The odds that I lived

Use the world factbook to calculate the odds that I lived and translate that into a creation.

Knitting Statistics

Knit a blanket where every stitch is representative of a statistic. Every stitch could be one person who died, every stitch could be, one person on the earth, it would be an immense project to stitch 6.6 billion stitches, it could be a worldwide project. But I have already stitched 31,640 stitches into my the first third of the current scarf I'm knitting, it has taken me about 24 hours to create this. Use the CIA world factbook as a source for the statistics.

Now that you can do anything, what are you going to do?

Thinking philosophically about where I want to go with design.

Use design to enhance my understanding about the world, use my understanding of the natural world in my designs. Abstractions of deeper concepts about life. Create designs that inspire wonder. Communicate what I understand about life through my designs. Make sure there is a good reason why behind every design I make. A why that somehow goes deeper than the money, and makes my invested time valuable. Learn something greater while creating every design.

is home-making design?

Hmm, well if it is then I've been doing a lot lately, but if it isn't then there hasn't been much going on. I have lately, made a very successful thanksgiving dinner, baked lots of stuff (aka apple pies, cakes, cookies, and so forth) cooked somewhat extensive meals, been knitting a lot, bought a sewing machine, and decorated the kitchen of our dorm, and am in the process of making christmas ornaments. I have been told that I am nesting and my friends at work are convinced that I will be getting married in the near future. Don't tell my boyfriend (of 2 months) that. Don't know what else to say, what a let down, after having said nothing for practically 2 months. I'll try to be more entertaining next time.

Mutations Assignment

Here are the cards of the assignment for Mutations of Communications, in case anyone is interesting in trying it for themselves. Or ifyour just interested:

Bach's Suite no. 1

I've recently been listening to slightly more classical music than before, which means about one song a week, instead of none. But I have to say that my ear is coming quickly, I am already recognizing songs, and the different styles of the different composers. I don't know what this has to do with design, but I have noticed that being preoccupied with a theme usually finds it's way into my personal designs. My personal favorite at the moment is Bach's Suite no. 1. The transition between fast, and slow motion of the reminds me so much of life, perhaps how time is flowing, how some moments seem to fly by, while some seem to stand still so that we can appreciate them, or dispise them (seems there is no preference time will slow for either of these extremes). Anyway, very beautiful music, I am excited to hear more from Bach!

Product Love

I am currently in the preparation and research process of writing my Vordiplom (intermediate exam). It will consist of three theses on themes of my choosing, and a final product corresponding to the main theme. Two of my themes are settled. The first of which being "Product Love" about the kinds of relationships that we build with objects, and how they are formed. I am busying myself the most with this theme at the moment, since I now have to prove that I can tackle such a large theme, in showing literature lists, and a partial outline of how I intend to tackle the theme.

The other topic is Eco-Porn. How we may pervert nature, and our perception of nature through idealized images of it. I am going to be writing this thesis in German! Which is really exciting and scary for me, I am not sure what is going to come, but I hope that I am happy with the outcome of it. I also have some information colleced on this theme, it should be very interesting and fun to investigate!

My Library

I expressed earlier my desire to have a library with books and papers, every page of which I had read of written, it would be my brain, and all the literature that influenced it, in one room. Yesterday I was discussing this dream with my boyfriend, and realized that this library will probably never be able to be my own. If I share my library with my future spouse or companion, some of those books and ideas will be his. This thought seems very unattractive to me, and I now get images of separated libraries, or separated shelves of his and my books. Will I ever be able to share my books. When or if I do it will be a meaningful event. It will mean that I am finally capable of sharing my life with someone, and also my thoughts, molding us into a single, and collective mind.

Product photography

How can we create creative evocative pictures of our product designs? You know, not an object on a solid background. Here's a bit of brainstorming, haven't used any of it, but I think I'm going to play around photographing some of my favorite things.

Check out the ID magazine archives, sometimes they have interesting product photography.

Look at exhibition designs for inspirations on how to photograph the products, it's just a still display of the picture.

Remember Ms. Baileys photo class: the assignment where we got an object and had to then make a series of photos with the object in it. Remember Paige's barbie inside kitchen appliances photo series? What did that say about the barbie, and what did it say about the appliances she was jammed into. Take your product and give yourself that assignment. Think of a thorough concept for the shoot, give your object some kind of odd juxtaposition. Give it a life. Give it a different environment than you'd traditionally think of that says something about the object itself, and about the environment around it.

