David Stairs
The discussion in my Junior-year studio at this week’s critique swirled around the value of Pinterest, that irrepressible repository of everything how-to-do-it. Is it a valuable source of inspiration, or a struggling student’s crutch? Is it gender specific,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
There are two or three things graphic designers are especially keen about. They like to make logos: Researching, executing, and branding a marque will cause most self-respecting designer’s hearts to flutter. They like to talk about type: Obsessing about letterform and the way it looks on the page and interacts with images is second nature to them…. Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Before I go any further, I must confess that I am a man d’un certain age. Therefore my responses to new technology are selective and generational. I still favor transactions with other human beings over those with machines…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I.
I once founded a town. It’s in the high desert about twenty miles outside of Bend, Oregon overlooking the magnificent Three Sisters Wilderness off in the distance to the west. I called the town Denial. At the time only two other people volunteered to live there,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Homo faber, humankind the maker, seems destined to design itself right out of a world.
MacGyver packin’
Unlike pharmacology, or agriculture, technology has a weak review process for testing its effects on the natural environment. We have user testing,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Ah, autumn.
A crispness is in the air. The delectable smell of woodsmoke, the warm sun burnishing a hundred shades of orange, the tang of fresh cider at the orchard, or a field full of pumpkins at sunset…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
As a person who answers a lot of mail inquiring about socially responsible design internship options, a recent Skype conversation with some grad architecture students at Ball State University got me to dusting off some serious criticism of the “faux humanitarianism” of do-gooder design…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I grew up in a subdivision of a crossroads-small town named Mattydale, N.Y. In the early 20th century the area had been comprised of dairy and vegetable farms that supplied the city of Syracuse. In the 1920s the farmers sold out,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
I like to go to a café in the morning to read the paper before I start work. I also enjoy meeting friends and colleagues in cafes. For some time, the Starbucks in my Chicago neighborhood was my choice for reading the paper and a Caribou Coffee a few blocks north of my home was the place where I chose to meet colleagues and friends…. Continue Reading →
The following is excerpted from Jesse McClain’s 2014 Master’s thesis—Ed.
Jesse McClain
Figure 1: Images from top to bottom: Top two images – Anawalt strip mining site in Southern West Virginia. Bottom image: Town of Keystone, West Virginia,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
There is a concept in science, known as publication bias, that suggests editors of scientific journals prefer to publish positive test results over the results of failed, or negative tests. It’s human nature, one supposes, to prefer good news to no news,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
If you are a white-collar worker making a decent salary, chances are that your paycheck will go directly to your bank so you can access it with a check or a withdrawal slip or draw on it with a credit card or mobile phone payment…. Continue Reading →
Daniel Drennan ElAwar
“Believe in stone and survive.”
Framework
From the Declaration of the Palestinian People during the first intifada in 1987:
We will no longer be a subject people. If you order us to our camps,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
At 10:02am on Saturday, February 23, 2014 I officially became old.
X-ray of surgical plate to correct a comminuted fracture of my right distal radius
As I left my house to take my dog Asali for a walk I noted that the front steps were blocked by snow…. Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
I once thought that the greatest obstacle to reflective thought was the endless haptic texting that occupies the mental space of so many people but now I have a new culprit, data. Devices that have dissected our bodily functions into tiny shards flood the market,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Looking for love? It doesn’t matter if you have specialized tastes. Not only the “fetish-friendly” or the “transgerdered” are searching, but single moms, cancer sufferers, BBWs, middle-age widowers, cheating wives, and sugar daddies, too. The internet caters for all races,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Everyone knows that university sports have become a big business and increased access to their aura and actual content is a great way to raise money. Besides luxury stadium seats, there are the intimate dinners with star athletes,… Continue Reading →
Vassiliki Giannopoulos National Design Awards Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum 2 E 91st St, New York, NY 10128
Dear Ms. Giannopoulos, Regarding your December 23rd email notifying us that Designers Without Borders has been nominated for the 2014 National Design Awards,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
An admission of personal weakness is not always a bad way to start a new year. I’m willing to stick my neck out and tell you a secret: I’m an inveterate maker of lists.
I can’t shop for food without using a list…. Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
In recent weeks, I have been involved in three chaotic attempts to introduce changes in services that I have come to rely on. These include banking, public transit, and healthcare. The website of Obamacare is not the only evidence of innovative change that is malfunctioning…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Ask my Indian friend: Americans are in a coma. What would evoke such an evaluation? Last year, while I was living in Bangalore, an American friend visited and my son and I met her for lunch. While crossing a busy boulevard she grabbed my arm and said,… Continue Reading →
Cansu Akarsu
During my short career as a designer I have been a true nerd, spending all my free time participating in every workshop and design competition I found from all fields. Life is easy when you are learning,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
“Tool hedonism is in ascendance.” —J. Robert Oppenheimer
Imagine a world where waste is more significant than thrift, where advertising trumps taste, and where novelty is the be-all end-all of existence. Not hard, is it?… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
View from atop the Middle Sister in the west central Oregon Cascades reaches 100 miles north to Mt. Hood.
On a recent drive across country I was thinking about what the land must have looked like two hundred years ago…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Luco at music camp. I kept the phone.
The campaign began about nine months ago. From the beginning I was the primary target. I never had a chance. It wasn’t even a subtle assault. Mentioned with increasing frequency,… Continue Reading →
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