Friday, September 14, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
recordbar research & strategy
kansas city's a great town for food, drink, and music, and kc's own recordbar is a great pick for all three. with delicious food, easy drinks, and live shows almost every night of the week, it's hard to go wrong. the iconic decor is classic: it's cool without being trendy, and fits the mood of the place; and the crowds aren't there for social posturing: they're there for a good time.
there's only one problem: you'd never know from the outside.
the recordbar is in the commercial and retail corner of westport, 43rd, and southwest trafficway. it's next to first watch. it's next to a cleaner's. a dollar tree. an ace hardware. the half price books. and with the look of its exterior, complete with the bubbly blue and gold typographic logo, you would never know that it wasn't a retailer itself. everyone who reviews it online says the same thing: "i was so surprised." or "i never would have guessed."
the recordbar shouldn't stay a secret. even just driving by, you should be able to guess what they do, and how well. they deserve it.
Monday, September 10, 2012
visual advocacy debate
smak and i have been asked to argue against this statement: "acting in a partisan manner through research or other design process discourages free thought and unfairly influences the minds of the audience members."
on this topic, here are some arguments we have found:
• it is our right and responsibility as designers and researchers to use the skills we have developed and the time we have spent learning about a given topic to present it in the most ethical and most useful way. other people don't have the time to sort through tons of neutrality and determine the best solution, but not only do we have that time, but we have been trained to identify that best solution. there's no shame in us rising to the call to action to do our job, and well.
• as they discuss in the section on catalyst design, we can use our position as designers to frame an issue and get a conversation started. it may well be beyond our power to direct people specifically, or influence their minds in a particular way, but we can give them a jumping off point to discuss.
• as our educations have (hopefully) prepared us to do, we should have a pretty strong sense of cultural literacy and critical thinking. having a transparently visible stance in a work can be much more useful in discourse than attempting to be neutral, because the well-defined stance gives people something to reject and craft an argument against, or hone in around, if they agree.
• given that it is impossible to be truly neutral, it's safer and better to have a well-reasoned and well-designed position than to deny your opinions and try to pass off something that, as neutrally as you may have attempted to make it, will definitely contain biases in your prioritization. it is much more insidious to allow people to internalize your priorities without realizing it.
• if your free thought can't withstand a touch of dialectic, maybe it wasn't all that much free thought in the first place? strong thinking can only get stronger and more reasoned when confronted with other people's opinions. anything that collapses the first time it encounters another thought is probably pretty arbitrary and not well considered.
on this topic, here are some arguments we have found:
• it is our right and responsibility as designers and researchers to use the skills we have developed and the time we have spent learning about a given topic to present it in the most ethical and most useful way. other people don't have the time to sort through tons of neutrality and determine the best solution, but not only do we have that time, but we have been trained to identify that best solution. there's no shame in us rising to the call to action to do our job, and well.
• as they discuss in the section on catalyst design, we can use our position as designers to frame an issue and get a conversation started. it may well be beyond our power to direct people specifically, or influence their minds in a particular way, but we can give them a jumping off point to discuss.
• as our educations have (hopefully) prepared us to do, we should have a pretty strong sense of cultural literacy and critical thinking. having a transparently visible stance in a work can be much more useful in discourse than attempting to be neutral, because the well-defined stance gives people something to reject and craft an argument against, or hone in around, if they agree.
• given that it is impossible to be truly neutral, it's safer and better to have a well-reasoned and well-designed position than to deny your opinions and try to pass off something that, as neutrally as you may have attempted to make it, will definitely contain biases in your prioritization. it is much more insidious to allow people to internalize your priorities without realizing it.
• if your free thought can't withstand a touch of dialectic, maybe it wasn't all that much free thought in the first place? strong thinking can only get stronger and more reasoned when confronted with other people's opinions. anything that collapses the first time it encounters another thought is probably pretty arbitrary and not well considered.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
on authorship, production, and intent within design
graphic authorship:
michael rock questions whether authorship is a useful concept for graphic designers. authorship, being the pre-postmodern (modern?) notion of the author as being truly the single, genius creator of a work, who is the ultimate authority (note the etymology) on the object and outside of whom no further information can be taken about it. postmodern decentering removes the author from the heart of the work, laying ultimate responsibility for interpretation on the reader him or herself, with all the social context they can glean.
he says: "The cult of the author narrows interpretation and replaces the author at center of the work. Foucault noted that the figure of the author is not a particularly liberating one. By transferring the authority of the text back to the author, by focusing on voice, presence becomes a limiting factor, containing and categorizing the work. The author as origin, authority and ultimate owner of the text guards against the free will of the reader."
