April 2013
2 posts
11 tags
Text Usability and the New New Typography
The traditional understanding of readability has been inherited from print and is informed by studies of human perception and typographic form. The form is altered by the typographer to enhance perception with the goal of an optimized reading experience that elucidates content. The values that form the foundation of readable text type, typeface choice, type size, letter spacing, word spacing, line...
March 2013
1 post
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something,...”
– Buckminster Fuller (via tashwong)
February 2013
2 posts
13 tags
Build, Builder, Buildest
Excuse this anecdotal beginning. I have a very clear memory of learning to ski a few years ago. I have had many lessons and am a terrible skier, but, this ski-instructor-guy was great and I learned more from him than any other. The way he taught was truly incremental. He would only move to the next lesson when someone asked a question. So there we were, doing snow plow turns back and forth across...
“If you can’t be a writer until you have something to say, wouldn’t...”
– thesis musings from b. deWilde
January 2013
1 post
10 tags
On Place and Praise
I teach Typography every Tuesday morning from 9 am. to noon. I have nineteen wonderful students and we meet in a classroom within the Interaction Design graduate studio on 21st Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City. In the morning, we rearrange the chairs and desks and transform the room into our space for talking about history, form, reading, and design. I love it; it’s...
November 2012
2 posts
9 tags
Teaching Type in 2012
Last summer, specifically late July, I discovered that I had a full roster for my upcoming Type 1 class at the School of Visual Arts. I haven’t taught this particular course and, ever practical, decided not to write the syllabus until the moment I knew that there would be people showing up.
The class fits into the requisite coursework of Graphic Design majors and is intended for juniors and...
October 2012
3 posts
7 tags
WatchWhat the Book exhibition movie created by B deWilde and T Chu.
Watchgregmelander:
VISUAL DATA
A great way of explaining data made glanceable.
5 tags
Teaching Fundamental Graphic Design Principles...
An Introduction to My MFA Thesis Interaction design and technology have made new communications possible. The makers in this field, however, do not always have graphic design or typography skills. Those skills have been relegated to the sidelines in the face of new skill acquisition, specifically writing code. As technology and the physics of the screen improve, applying graphic design principles...
September 2012
1 post
August 2012
1 post
4 tags
Can Dinosaurs cry?
thegruntledmudgeon:
I do not “app.” I do not play Words with Birds. My phone is not smart. I am out of place among the hundreds of fellow commuters who use expensive electronic devices to play Solitaire. The only tablet I use is my daily dosage of baby aspirin. As for pads, I leave that to your imagination.
(Really, these things are so small they should be called tablet-ettes).
My only...
June 2012
1 post
May 2012
5 posts
7 tags
WatchPhysical Computing Project created by myself and Tony Chu. A indoor wind chime that moves by sensing the motion of the wind outside. SVA coursework with Rob Faludi.
“Pride and fear. Really awful reasons for failing assignments. The irony is that...”
– Tony Chu: “Fail in Public” (via garychou)
10 tags
Can You Teach Someone to Be an Entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurial Design, aka “Internet School” or, as guest speakers/entrepreneurs referred to it, “the class I wish that I had five years ago!,” ended last week. My description of the class crafted by Gary Chou and Christina Cacioppo of Union Square Ventures won’t do justice to the impact that the work had on us, but here goes. [[MORE]]First, there was a remarkable...
April 2012
10 posts
The Man I'd Like to Meet in the Future
Who would I really want to meet in the world of design and technology? The problem I find, is that if I were to email my hero and the email was answered, would I really be able to carry on a proper conversation? I think this is especially true for the man I’d like to meet, James Bridle, the artist and futurist. James Bridle has been working on many remarkable projects, his Wikipedia work and...
7 tags
Win the Contest
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there are 286,100 professional graphic designers in the United States. They project that this number will grow to 323,100 by the year 2018, an increase of 36,000 jobs. The National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) accredits about 300 post secondary institutions with degree-granting programs in graphic design. If the average program...