Amelie's travelling gnome. What does this do for the gnome? It animates it in a way you wouldn't expect, with a few hand scribbled notes it seemed like the gnome had taken a vacation of his own.

Check out Philip Toledano's work again, nice photos, you might get some ideas. What about product photographs without the product in it? Like the video game pictures, the faces on the people says enough about the game, you hardly have to show it. Okay, might be too far for a portfolio, but interesting.

Look at other experimental photography for inspiration, take out the subject of the photo, and put your product in it. Check out the lomography website for more ideas.

Possesions

"Let us grant that our everyday objects are in faact objects of a passion - the passion for private property, emotional investment in which is every bit as intense as investment in the 'human' passion.... Apart from the uses to which we put them at any particular moment, objects in this sense have another apect which is imtimately bound up with the subject: no longer simply material bodies offering a certain resistance, they become things of which I am the meaning, they become my property and passion"

-The system of objects

Wabi-sabi

"Artfully obscured exotic concepts like wabi-sabi also made good marketing bait. Obscuring the meaning of wabi-sabi, but tantalizing the consumer with glimpses of its value."

Like starbuks coffee, or other so called "lifestyle" products, which give you the feeling that you are getting something more than an object, a collection of molecules - something higher, and better, almost impossible to forge. The secret and success of such products is that the extra something remains undefined, allowing the consumer to redefine it for themselves everytime they consume the product. The consumer then can associate any beauty in the laws of the world, light, or sound, experiences or feelings, things that are inevitably incapturable as a whole, and then bind this with the product itself. You don't have to then bind these beautiful things with with objects, you have to allude that they are bound to the object, and the consumer will do it for themselves.

Ode to Books

A book for me represents a future. I buy the books that I read when I can afford it. I dreamt as a child of having an extensive personal library, in which I had read every book that sits on the shelves. I dreamt of having a library of my own mind. It would be extensive with shelves and shelves of books, but also with card files of all the quotes I had written down from the books. It would have filing drawers full of essays I had read, and written. CDs of all the information radio I had heard.

This is a dream I still intend to uphold.

I love the feeling of buying a new book, it is the hope for myself. That I will become something better. That my mind will stretch further beyond any point I could have imagined. A book holds a future of thought for me, and my book reading rituals exemplify that. I buy a book, and have a special stack of books bought, and not yet read. Some of the books in the stack have been read halfway through, but remain in the stack until the last page has been finished. I mark the margins of my books, not worrying about making intelligent of even complete comments. Sometimes its just a keyword, often, Spencer. When the train of thought from the books runs parallel with, or merges with a path that my own mind has taken. After or sometimes during the reading of the book I go through all the marked passages, and copy them onto notecards. I learned this technique in my senior humanities class. A technique for writing research papers. A way of conglomerating the important parts of the book into tangible, and movable parts, like movable type, the ideas can be arranged and mixed from different sources into a new pattern and order with a different meaning. When the book is finished I put it into my bookshelves. It is a kind of celebratory ritual for me. Celebrating and embracing my new knowledge, and putting aside to rest.

Books have also become an important part of my mind. I often find myself thinking of passages that relate to the events or ideas that I encounter during the day. Depending on the situation I either quote or summarize the passage from the book, or I revisit the passage later that night, pondering on the meaning and connection. Why I made the connection at that point, and how I might be getting closer to understanding the world. I remember specifically having a conversation in my living room during my first date with my former boyfriend. And for some reason, I pulled out the book Walden and read passages to him. What a nerdy, and completely sweet and vulnerable thing for me to do.

I like to have the books after that fact for just that reason, if I have them, I go back to them, they slowly integrate into my life and my thoughts, and become a bigger part of me. Most of my books are stored at my parents home at the moment, for reasons having to do with my semi-nomadic international lifestyle at the moment. And the fact that they aren't here with me makes me sad sometimes. Not a physical sadness that would show in a facial expression, but a really deep and gentle pain and nostalgia for them. Because they are a part of me. They are a part of my mind, made permanent with ink and paper. They are a connection between me and the author that could only happen through this media, as personal sometimes as a letter between lovers. And they are a connection between me and everyone else in the world who has ever read and connected to the book. I belong then in a net of people, we don't even know who eachother are, but when we find eachother by mistake or happenstance it's like a reunion, we know that we are common to eachother, and that if only in some small way, we are connected to eachother without even having known it.

Days like this

It is on days like this that I realize the puny size and capacity of a single human brain compaired to the expanses of information that exist in the universe. I just want to learn everything, and at the same time I know that it is impossible. Isn't this what the human life is about? Wanting what we know that we can't have?

