Sumandro
“Commons are forms of direct access to social wealth; access that is not mediated by competitive market relations.”
– Massimo De Angelis, The New Commons in Practice: Strategy, Process and Alternatives, Development, 2005, 48(2), 48-52
Men gathering cattle fodder,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Two articles of significance appeared in my morning papers recently, one in The New York Times, a lengthy obituary for the courageous publisher Barney Rosset, and the other in the Business section of the Chicago Tribune, describing how Amazon has yanked 5,000 titles that belong to the Independent Publishers Group from its e-book library…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I thought it was malaria. I had all the symptoms: headache, chills, fatigue, fever, sweats, dry cough. My first three weeks in country I’d been living near a swamp, and the incubation period seemed right. No matter that Bangalore is not in a malarious zone,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
“Indians do not have the same civic sense as, say, Scandinavians. The boundary of the space you keep clean is marked at the end of the space you call your own.”
—from Maximum City by Suketu Mehta
The Commons are a topic of concern to contemporary Indians…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Anantapura Road
Demarcating property lines, that most European activity, has taken over the world. When I was a child in the ’50s, the adjoining backyards of my neighborhood were open. I remember running with my friends through the neighborhood like wild horses,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Two of the major trends that have driven product design in the past twenty years are connectivity and sustainability. The desire to be in frequent if not constant communication with others has spawned a variety of devices from cell phones to almost lighter-than-air tablets and laptops…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Cement trucks parked along Doddaballapur Road
Every environment has its signature building material. In Africa, rammed earth and thatch were, for centuries, the default until they gave way to bricks and mortar. I’ve always thought of North America as the wood construction capital of the universe,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Editor’s Note: With this posting we launch our Indian Journal category of D-A-P
India. For over thirty years, ever since seeing Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy in the 70’s, I’ve dreamed of being here…. Continue Reading →
An Xiao Mina
They’re a colorful, familiar sight all across the Philippines. Converted from old US army vehicles and personally decorated by the drivers, jeepneys have been transformed into viable public transportation vehicles. They zip through dense traffic much more easily than a bus but they can still fit at least a dozen people…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I’ve been writing about altruism at this blog for so long it all begins to blend together. My inaugural essay spoke about the biological/memetic basis for altruism. The year before I had published an essay at Design Issues that was a prelude to D-A-P…. Continue Reading →
Ed. note— This interview of Daniel Drennan ElAwar was conducted by Nabil Chehade at American University of Beirut, where Mr. Drennan has been teaching.
Series of four posters for the Return to Palestine March, May 15, 2011…. Continue Reading →
We’re pleased to observe that our friends at Terrestrial Design in Pretoria, South Africa recently won an award from the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), that country’s design oversight body, for their safe Arivi paraffin stove. 2009 INDEX Award finalist,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Let’s be clear. The folks on Wall Street and others who work in the financial and banking industries don’t make anything. They create pieces of paper that encode the bad deals they have foisted on American consumers or they buy and sell these pieces of paper among themselves…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
In Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord attempted to define the interrelationship between government and commodity capitalism. No finer recent example could be found than the 9/11 10th Anniversary commemorative activities that took place around the country this past month…. Continue Reading →
Daniel Drennan ElAwar
In April 2010 I found myself in Montreal for an academic conference. It was my first time there, and as I am wont to do in such a new place, I looked up used bookstores and otherwise roamed around the city…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
This essay was originally published in Speak Up October 26, 2004. It seems just as timely as ever.
Branding. From the pages of Print and Communication Arts to the sessions at the AIGA biennial conference,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I was over at Design Observer yesterday, reading Rick Poynor’s lament about the depressed state of design criticism. The comments, posted by the usual band of DO nabobs and groupies, were unusually critical. One commentator referred to DO as “a likedy-like NYC mafia,”… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
When it comes to saving the world, I’m a reformed do-gooder. Yet, not a day goes by that I am not reminded of how many people are working mightily to save the world. First and foremost, there are the entrepreneurs,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
It happened in an instant.
One moment I was leaving the school parking lot, the next the ground was close to my face and I could see the EMT’s feet as they worked around me. It was 8:20am Monday May 2…. Continue Reading →
Scott Gerald Shall
Introductions
We sat on the floor in the cramped offices of Espasio Cultural Creativo. The group was an eclectic mix: staff and volunteers from Espasio Cultural Creativo (or ECC, a Bolivian non-profit that runs arts education initiatives on the streets of La Paz and the chief reason we were in Bolivia),… Continue Reading →
Ed. note. This piece recently appeared as 21st Century Ethics for Graphic Designers in Sophie Krier’s anthology I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I Want To Be There published in December 2010 by BIS
David Stairs
What does it mean to be a citizen designer anyway?… Continue Reading →
Wes Janz
This piece was recently presented at a workshop at Ball State University —Ed.
I. Whose vantage point is privileged when we speak of “the base of the pyramid”? Whose construction of “base” and “pyramid” are we talking about?… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I never thought I’d get so old that I’d begin to sound like Andy Rooney. What is he, about 95? But I realize now that the infernal buzzing of human electronic communications media has me longing for the quietude Obi-Wan enjoyed in his adobe hut on Tatooine…. Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin and Sylvia Margolin
Americans are witnessing the birth of a new spectator sport – political football. It’s played with two teams – the Democratic Donkeys and the Republican Elephants. The intensity of the competition is similar to regular football but it differs in that the contact is ideological rather than physical…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
On Sunday February 6th I went to my local grocery store to get some canned tomatoes for the dinner I was planning. The place was mobbed. I looked around, half expecting to see the Lord descend in a cloud of glory,… Continue Reading →
© 2026 Design Altruism Project — Powered by WordPress
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