a more comforting visualization for the design process, and its inherent collaboration, is as poetic translation, which must remain focused on keeping the literal content consistent and yet still recapturing the intangible character at the same time. in the end, though, all he has to offer is that, after all these trying on of concepts, design simply = design.
why is it important for us to define and redefine the work we do? does our definition, or others', change the way we feel about & execute our work?
the designer as producer:
victor margolin asserts that "Until now, users have engaged more flexibly than producers with the product milieu. Now designer/entrepreneurs have the opportunity to create a much more inventive and
spontaneous product culture than we have ever had in the past. They can subvert the near monopolies of large companies in many product sectors and create products for needs that have yet to be met."
in this revitalization of an almost "arts and crafts" movement of alternative makers and alternative products filling niches unfilled by mass production and focusing on ideas like sustainability and user experience.
he proposes a program of master's studies in "design entrepreneurship" for people who want to be "both product innovators and manufacturers."
should this, in fact, be a separate field, specifically tailored to filling these economic niches in high-tech/sustainable thinking? should it be a designer's responsibility to join with this manufacturing, or is there a notable difference between working with a manufacturer and doing it yourself?
design with intent:
robert fabricant describes the turnover from the "disappearing designer" whose user-centered work was so neutral and unquestionable that it was invisible to the user, so seamlessly meshing with behavior; to the active and personal designer whose skillset and ethics lead them into the three emergent direct design categories of persuasion design, catalyst design, and performance design.
these intervention strategies can seem gutsy, but they get results. "As designers, we don’t always have the courage or the opportunity to look honestly at the impact of the decisions we make. Persuasion design allows for that. At its best, this model starts with results and works backward from there."
is a creative way to intervene and solve a problem ever simply enough? how far do you have to take a solution before it is inarguably a design artifact? are the problem solvers themselves "designers" or does it require a visual solution to be considered a designed project?
michael rock questions whether authorship is a useful concept for graphic designers. authorship, being the pre-postmodern (modern?) notion of the author as being truly the single, genius creator of a work, who is the ultimate authority (note the etymology) on the object and outside of whom no further information can be taken about it. postmodern decentering removes the author from the heart of the work, laying ultimate responsibility for interpretation on the reader him or herself, with all the social context they can glean.
he says: "The cult of the author narrows interpretation and replaces the author at center of the work. Foucault noted that the figure of the author is not a particularly liberating one. By transferring the authority of the text back to the author, by focusing on voice, presence becomes a limiting factor, containing and categorizing the work. The author as origin, authority and ultimate owner of the text guards against the free will of the reader."
a more comforting visualization for the design process, and its inherent collaboration, is as poetic translation, which must remain focused on keeping the literal content consistent and yet still recapturing the intangible character at the same time. in the end, though, all he has to offer is that, after all these trying on of concepts, design simply = design.
why is it important for us to define and redefine the work we do? does our definition, or others', change the way we feel about & execute our work?
the designer as producer:
victor margolin asserts that "Until now, users have engaged more flexibly than producers with the product milieu. Now designer/entrepreneurs have the opportunity to create a much more inventive and
spontaneous product culture than we have ever had in the past. They can subvert the near monopolies of large companies in many product sectors and create products for needs that have yet to be met."
in this revitalization of an almost "arts and crafts" movement of alternative makers and alternative products filling niches unfilled by mass production and focusing on ideas like sustainability and user experience.
he proposes a program of master's studies in "design entrepreneurship" for people who want to be "both product innovators and manufacturers."
should this, in fact, be a separate field, specifically tailored to filling these economic niches in high-tech/sustainable thinking? should it be a designer's responsibility to join with this manufacturing, or is there a notable difference between working with a manufacturer and doing it yourself?
design with intent:
robert fabricant describes the turnover from the "disappearing designer" whose user-centered work was so neutral and unquestionable that it was invisible to the user, so seamlessly meshing with behavior; to the active and personal designer whose skillset and ethics lead them into the three emergent direct design categories of persuasion design, catalyst design, and performance design.
these intervention strategies can seem gutsy, but they get results. "As designers, we don’t always have the courage or the opportunity to look honestly at the impact of the decisions we make. Persuasion design allows for that. At its best, this model starts with results and works backward from there."
is a creative way to intervene and solve a problem ever simply enough? how far do you have to take a solution before it is inarguably a design artifact? are the problem solvers themselves "designers" or does it require a visual solution to be considered a designed project?
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