Being and Time

I want to be one of those peoples who dies with an unfinished project on their desk, that at some point after their death people wish that the work had been finished.

Mutations of Communication

In the past week I participated in a short-term programme at the Köln International School of Design, under the leadership of guest professors Tina-Henriette Kristiansen, and Anne-Elisabeth Toft of Denmark. The title was Mutations of Communication, and honestly as the 16 participants gathered in our classroom to begin the project, we didn't know what to expect.

The guest professors were extremely well prepared with a concrete assignment (something traditional KISD professors might learn to do better). We began the project with a short presentation on the concept of bodily mutation. We discussed what could be considered mutation (everyone) and how mutation works in the human body.

We were then paired into teams (I worked with Mathilda Oluoch) and given artefacts to work with. The project was exucuted in steps, with specific rules of mutations that we were requred to follow in each step, with each new mutation building off of the final product of the last step, in order to allow a generational growth of the objects. We were instructed not to think about beauty or function at all during the project, just to follow the principles given.

The steps of the project were as follows:

Photograph the artefact
Name the artefact and it parts
Draw the original artefact, "wildtype", in a detailed and accurate technical drawing (or render in 3D)
Mutation 1: Duplication
Mutation 2: Translocation (switching features of the object with eachother)
Mutation 3: Insertion (duplicate feature, or add features from a nearby object - in other words the area of the body where the artefact meets the body)
Mutation 4: Deletion (can also be fusion of parts)
Mutation 5: Multiple Choice (bring the artefact and the body back together, and Design. Here we were allowed the freedom to think more creatively, use all of the mutation principles and also think about function and form a little bit more. Although the end result was required to make sense in terms of it being a further generation of the product before
Finally, build a model of the final design

To accomplish this all in 5 days was quite a feat. Many of us were in the work room morning to night, every day (I only slept a few hours every night). But the end result was fantastic, the students and teacher at KISD were all very enthusiastic about the results, and we were asked to display our results for the Long Night of the Museums in Cologne.

Original Artefact




Wildtype
We drew the original artefact by hand, but later decided that using Illustrator would be a more simple, and correctable choice.


Mutation 1: Duplication


Mutation 2:Translocation


Mutation 3:Insertion


Mutation 4:Deletion


Mutation 5:Multiple Choice

Presentation Style

The best kind of presentations: short and complete. A verbal presentation should never repeat itself, or repeat itself as little as possible. The audience should have heard everything it wanted to, have a few detail questions in it's head, but should have the whole concept already. It should be surprised that you have reached the end, because they were so enthralled in what you were saying that they weren't thinking about the time moving.

Image Nation

We are so used to seeing the world through images and photos, that we have lost the capacity to see outside of the frame, to find beauty in the world that no-one tells us is beauty.

New and Unexpected

The only way to create something new and unexpected is to work outside of your own mind. Using tools that force you to make something that you haven't ever thought of before. You can't consider style, and beauty, because if it fits into the current style, it's expected. This is something I noticed last year during the Passagen furniture design event in Cologne. Very little of what was there looked new of exciting to me at all. I got explainations of what was actually new and different about it, but it still looked like something I'd seen before.

The only wat to create something that is truly new is to make something that isn't the typical idea of beautiful. It can be beautiful, but it has to be a new definition of beautiful.

Note to Self

This feeling, this really good, weight off your shoulders feeling that you are feeling right now is because you just finished 3 projects that lasted way longer than they should have. You can have the feeling of accomplishment more often if you just finish more stuff. Finish the projects that you begin!

Blue and Red Thought Process

Busy

I'm sorry that I've promised more posts, but I've been pretty busy lately. However, there are things on their way, and they are cool! (namely, the things that have slowed down my blogging in the process of finishing) So just keep holding your breathe.

