David Stairs
Rube Goldberg at work
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
I’ve been hearing about the advantages of utilizing AI in design for about 5 years now. I attended a conference where the keynote was delivered by a woman who was working on a book about it…. 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
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
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
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
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 →
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 →
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 →
David Stairs
Have you ever been in a super loud environment? I don’t mean the usual sort, like a kindergarten classroom or a football stadium on an autumn weekend— a scene of audio cacaphony— I mean a visually loud room…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Since when did coding corner the market on the definition of “smart”?
I recently attended a UCDA design conference where Helen Armstrong was one of the keynoters. Ms. Armstrong, a multiply-credentialled academic with deep ties to the AIGA,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
While most people these days don’t think much about cattle when they discuss branding, they also probably don’t focus on Apple’s iconic 1984 Superbowl ad as the catalyst for a whole new generation of brand differentiation…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Nativity façade of Sagrada Familia
If you are planning to visit Barcelona for reasons other than seeing the FCB, Futbol Club Barcelona, chances are you will visit a site designed by Antonio Gaudi. Gaudi is the city’s favorite son,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Downtown Mount Pleasant, Michigan on the morning of July 16th, 2016
Some things about the Michigan summer are a certainty: mosquitoes, humidity, and recreation vehicles. Summer’s the season when snowmobile trailers are swapped out for boat hitches,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I’ve written the past couple of summers about Portland, Oregon and its environmentally-friendly culture. I visited my family again last month, as I normally do in July, just in time for the unveiling of a major new corporate/municipal project…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
When I first saw the house, a big old Victorian three-story I thought, “This place is great, but it’s way too big.” I’d been living abroad for a couple of years, and returning to rental space in a college town,… Continue Reading →
This is the third in an annual series of essays by students of the Ball State University Architecture program. Previous works by Jesse McClain and Phil Borkowski appeared in 2014 and 2015. —Ed.
Kenna Gibson
I am from a small town 10 miles away from Muncie,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Last week I was talking with my 16-year-old about his piano lesson when I asked him whether his tutor had emailed him before rescheduling a recent lesson. “Dad,” he chuckled, “I can’t believe you said that.” Translation: no one of sound mind uses anything but text as a means of communicating these days…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times: design is not supposed to be about self-expression. It’s iterative. It’s altruistic. It’s problem solving. But it’s not supposed to be self-expressive. Considering the number of huge egos in the design world,… 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 →
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 →
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 →
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
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 →
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
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 →
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