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Capitalization of the Body

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 →

Annals of Dumb Design: Convenience

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 →

Land of the Free, Home of the Influenced

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 →

Racism as a Topic for Design Research

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 →

A Poke in the Eye

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 →

F*ck the Fortune 500

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 →

Summer’s Peeping Toms

David Stairs

While China installs a nationwide video surveillance system, people in the West fret about the potential damage to their privacy by CTV cameras. But, apart from high profile failures, like Toronto’s “smart city” project, we’ve actually been normalizing surveillance for decades…. Continue Reading →

How to Design a Pandemic

David Stairs
UPDATE:
As of July 23rd, 2021, following Anthony Fauci’s recent congressional testimony, this story is now being reported by the BBC.

A double arginine codon inserted at the S1/S2 furan cleavage site of the SARS CoV-2 virus’s genome
It was once the best of times………. Continue Reading →

On Outliving an Institution

David Stairs

When Thomas McNeill was made pastor of St. Margaret’s parish in 1948, he inherited little more than a twenty-year-old mission church in a growing suburb north of Syracuse, New York. McNeill had been a Navy chaplain in the Pacific during the war,… Continue Reading →

Designing Mayhem

David Stairs
Another day, another mass shooting. We’re led to believe by television that Mayhem is a guy in a suit, played by actor Dean Winters, who causes mass upheaval wherever he goes. If only it were that simple…. Continue Reading →

Is Fashion Unnatural?

David Stairs

Tom Tierney’s Rita Hayworth paper doll published by Dover
As I sit by my Thermopane picture window reflecting on the wintry scene outdoors, I am distracted by the arrival of a mated pair of songbirds. A male cardinal hops onto my bird-feeder while his subtle mate shelters in a nearby bush…. Continue Reading →

Fluoride for Truth Decay

David Stairs

Deep fake of the Queen’s Christmas address; courtesy Channel 4
A man walks into a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. armed with an automatic rifle determined to free children he believes are victims of a peadophilic sex trafficking “deep state.” People interviewed at a Stop the Steal rally in Atlanta tell interviewers a commission is needed to investigate the Democrat’s efforts to corrupt a widely certified election…. Continue Reading →

Death’s Trombone

David Stairs
Steve Zdep is dead, that much is certain. He passed away on November 6th, 2020 from causes not revealed in his obituary.

The author in more innocent times… Continue Reading →

Have Yourself a Merry Little Covid

David Stairs
With states reporting record numbers of infections, there is no doubt that this Christmas season will be one many will find hard to forget. The malls and retail centers we so precipitously abandoned way back in March do not have the same attraction of earlier years…. Continue Reading →

Don’t Regret November 3rd

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Maxed Out

David Stairs
Max is over, thank God.
And by Max I mean Adobe Max, that brightshiny overripe bells-and-whistles software tradeshow masquerading as an allconsuming excuse to be pretentiously jejeune…. Continue Reading →

The Design of Summer

David Stairs

A wild back yard
Except for a couple of thunderstorms, it hasn’t rained much in central Michigan this summer. It has been quite hot, and as usual, very humid. After aggressively mowing the grass in late May and June,… Continue Reading →

Masks! Of Course!

David Stairs
America has finally caught mask fever, fifteen years later than Asian people. There are still many who refuse to “suit up” including Covid deniers, those suffering from claustrophobia, and some who claim medical excuses. But the possible reasons for not wearing a mask are narrowing,… Continue Reading →

Relevance

David Stairs

I thought I was speaking truth, but now I’m not sure that it wasn’t simply “my truth” rather than something absolute. Maybe absolute truth doesn’t exist, no matter how much we’d like to believe in it. But,… Continue Reading →

The Tribble With Troubles

David Stairs
Courtesy Wikipedia
America’s got troubles. I don’t mean the song lyric kind, but, you know, serious troubles. And they’re not the soft purring type you might find on a now infamous classic sci-fi show. Those are tribbles,… Continue Reading →

Alternate Coronas

David Stairs
Are you just about sick and tired of seeing pictures of viruses?

Courtesy NIH… Continue Reading →

Lady Macbeth Did Not Have an N95

David Stairs

A sign of our times
There are interesting new ways to mark the passage of time. I generally take account each week when I venture out of my home to grocery shop…. Continue Reading →

Of Flattened Curves and Ballooning Statistics

David Stairs
Informatics is enjoying a renaissance.

Courtesy LiveScience.com
If you haven’t already encountered it, this graph is bound to become the most talked about x-y axis since Al Gore’s Nobel prize-winning acceptance speech. And it represents events more immediate than climate change,… Continue Reading →

A Good Bookstore Deserves a Good Bookmark

David Stairs
I suppose bookmarks are a personal thing. Some are woven; some are printed; some are just bits of stuff. My son uses a piece of red thread. I won’t say that I collect bookmarks either, but when I am in a bespoke store I will not leave without one…. Continue Reading →

Resistance is Futile

David Stairs

Paramount
“We Are the Borg.”
With these words, Maurice Hurley, writing for the Star Trek TNG episode Q Who?, unleashed one of television’s most implacable adversaries on the world. But,… Continue Reading →

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