Current Stored Information

German course starts at 6:30 ends at 9:30, has a break at 8.
I attend my photoseminar two times, the first on November 5, other people will present their results on November 6th at 3:15.
Pall Mall and L&M cigarettes cost 3.50 euros.
I owe Professor Brandes 93.- euros.
I gave Arne, Michael Marx, Michael Granado (I also gave him the money for Juliette, which was about 7.13 euros, Chris, Maik, Andre, Chantal, Jo and probably someone else wilkhahn money today.
The sum of it all was about 750.- euros.
Someone recieved exactly 110.- euros.
We had about 6500.- euros in the Wilkhahn account yesterday.
The add numbers in Excel one writes SUM=(cellname-cellname) in a cell.
I have a stack of books about a foot tall to read.
I need to read Massive Change by the end of the week.
Ein Julitag can wait to be read until we start as a course.
I want to photograph every monday, because I will have it completely free.
Sleeping against the wall is rather comfortable.
India is 3.5 hours ahead of Germany.
Utah is 8 behind Germany.
It will cost 28 euros per book to print softcover copies of the wilkhahn book on Lulu.de
The tuesday talk today was called "Why being international" which is technically incorrect.
I have not watched the very last episode of the last season of "Are You Being Served".
I had a lot of ideas today, if they're good will decide itself within a couple of days.
My jacket has 2 buttons.
My black skirt can show a little skin between the buttons and zipper if I'm not careful.
The only thing I need to get done at work is Website updates.
My room number is 05-16.

Hmm, this could go on forever I'm sure. But I was justing thinking today about all the little details about my current life that I will forget within a short time-frame after they become irrelevant. So I thought I'd document a bit of my short-term infomation see what I remember in a couple of weeks, or months, or years.

I realized that we store all sorts of little information in our heads, and the more often we use it after that, the more permanent it becomes in our head. This may, however, have been a good realization for my German learning, I just need to go through my flashcards often, and put effort into using what I learn on a daily basis, and it will stick better (so far new stuff isn't really sticking well).

Folding a cut image

I saw this and got lots of ideas. I like the idea of a folded poster that is cut into a certain shape, perhaps the folded shape could be taken into account and played with. Interesting...

Thanks to http://vi11age.com/article/27/heilongjiang_box

Network Gardening

If you have ever had a zucchini plant, or apple tree, you understand the dilemma. Zucchinis coming out your ears. During high growing season you recieve many more ripe zucchinis on your plant than you and your family could ever eat. This usually ends up as a bring a cardboard box full or (insert overly abundant in season fruit/vegetable here) to work, church, or just ditch them on an unsuspecting person's porch.

It could be that your home has one edible-product producing plant, and that you just get so dang sick of eating them, but really don't have the time of the know-how to make a multi-facetted garden that gives of small amounts of what you need on a regular basis.

Perhaps you have a yard full or grass, and you don't do anything with this grass, why not grow a fruit tree, many are ver low maintainence, and you're not really doing much with the garden space.

I guess part of the point here is driving through a suburban neighborhood, (in the US mostly) where there is lots of space between the houses, and lots of green (grass) that isn't actually very useful, and is rather a pain in the butt to maintain. There is a better way to use this space, how could we encourage this.

For environmental reasons, it is better to eat locally grown, in-season foods, but when the land is covered in grass, who's growing locally. Locally could be your, or your neighbors yard.

What if there were a website for garden-sharing. Or a store, or a market, we'll call it a system. Where people can bring their overabundance and trade or give-away the gardening-extras, and to encourage at home gardening in the first place.

The website could arrange neighborhoods of plants, on neighbor could have zucchinis, the other apples, the other peppers, another herbs. You get the picture, each neighbor takes care of one plant that their "good at" and shares the edible-products.

A store could be arranged for exchanging of goods, like a second hand CD store, in terms of fruit and veggies. You bring in what you don't want and get a credit for it. You can then go pick out more useful edibles, or save the credit for when there are fewer veggies growing in your garden, to replace what you've dropped off. Other's could shop there, it could be a central point for locally-grown goods in the area.

A network could be built up for helping newbies grow. Helping them assess what will grow well where they are, giving them tips on figuring out how to grow particular plants. Or showing them combination of things that grow well in the same environment. Also encouraging them to focus on learning how to grow a specific plant, before they just head-first into a full fledged garden. Figure out a certain plant one year, the next year add another to your reportoire.

Object Attachment

"One night I found myself taking from the cupboard not one of the plates I normally used but a crackled and worn Spode plate, from a set mostly broken or chipped, in a pattern no longer made, "Wickerdale." This had been a set of dishes, cream with a garland of small rose and blue flowers and ecru leaves, that John's mother had given him for the apartment he rented on East Seventy-third Street before we were married. John's mother was dead. John was dead. And I still had, of the "Wickerdale" Spode, four dinner plates, five salad plates, three butter plates, a single coffee cup, and nine saucers. I came to prefer these dishes to all others. By the end of the summer I was running the dishwasher a quarter full just to make sure that at least one of the four "Wickerdale" dinner plates would be clean when I needed it."