Entrepreneur Designers: A tribute to cheese →
gurivenstad:
I’ve had a fascination for cheese for as long as I can remember. When I grew up, there was pretty much two types of cheese on my table: “the brown cheese” and “the yellow cheese”. The first one was sweet and the latter a mild, but salty kind of cheese. For a couple of years, my…
6 tags
Inward Facing
One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows a picture of a scientist standing in a laboratory filled with caged mice. He’s dressed in a very large mouse suit. The caption reads ” What was most interesting is what I learned about myself.” Yesterday, Facebook bought Instagram for, as my grandmother might say, an unGodly sum of money. The sale has driven me to distraction…it...
4 tags
March 2012
9 posts
Designing a Life
I was in Zagreb, Croatia two weeks ago as part of an international design jury for the ZGRAF exhibition of communication design. On the jury with me was the wonderful Niklaus Troxler whose posters for the Willisau Jazz Festival have been published widely and lauded internationally for their energy and inventive use of color, texture, and type. I’ve seen Niklaus work at the Art...
6 tags
9 tags
Saved by Tumblr
I was in the weeds on a design project last week and Tumblr really saved my neck. I was working on a book project with Patagonia. The title, The Responsible Company, sums up the content, a compilation of hard-won lessons in pursuit of a sustainable business practice. The authors, Vincent Stanley and Yvon Chouinard, are are absolute gents, idealistic and innovative. Chouinard wrote an inspired...
4 tags
Taking your own advice
I went back to Penn State for an alumni design event last year. I hadn’t been back to school in 15 years and, I have to say, it was great to visit. The design studio wasn’t in the same building, the old tables that were lacquered with spray mount residue had been replaced with modern work spaces. There was lots of room, it was clean. The students were great. I gave a talk about my life...
5 tags
Technology is not a movement, but it creates them.
Ansel Adams was very clear about his process: ” I do not take photographs, I make them.” In one sentence he drew a distinction between himself, the artist/photographer, and all the other hobbyists and dilletantes with cameras. “Making” involves the creation of something new; “taking” captures what is. Making requires a maker, the artist, and an intention, the vision. The vision...
6 tags
Lo lee ta.
“She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.”
John Bertram, architect and blogger, forwarded a link to an erratum in Print magazine. It seems that the April issue went to press with one page erroneously set in dummy text. (this will be the printed issue that I’ll have to buy!) The page was devoted to the Lolita Cover Project that John...
February 2012
6 posts
After 20 plus years of design---an internship.
I know the word internship evokes images of fetching coffee, making scans or doing busy work. Or it sounds like work for which one doesn’t get paid…and yet, here I am committing to a summer internship and excited at the prospect!
The SVA Interaction Design MFA program hosted a MeetUp event last Friday with folks from Facebook, Twitter, R/Ga, and others in attendance, but I had made a...
The Mnmlst
I received an email yesterday from Wharton Digital Press at the University of Pennsylvania. They had found my work on a Web site. They told me they liked my “minimalist approach” and wondered if we could talk about some future projects.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy that they liked the work. But, I was a bit disappointed about the “minimalist” thing.
I really can’t...
9 tags
11 tags
What the Book
Www.whatthebook.org is an interactive poll designed by myself and Tony Chu to provide a space for people to display their feelings about the changing form of books. The site was created in conjunction with the AIGA “50 Books/ 50 Covers” exhibition, an annual showcase of the best in book design. Visitors select AGREE or DISAGREE to seven statements that relate to the function of...
5 tags
Read my Lips
President Obama’s re-election campaign reported a boom in financial contributions to the tune of $68 million dollars. Those numbers, made of donations from individuals and PACS as well as money from the Democratic National Committee, are reminiscent of the record amounts raised during the president’s first election run. The announcement came the day after Mitt Romney won Florida and...
January 2012
2 posts
“A problem properly represented is mostly solved.”
–
credited to a Philosophy 101 course
And so it begins.
I want to code. Mayor Bloomberg wants to code. Newly registered users of codeacademy.com, middle school students, jobless graphic designers, hobbyists, geek wannabes, doctorate fellows, librarians, Starbucks employees (the list goes on and on) all want to code. What gives? Is it the last instrument to be learned in the pursuit of one-man-band virtuosity or a universal language in an internet...
