David Stairs Ask a group of student designers, any group, to develop a campaign while working in a large cohort, and they’re likely to react the way my Central Michigan University students did when I first made an unconventional proposal to them back in November 2012. I asked them to consider developing an online fundraiser [...]
David Stairs Dear Julie— I’ve been watching with a mixture of mild horror and benign amusement the recent fascination that Africa engenders in Western design circles. It’s inevitable, I suppose, that that portion of the human world known by the UN as the LDC (Least Developed Countries) would become some sort of 21st century refuge, [...]
David Stairs Upon meeting Kabaka Mutesa I, King of the Baganda, in 1878, Henry Morton Stanley was favorably impressed. In Through the Dark Continent, among the many journal observations regarding his visit to the shores of Lake Victoria, he had this to say about Bagandan dress: The women and chiefs of Mutesa, who may furnish [...]
An irresistible object, a homeless man and the future economy of the world Tasos Calantzis On a chilly late autumn afternoon the curator of one of Europe’s most prestigious art and design museums clicked through images of a new wooden vase and immediately ordered 8 pieces via e-mail for sale in the museum store. She [...]
David Stairs Kasule Kizito is not your everyday Ugandan. For one thing, he’s too direct. He says what he thinks without undue regard for taboos or political correctness. In an oral culture this of itself is amazing. For example, he’s the only African I know who’s not in ecstasies over Obama’s victory. Kizito had wanted [...]
David Stairs I was trudging through my local neighborhood big-box megastore the other day en route to my weekly rendezvous with groceries when I found myself in what passes for the book section. This isn’t a Borders experience; more somewhere between B. Dalton and the magazine rack at the local regional airport. So I wasn’t [...]
The origins and development of Uganda’s first product design program
Cell phone marketing in Africa
Being fitted for Sunday-go-to-meeting duds Ugandan style
Ugandans make a valuable resource out of banana leaf fiber
Laundry problems solved by vernacular
Creative design by Ugandan boys
That cloud you see isn’t rain, it’s Kampala smog!
Obversations on soda pop marketing in Africa
8 1/2 days without power can turn a city into a village
The things that hold Kampala up
A report from the DEFSA conference in Port Elizabeth, South Africa
James Lutwama’s Termitaria Thesis
David Stairs’ African Journal begins