"This alarm clock had stopped working during the year before he died, could not be repaired, and, after he died, could not be thrown out. It could not even be removed from the table by my bed. I also had a set of colored buffalo pens, given to me the same Christmas, in the same spirit. I did many sketches of palm trees that Christmas, palm trees moving in the wind, palm trees dropping fronds, palm trees bent by the December kone storms. The colored buffalo pens had long since gone, but, again, could not be thrown out ."

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Lasting Creation

I just finished a publication for the organization I work for, which I am quite proud of (I will post pics soon) but I can't help but think of the timeline that this publication will have. It is clear that within 10 years some copies of the publication will still exist (since it is an 8 year plan) But after that given time point how many will survive (it will only be a print run of 3500 copies). When will the last copy of this publication be thrown away? How long will it last.

Because, just as this publication was a matter of need, it wasn't something I put a whole lot of heart into, but in a way I did. I spent months working on it (mostly because of numerous tedious changes from the administration), it's not revolutionary or new in the world of design, but in the world of IHDP it is something great and new. And it's undeniable that this publication was there, and followed my thoughts for a long time.

How long will that last, will something change when the last is thrown away, and begins it's process of decomposition in the landfill?

Own it, then change it

The only way to have create influence in a culture (not the uncreated influence that coincidentally happens, but a planned change) is to first own the culture. You have to know exactly how the culture works, fit into the culture and then from the inside you can make the changes. Change can only come when it is relevant to the current cultural climate, and springs from the cultural climate. Pushing a culture from the outside is too hard and foreign. People have to find a change perfectly fitting to who they are, or a part of who they want to be before they will follow it.

Consider Socrates: His persuasion technique was to ask questions. The listener would then give their most logical answer to the question. Each question would be part of a theme, but not a question about the theme itself. They would then build up, and lead to a logical conclusion about the big theme, which is different from the gut reaction the person would have had in the beginning. Through this he would not only get the person to believe what he wanted them to, but would make them find the answer in themselves. Pushing from the inside.

Absurdity

"But above all, [youth] is a haste to live that borders on waste."

"There are races born for pride and life."

"The contrary of a civilized nation is a creative nation."

"To feel one's attachment to a certain region, one's love for a certain group of men, to kow that there is always a spot where one's heart will feel at peace - these are many certainties for a single human life."

"Everything that exalts life at the same time increases its absurdity."

"For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life."

I renewed my love for Albert Camus a couple of nights ago in the train, reading the essay he wrote "Summer in Algiers." I was without a pen, a found myself dog-earing the book (which I never do) to point to the beginnings of what I would have underlined, eventually resorting to underlinin with my fingernails, knowing how easily this kind of marking gets lost or the technique forgotten. But I couldn't just go on reading without putting some kind of mark in the book to show my enthusiasm. It is beautiful philosophy, existentialism, it sometimes seems bleak, and is commonly the philosophy of suicidal people, believing there is no meaning to life. But Camus' argues that this life is just so beautiful, there may be no meaning, but this life is so beautiful because of it.

This is where I stand. Life is just so damn beautiful, enjoy it!

Ode to Spencer

"The world fascinates me."

This has to be my favorite thing ever said in the history of mankind. My brother said this one day as a reasoning why he likes pretty much any christmas present he gets, and why he is so easy to shop for. He's the kind of guy you think of when you see that ever so cool, moderately useless gizmo sitting on the shelf.

He died two weeks after he said this, it's something I can appreciate because if he hadn't died, we wouldn't have spent hours and hours discussing him, and I would have never remembered that he said this. We had a great childhood together, and I can't regret anything about his life because I learned so much from him, it's actually difficult to talk about myself, my favorite things, and my interests without creating a connection to him, because he is such a big part of me.

So, now this will be my motto for life. To take his curiosity, and excitement about everything in the world, everything he taught me and keep it alive in myself.

Design for Life, and the Taxonomy of Experience

To design for an experience one must know it. The experience of using a personal timepiece.

The Design for Life project, run by a guest professor, Ian Coxon, from the University of Western Sydney, Australia, was my first project at KISD, and so far my favorite. The main goal was to choose an experience and study it so fully, to learn it's specific vocabulary, and intricacies, in order to better design for it. I chose to study the Experience of Using a Personal Timepiece. The course was focussed around philosophical concepts from Heidegger, and Gadamer, about how to understand and categorize experiences. From this philosopy Ian created a process which he called the Taxonomy of Experience.

