David Stairs
Taking daily ice core samples on Antarctica. Courtesy BBC
Just this week the BBC reports that sea ice surrounding Antarctica is “mind-blowingly” low. This probably does not concern you too much. After all, you’ve never been to Antarctica,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Summer 2023 may be remembered as the year Americans finally awoke to climate change.
While choking smoke from Canadian wildfires enveloped cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York, places in the southwest suffered record high temps…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
In the Land of Celebrity, the Expert is King.
It would be difficult to argue that our society is not obsessed with celebrities. From film stars to athletes, politicians to the Pope— and let’s not forget the British Royal Family— in America the Cult of Personality reigns supreme…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning “segregated by race” that entered the general vocabulary during white control of South Africa and Namibia from 1948 to 1994. Its usefulness has expanded in the years since until nowadays it has become a universal term denoting enforced segregation…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Chris Stairs, age 5
I’ve never been shy about self-publishing.
I published my first small book in 1980. In those days there was a sort of pioneering enthusiasm about what has come to be known as artist’s books…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Malian terra cotta beads
Bling. When you start seeing it on Nike sneakers you’ve got to know it’s everywhere. But there are alternatives to manufactured bling if you know where to look for them.
When I lived in India and Africa I used to hang out at the open air markets…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Designers are such pragmatists.
Look at any form of commercial online instruction platform and you will be underwhelmed by volume of courses meant to help people improve their marketability. Whether you are obsessing over the need to improve your design skills through LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Recently I was working on an article for a design periodical when I hit on the idea to compare an American brand icon to an African DIY counterpart. It was not a fair comparison.
The American product was the Coleman pressurized lantern,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
“I think that it’s fairly likely that it will not take too long of a time for the entire surface of the Earth to become covered with data centers and power stations. Once you have one data center,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Early Bell System ad
In the 1920s, before such things developed a predatory sheen, the advertising world promoted the theme of the man who was on top of the world. Modern, accomplished, wealthy, this contemporary Babbitt looked out the window of his 40th floor office at the world as it lay at his feet,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I was in Detroit last weekend.
Of all the cities in the realm, Detroit has the best claim of “first in freeways.” The first mile of paved road was laid in Detroit in 1909, just in time for the revolution in transport Henry Ford was planning to visit on the nation…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Did you ever have to “brown bag” your lunch? If so, you know about the things that can go wrong, from torn bag to sogged-out paper from a leaky drink container…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Sigmund Freud in the parallel universe that is America (Photo credit: Library of Congress/Corbis Historical Collection)
Amid all the loose talk about lost American greatness, there seem to be many people worrying about just what has gone so terribly wrong,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Title wall of the exhibition 5°F
Gordon Lightfoot had a song on Summer Side of Life entitled “10 Degrees and Getting Colder.” That record is now over 50 years old, and things have changed dramatically since it was released…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
The only guns this cowboy ever owned
What could be more dimwitted, un-insightful, or self-serving than a strict interpretation of the Second Amendment?… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Load your Potato Guns boys ’n girls!
Yogi Berra once said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
Back in the days when Trump was the undisputed Twitter Queen, I never thought we’d be free of his unhinged rantings…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Courtesy of Lucien Stairs
You don’t have to look very far these days to see designers talking about the brave new world of Design AI. Helen Armstrong is out stumping her AI monograph, Big Data,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
There are two treats I remember from childhood, and they were both manufactured by Sunshine Bakers: Cheez-Its, and Hydrox. Cheez-Its are still around in many updated variations, now a Kellogg’s brand. Hydrox dropped from sight for awhile,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Thomas Carlyle called economics the “dismal science” in response to Malthus’s writings about exponential population growth. Carlyle was a Victorian and did not live in an era dominated by design. It would’ve been interesting to see what he would have made of our times…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Quannah Chasinghorse by Nathaniel Goldberg; Emily Ratajkowski from Instagram
A recent article in Elle Magazine online by Terese Marie Mailhot (Photographed by Nathaniel Goldberg and Styled By Alex White) introduces us to Quannah Chasinghorse, a nineteen-year-old native American runway model of Ha?n Gwich’in and Sicangu Oglala Lakota descent…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
The only good use I’ve ever found for disposable diapers, a 1976 poster. (Note the pins I added. Talk about double-entendre!)
I know I’m supposed to say that prize-winning financially successful ideas are examples of great design,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Dick Clark at the Moulin Rouge by David Stairs
In a land governed by capital, it comes as no surprise that so much value is attached to celebrity. One of the first great modern personalities,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Every three years I am tasked with guiding a group of senior design students through their capstone year. Once upon a time it was enough to mount a student’s portfolio for public exhibition, and this process can still be seen at end-of-year design exhibitions across the country…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
As the AIGA gears up for its annual conference, I find myself pondering. In a year of magical thinking, like everyone else the AIGA has reinvented its conference schedule for online delivery. If this is just a matter of the new normal,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
There are a lot of people criticizing techno-capitalism these days, those so-called social pariahs demonstrating for economic “justice” and “equity.” But surely, these things are not givens in a free enterprise economy. They have generally needed the assistance of government regulation…. Continue Reading →
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