroke headers for a majority of the chapters (“What is good design?”; “Why design is not – and should never be confused with – art”) read like provocations or prefaces to caustic manifestos; epigraphs from the canon of design pedagogy – everyone from Reyner Banham, to Victor Papanek, László Moholy-Nagy, Steve Jobs, and Bruno Munari – set the tone of each section with critical perspectives. Yet Rawsthorn’s elucidation of her examples, from prosthetic limbs to infographics, corporate identities, public transit wayfinding, and smartphones, never fully culminates with a central, incisive argument. At times, her observations can be lucid to the point of facile.

There are a few moments when Rawsthorn seems particularly exercised (the stock colouring of Post-It notepads is described as “uriniferous” at least twice); she also airs critical observations that get brushed under the rug all too often (perhaps because well-considered design commentary from non-practitioners is a fledgling genre?). Rawsthorn criticises the lack of diversity in the design profession; she advocates for higher integrity in the use, origin and afterlife of materials; her even-handed depiction of social design places as much emphasis on the long-term effects of a project, as it does on its philanthropic intentions. Rawsthorn is one of the few full-time, internationally read design critics, but readers, especially professional designers, may look elsewhere for fine-combed takedowns or assessments; Hello World aims to introduce questions rather than provide strong arguments or actionable solutions.

Rawsthorn’s arsenal of knowledge could be best described as that of a specialised generalist, or general specialist. But one need only flip through the back matter to confirm the wide-ranging extent of her research: the annotated bibliography and acknowledgments comprise nearly a quarter of the whole book. Still, the book is not a comprehensive historical account, nor does it pretend to be. In providing a map of contexts and precedents with which to consider design, Rawsthorn provides a much-needed resource for deeper enquiry. At its best, Hello World is an invitation and encouragement to the 99 percent to engage in the conversation of where design is headed, beyond the check-out aisle, and in the foreseeable future."

(via Icon Magazine)

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Design for Process/

I have a feeling over the course of the next 6 months some big things are afoot for the practice of design and design management. In short, things are about to get way more complex. How we design for and manage complexity comes down to being good at what we do. How do you do what you do? Is it elastic enough to cope with the inevitable cascade of fast approaching paradigm shifts? 

I dusted off this running compendium of design processes pulled together by Hugh Dubberly to test my process vocabulary and brush up on how I structure and describe my practice. I encourage others to do the same. 

You can download the document here.

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Design for Low Data Pressure/

"How we guffawed a mist of flat white coffee onto our iPads when a survey said that half of Americans think that stormy weather affects cloud computing. But they were right. The infrastructure running cloud computing both suffers and generates its own weather. Facebook kept servers heated so that clouds of water wouldn’t condense on them as they were brought across the humidity gradient from truck to a new cold-air server farm inside the Arctic Circle. Data centres have long been air conditioned, climate-controlled and Halon-protected caves, and recently water cooling is making a come back - rivers irritating server farms, carrying their heat safely away. Fire control is provided by gaseous suppression systems, whose alien atmospheres drive the oxygen from a burning room, or by water mist systems (with meteorological names like AquaFog) which smother fire in a cooling mist.

There is weather, too, beyond the physical infrastructure. Our “likes” and “favourites” are small prayers to the social network gods to keep safe the photos, spreadsheets and status updates we entrust to their cloudy crypts. (Not all precipitation makes it back to the ground: virga is rain that evaporates (or hail that sublimes) before reaching the ground - the observable spinning bar that never results in a file being displayed on our screens. Our status updates may not suffice as offerings: if we didn’t pay for the cloud service, we’re making a wish.) Service uptime websites are the weather charts. A database fails, creating a ripple of low data pressure." - Rodcorp "Does Cloud Computing Have Weather?"

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Design for Industrial Policy/

"In 1839 the French government purchased the Daguerreotype patent and placed it in the public domain. Such patent buyouts could potentially eliminate the monopoly price distortions and incentives for rent-stealing duplicative research created by patents, while increasing incentives for original research. Governments could offer to purchase patents at their estimated private value, as determined in an auction, times a markup equal to the typical ratio of inventions' social and private value. Most patents purchased would be placed in the public domain, but to induce bidders to reveal their valuations, a few would be sold to the highest bidder." - Michael Kremer "Patent Buyouts: A Mechanism for Encouraging Innovation"

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Design for Time Crystals/

"In February 2012, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek decided to go public with a strange and, he worried, somewhat embarrassing idea. Impossible as it seemed, Wilczek had developed an apparent proof of “time crystals” — physical structures that move in a repeating pattern, like minute hands rounding clocks, without expending energy or ever winding down. Unlike clocks or any other known objects, time crystals derive their movement not from stored energy but from a break in the symmetry of time, enabling a special form of perpetual motion.

“Most research in physics is continuations of things that have gone before,” said Wilczek, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This, he said, was “kind of outside the box.”

(via Wired)