The Process
We were first to experience our chosen experience ourselves, and document that experience as well as possible including as many nit-picky details as possible. I think I learned the most from this step, just inspecting my own behavior was very interesting to me. We were then to use our learned vocabulary for the experience to interview about, and inspect the experiences of others. This ended up for me being about 15 written pages of notes, and plenty of tiny scribbled notes all through my notebooks such as "the lecture no longer interests me, I check my watch." From these documentations we pulled out all the bits of the experience and categorized them under subsets of senses, positive/negative, cognitive, and emotional factors. This was quite a bit of work for me since I ended up with more than 1000 bits.
We then assigned each bit a theme, that was more specific, for example under Sense of Touch I used categories such as cold, heavy, and sweaty. Each bit was then interpretted, in order to document whatever information might be hidden behind the simple words of the text.
We then began narrowing down the information to the essential elements. Cutting my list down to 1/10 of what it was, cutting out overly repetitive elements, and things that did not seem to be essential to the experience.
The most difficult step came next, finding the extraordinary parts of the experience. We chose from the essential elements, the bits that had some surprising aspect to them. We were encouraged to leave behind information on form, and function, and to focus on only the super-ordinary aspects such as feelings, and philosophical ideas. We then gave each of these super-ordinary aspects a title, and sorted them accordingly. This led very quickly to the end product, about 4 words with which you could summarize the experience.
I was extremely excited and pleased to reach the end stage, after having droned through so many bits of information to finally have reached the nucleus of the experience. But I wasn't really surprised by any of the words I had found, because at that point I was so deep inside the experience that they all seemed so applicable to me.

5 Summarizing words
Emotional Attachment
People grow a huge personal attachment to their watch. First, because as a concept, it is a trusted source of information that is important to them. Second, as an object. The watch can represent something about it's past, such as it's former owner, or being a gift celebrating a big achievement. The watch can also become a symbol of you. Because it is a piece that you wear almost every day, it can come to represent your style, showing yourself through a piece of jewelry.

Coordination
Time has become a kind of grid work for the world, a fourth dimension. Just like streets, latitude, longitude and even country borders, are systems humans have created, and implemented to coordinate ourselves with the first 3 dimensions of the world. Watches and clocks are simply establishing a common framework to organize this fourth dimension. We use time to coordinate the flow of our day with those of the people in our society, in creating appointments, such as opening hours, friendly meetings, even train schedules. It's a way for us to coordinate our moments, and in doing so, consolidate our time so that we can get more done with what we have available.

Craving
The need for an answer to the question of "what time it is" can sometimes be very casual, and unimportant, but more often it is urgent, and pressing. It can control you, and cause stress and anxiety just by having the question in your head. This is the reason for having a wrist watch in the first place, a quick and simple satiation to our craving to know the time. It is always there, and can be depended on as a source of the necessary information.

Exactness
Because our own personal interpretation of lengths of time is so weak, the system of measuring and dividing common time has been set into place. The amazing thing about time is that according to our experience it is so inexact. 1 minute can seem to last a lifetime, and an hour can seem to fly by in just a couple minutes. I find it amazing that sometimes a 10 minute exactness is plenty, and at times it is necessary to be exact down to the fraction of a second. But the system of time is designed to function like this, dividable down to the second, every division of time is applicable to measuring different kinds of activities.

Homeostasis
One main aspect of using a personal timepiece is homeostasis. No matter what the form, be it carrying a personal watch, using a cell phone, or even outside sources for the time the user becomes acquainted to, and comfortable with this resource. This can be a physical comfort, in which the watch becomes like a part of the body. Or mental comfort, where you grow a dependance on the watch as a source for the time. After you have grown a homeostatic connecting with your watch an expectation grows, you expect for the watch to be there on your wrist, or not, depending on which side you are on. And when your expectations are wrong, it is always a bit of a surprise, sometimes good, and sometimes disappointing.


Making a Design
Finally we turned our results into a design. Because of time restraints we weren't supposed to make something practical, but more to capture the essence of the experience into a product, or design.

I based the concept for my final product, on the word craving. Quickly put, a watch is a way to strap our the satiation to our craving for time to our wrists. My product is then just a strap, with which one can strap their own personal craving to their wrist. The "cravings" shown in the example are more conceptual than practical, I found however that had I then studied what people currently "crave" a strap-on version of this could have been designed as a more practical application.

