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 →
David Stairs
What can be considered radical anymore?
In their day, Vikings were pretty radical
Used to be this was easy to answer. Back in the ’60s we had Abbie Hoffman and Students for a Democratic Society, and Angela Davis and the Black Panthers…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I recently came to the end of a three-year creativity cycle. This usually means it’s time to relax, reflect, and reconsider my options. For me, a great way to do a little lateral thinking is my annual painting chore…. Continue Reading →
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…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Young boys on the beach in Allepay, Kerala, India
Designers are frequently talking about skills and aesthetics, practice and theory, and these are important topics. But when it comes to politics, man can they get it wrong!… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Winter Park, FL. train station
I’m having this printed on a t-shirt in 100 pt. demi-bold letters:
I survived Universal Studios
Over the Christmas holidays I was invited to Florida by an old friend I hadn’t seen since 2005…. Continue Reading →
Editor’s note: To celebrate the first anniversary of the Indian Journal we’ve invited our friend Sumandro to share his thoughts on contemporary discussions of the Indian concept “jugaad.”
Sumandro
In a recent essay, Hamid Dabashi has spoken out against the continuation of the obnoxious (colonial) practice of identifying European socio-cultural artifacts as the universal form,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Several months ago my wife and I had dinner in a restaurant with another couple. My wife is in her late 60s and I am in my early 70s. The other couple was about twenty years younger than us…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Amid the controversy over Guantanamo interrogation techniques resurrected by Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty I read Mark Owen’s No Easy Day, the ooh-rah first person Seal Team Six account of the assassination of Osama bin Laden on May 1st,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Cutting Corners
One of the most gratifying experiences is having one’s observations corroborated, especially when they are about another culture. Not one, but two Indian acquaintances responded to my last Indian post, Why India Does Not Need Me,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
As I come to the end of ten months of articles about India, I am a little sad. It has taken an effort, at times, to stick to my original purpose, to observe everyday design in action on the subcontinent…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
“It’s not a blue world anymore, Max.” —Chief Blue Meany speaking to his assistant at the end of Yellow Submarine
The aftermath of the 2012 election got me thinking about color. The typical red/blue dichotomy that the media has devised to represent our apparent “bad blood”… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I once saw a mounted policeman in Philadelphia charge down a street at a full gallop chasing a felon. In my neighborhood, South 9th Street, there were even a few remaining stables. This was, of course, a 17th century city that late in the 20th century that still had a mounted police unit…. Continue Reading →
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