recordbar letterhead and business cards

as i'm participating in a workshop with second story's julie beeler today, i'm not going to be able to get feedback during class, so i'm blogging my process in hopes that i might get some here! thanks for looking!

piece studio research

piece studio research

alzheimer's presentation

jessica and i have spent the past several weeks researching alzheimer's and working to determine a way that design can improve the quality of life for both those suffering from the disease and those who care about them and are suffering alongside. our proposal includes a memory box that can blur the boundaries between the physical and digital, holding real keepsakes and uploaded memories in whatever format they want to be. friends, family, and loved ones have access to an online repository  and each individual memory provides a jumping-off point for the rest of the family to reminisce, add to, lovingly contradict, and compare their own memories. simultaneously, the physical memory box encourages time spent close to family members and stimulation through the viewing of memories. this system helps the patient and the family come together throughout the illness while preserving those memories and feelings for the future, to become a family heirloom and legacy, and to keep the spirit of a loved one alive long after they are.


Rojas Wilson FinalKeynote

we gave this presentation on october fifth. the night before, as we were practicing, i was thinking of my grannie, vivian gust. we lost her to alzheimer's in 2009, quite some time after we'd already lost her to alzheimer's. that night was the fourth: her birthday. <3

sustainable business/cradle to cradle

catherine gray, of the natural step, writes:

"at a fundamental level, our industrial system was built without sustainability in mind."

how common is it that people utilize partnerships with sustainability experts like the natural step?

she continues: "the reward system currently in place supports unsustainable business practices."

this feels like a game theory issue, that for every company that cooperates and plays by the rules, the way is left open for another, even more insidious, company to come in and get ahead by defecting toward exploitative practices. 

how big does a company have to be before they trust their ability to make it, even by playing fair? 

/

the book cradle to cradle asks, "what do we gain by playing environmental roulette?"

and indicts: "recycling is an aspiring, alleviating a rather large collective hangover… overconsumption."

it contrasts between two characters, guardian and commerce.

guardian: 

•the government

•preserve & protect the public

•slow & serious

•regulation is its tool

•right to kill/war

•public interest

•shuns commerce

commerce

•day to day instant exchange of value

•currency is its primary tool

•urgent, quick, creative, inventive

•short & long term advantage

•inherently honest.

money + guardian = corruption.

commerce + regulation = slow.

the use of the tool of the guardian, regulation, is a signal of design failure. regulation is a "license to harm", to dispense sickness, destruction and death at an "acceptable rate."

can we really trust that good design can require no regulation at all? is it safe to have that much faith, or is it in our nature as humans to try to enslave nature, and should there always be regulations to safeguard that protection?

politics, imperialism, human dignity.

cameron tonkinwise asks: "are the ideas that are being collected not just remedial of cost-cutting forced by poor planning and under investment, but genuine innovations, creating more valuable ways of sustaining our societies?"

this becomes kind of a critical question of whether design should run along behind the world trying to clean up after the problems or abandon what's failed and run ahead to try to pave the way? what's more ethical? this is a little tangential to the topic, but i still wonder.

also, where did people get the idea that it was possible to be apolitical in the first place? i don't get it.

emily pilloton quotes: "nothing is so cut and dried, particularly in a corner of the design world that is so new, so misunderstood, and so much still a work in progress, that some days the best we can do is just to keep trucking--eloquently put by patagonia founder yvon chouinard, 'to do good, you first have to do something.'"

are there circumstances, still, where doing something can do more harm than good? or is intervening always the better option?

richard buchanan writes: "human-centered design is fundamentally an affirmation of human dignity."

does this change the way we should focus on a particular user base? does this have a buried implication that if something is unusable to anyone, it does a disservice to everyone?

"he might be giant"/"guerilla street postering"/"adbusters"

shepard fairey says: "'i hate stuff that's too self-righteous.' rather than subject people to sloganeering, he wants them to have their own epiphanies.'"

is this stance compatible with the idea of ethical design, the sort that fairey might call "self-righteous" but also works directly towards a beneficial end?

robbie conal's guerilla street postering proclaims "colloquial american english is the most subversive form of communication on the planet, and humor helps."

what is it about that, the slang and low-brow, that becomes the strongest way to communicate?

kalle lasn describes "true cost": "simply means that before designers begin work on a new product, they consider the ecological and psychological consequences of what they do. in other words, they plan to minimize the damage before they maximize the cool." 

how likely is it that this is always going to be an uphill battle against the client? will values ever shift to the point that this is a consideration that is not our responsibility alone to consider?

visual advocacy reading questions

bruinsma writes in cultural catalysts, cultural agency that "design as cultural agency surpasses the one-dimensional messages of advertising and the false claims to objectivity of "problem solving", by enriching which ever message or product it touches with a wealth of cultural and social connotations."

does this mean the entire world becomes the designer's responsibility, in an attempt to control and activate the context for every communication?

blauvelt writes in towards critical autonomy; or, can graphic design save itself? "rather graphic design must be seen as a discipline capable of generating meaning out of its own intrinsic resources without reliance on commissions, functions, or specific materials or means. such actions should demonstrate self-awareness and reflexivity; a capacity to manipulate the system of graphic design."

doesn't design implicitly need means/materials/etc? it needs a problem to solve, and unfortunately for society, the designer must make enough money to support himself, or he will not be able to design at all, for good or ill. is autonomy attainable in the first place? would it be so good, if we could attain it?


mau writes in the intro to massive change that "there is a proposal integrated into massive change for a right-angle shift in the axis of discourse defined by right and left, socialism and capitalism. the new axis is defined by advanced and retrograde, forward and reverse."

is it just me, or does this feel like a revolutionary manifesto? does it put designers in the place of the ones who will inherit the ruling class?