Things to add to the ends of words to make them automatically sound cool

-omatic
-omat
-tron

for example:
nerdtron
poopomatic
looseromat

Haha, I'm the postal drone

Core77 blog made a quick reference to one of their message board threads about what you did as a pre-designer. I was very amused to realize that he was talking about me when he said some of us had our former lives as postal drones... Very amusing. I kind of feel famous! Ha ha

http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/yo_c77_board_alert_life_before_design_7589.asp

Baby Stroller

Wouldn't it be convenient to have a baby stroller that could lock up like a bicycle, The body could close up to make a kind of locker, or it could just fold and lock for storing on the streets.

CD Covers

A german friend of mine wanted me to share some American Rock music with him, so I picked him out some of my favorites but when I was done I had 4 hours of music, and only some of it was actually rock. So I cut it down to 2 cd's one of the full of almost purely american rock. And the other with a bunch of other songs that no-one knows about, but I love.

The best part was making the CD covers. For the Amerikanischer Rock CD, I played on the language difference, in German a rock is a skirt, so I did a picture of me wearing a true American rock for the cover. And on the inside wrote the song list, including not just the song title, and the band, but why I picked the song. When I went to print it out I ran into trouble - My printer was out of ink. But the result turned out pretty dang cool. Happy mistake (note: the file color was mostly brown).

I almost gave up in making a sleeve for the other one cause of the ink predicament, but I decided I can't have one with a really cool sleeve and the other with nothing, so I did it by hand. I took the liberty of using my in-the-process-of-being-developed-font, in a gold pencil. Which gives a nice subtle shiny effect, and then for the back, copied off from my person list writing/designing technique, by filling the whole page, and switching handwriting "fonts" constantly. I'm pretty pleased with the result, only problem is, I don't want to give it away now!


Front

Inside

Back

Front

Inside

Back

Getting through to them

"Although a message is recieved by an individual, the "room" is very crowded. Messages are designed and launched from a social and cultural stage full of actors. Even if one little message manages to best the competition and reach the ears or eyes of one individual, the person must understand, believe, weigh, and interpret the words and images in the context of her own personal, complex psychology."

Julia B. Corbet in "Communicating Nature"

Biomimicry

While visitng Goblin Valley, about a year and a half ago, I was enthralled by the rock forms, and the geological history of the site. The rocks were formed over thousands of years of rain fall, and wind which eroded the red sandstone. While hiking through one part, I could just imagine pools of water forming in the indentations, and little rivers running across the formations. And then I just wished it would rain, because it all looked like an elaborate, and incredibly enticing waterpark. Sliding through caves, over the bumpy landscape. If I ever design a waterpark this will be the concept for it. The red rocks of southern utah.

My Kind of Bookstore

I love bookstores, I feel at home seeing all of the books on the shelf, all kinds of information stored in the shelves. But at the same time I feel a bit uncomfortable because all the books are pristine, the books that aren't are the display books which have been leafed through, and looked at. But they are the books that don't get bought, and the pristine books beckon me to open their pages, but I feel guilty in making a sellable book into a non-sellable book just by looking through it. Many bookstores, probably first was Barnes and Noble have reading couches, and encourage you to stay and look at the books, but very few people do it, I think because of this sellable to non-sellable factor.

Another thing I love about books is used books, especially those with markings. I love that these books have a history in themselves, the person who read the book has put themselves into the book, and they have also been influenced by the ideas contained in the pages. Probably because I have such a great attachment to the books I read, and I assume that everyone else does too.

So what if bookstores were a mix, between library and bookstore. If you could open a book, and sit and read the whole book through, crack the spine, mark the pages and not feel guilty, but then buy a clean pristine copy of the book if you liked as well. There would be two parts then to my bookstore, not physically separate, but in concept, every book in the store would be accompanied by a readers edition. One you could sit with in the store and absorb. There would be cozy corners to sit in, coffee and tea to drink right there while you read. You could and would actually be encouraged to interact with the book, change it physically. Some might say if people can read the book in the store they won't buy it, but I think if you get the opportunity to change and be changed by a book you are more likely to buy it, because it has become a part of you.

I would love to have such a store, not just to create this new kind of environment, but to have the books that get read. Because the owner of the store would also be the owner of these most precious editions which hold the history of all their readers.

Weather, and Time

It was an amazing day in Cologne, quite untypical for this time of year, and you can see the people absorbing it in, because they know that it could be the last beautiful day for months. So when my roommate, Manuela, a geography major, invited me to go to the rhine to study, although I had nothing specific to study, I agreed to go along. At some point we stopped chatting and got working while we were sitting there in the shade near the river, and at some point broke the silence and said, "I just can't get my head around this," explaining " I know what the words say, but it's so incomprehensible." She began explaining the concept that some of the stars in our sky are thousands of light years away, so the fact that we can see them today means that they existed thousand of years ago. It is a huge concept, to imagine that something is so far away, and the travel of light which we assume as instantaneous, is slow enough that it can take thousands of years to arrive in our sight.

I think it's rather cool though, and I told her this, our sun, which on the universal scale can be taken as a representation for us, and the life on this earth. Because we live from the sun, and it feeds us. And we are (probably) the only living creatures growing from this sun. Our planet my very well end, life may end, and the planet may disintegrate. But in thousands or millions of years, there may be life living on a planet that is thousands or millions of lightyears away, they will see out star, our sun, and they may not know that it represents us, but it is still one way that we exist, essentially through these waves of light that it is sending off into the universe.

It's so huge, and hard to understand, and even explain. But that's the beauty of our life, that it is so tiny, but part of something so huge that we can't even understand it. So I told her this and I said "You know, don't feel bad that you can't understand your homework, because not being able to comprehend it is the beauty of the world. So your frustration, is actually why the world is so amazing.

Typefaces

I love typography, it was one the most evocative aspects of the design when I started my interest in it. Even before I was interested in design I have different fonts of handwriting and I was always (and still am) twisting and changing the shapes of the letters that I wrote. I was writing lists with different "fonts" for headers, and body copy.

But one of the interesting concept of typography, when you are designing with type you have another person's work within your design, the font design that they created has now become a part of your work, and will live on. I used to tell a then-boyfriend of mine that I want to design the next helvetica, and he (a non-designer) then forward called me the font nerd. He couldn't understand why I would want to design a font, although it is used all over the world, no-one knows who designed it, and you seem to be a non-entity once the font gets release to designers. But that is the key, your font lives on as your own, it's not important if people know who created it, because you are in the font, and every time your font is used, you are there on the page.

Childhood

I had a very magical childhood with my brother, I cannot count all of the playhouses we had, because we built so many, one in the attic of our garage, one dug out of the empty spot of land next to our house, and one built in a tree in an empty field about 15 minutes away from our house, that once we finished building, we never actually visited again. It's actually a funny story, I found out later that a friend of mine did play in that treehouse, and they never knew who built it, and were always worried that we would come back and kick them out.

I sometimes feel that now that I am grown up my apartment has become my playhouse, but it's not the same, it's just home, and the excitement of visiting in free time is lost. I would love to have an adult playhouse somewhere, where I could read, and enjoy myself, just get out of the house. In the book Walden I think that Henry David Thoreau got to this, and his playhouse, a cabin he built near Walden Pond, gave him the opportunity to inspect life, and escape from the buy more, and work more feelings of everyday life. He wrote the book during the experience and the insights and ideas he has in this playhouse is unbelievable, what could this do for me, or us as a people?

Loose Parts

The more loose parts a child has to play with, the more creative, and capable they are of problem solving. This is called the loose parts theory. It implies that the design of toys should allow for loose parts. This could be applied in two ways, first by making sets more complicated and extensive but because of recent, and very applicable movement of environmental design, one of the best things we can do is reduce. This is where the second application comes in, not making more things, but making things that are more compatible with what we already have. This idea was applied in my "Bildy" design, a fort building system which provides the tools for kids to build forts from found objects. In what other kind of toys could this be applied, perhaps on a smaller scale?

It amazed me when inspecting my own childhood, that I don't remember a lot of specific toys being used for their functions, we used everyday things to build bigger world, to create the toys we wanted. We didn't even need toys really, but just the freedom to play with everything in the house.

Who is this man?

I love the mystery that I associate with this image. I found it on the dirty, dust covered stairs up the attic of my last apartment building where lines are hung for drying clothes. I love his smile, and his face, his beard, his outfit. I think this picture must be important to someone, and wonder who, and what story lies behind this picture, what kind of personality is locked into the emulsion of the photograph?

Beautiful Map

I found this map at the Cologne Flea Market, I love way the different colors are made out of few inks by cross-hatching, and the hand-lettered names. It's printed on a beautiful thin tissue-like paper, it's an absolutely beautiful piece of paper.

Designer Nachos

This is one of those moments when you think "Hey I'm a designer, I've got a solution for this!" I was making nachos, and trying to make sure I got cheese on every chip.