With this involvement of notating time out of necessity, I began to wonder: what other visual systems also came out of a need to construct a plan, but be flexible enough for the unplanned? What do they look like? How do these visual systems of notation accommodate improvising? In 4 very different arenas, I found that carefully evolved design languages can indeed become containers for the unplanned to arise and at the same time, encouraged improvisation. The seemingly disparate arenas of basketball, dance, conducting, and becoming a parent all yield a visual language that is economical, transferrable, and inspiring. In broad strokes from the lens of simple curiosity I’ll use these examples to support the meeting of structure and improvisation, the magic in the halfway of planning and letting go.

TRIANGLE OFFENSE

Since basketball is really about reacting to how the defense is playing the offense, basketball plays are just guides, like rules and systems to help the player know where to go, stay spaced, and provide movement to make it harder for the defense to guard. The whole point of a ‘play’ is so a team can work the ball around and get the best shot. Good teams can run their plays perfectly like clockwork and get those shots. BUT when the defense prevents a team from executing that play, there’s a great chance that the whole play will break down and the team will either turn the ball over or attempt a ‘bad’ shot. The best teams can run their plays perfectly but also improvise, adapt, and react to the defense. The Triangle Offense emphasizes this idea of reacting to the defense and having multiple options (plays) for the players when they get the ball. It’s designed for its players to always be in motion, where every pass and cut has a purpose and everything is dictated by the defense. (As told to me by Morgan DiPietro, a design student of mine, and a basketball player. Thank you.)

LABANOTATION

Rudolph von Laban studied sculpture; specifically human form and the space that surrounds it before he became a dancer and choreographer. In 1928 he published Kinetographie Laban, a dance notation system designed not for a single style of dance, but generic movement. Labanotions record movement within a space and duration of time and are understood by dancers and choreographers as only guidelines and will be interpreted by the choreographer and the dancer. Symbols make up a data format that capture the choreographer’s intentions and can be quite complex and nuanced but set the ground work for transferring intention and specifics of movement within space and time. While Labanotaion is a straightforward way to transcribe dance into a visual system, the readers recognize that the influence of personalities, context, and expression also becomes a part of the interpretation. Again a notation is designed out of need and is recognized by the users as guidelines which will meet expression halfway.

BENESH NOTATION

Rudolph Benesh studied fine art in London. His wife Joan Benesh studied at the Liverpool Studio School of Dance and Drama, Royal Ballet.Together in 1955 they published An Introduction to Benesh Dance Notation. This notation system used specifically for ballet is based on a matrix on which a five-line horizontal staff represents the dancer from head to foot, seen from the back. From the top, the five lines denote: head, shoulders, hips, knees, and feet. Marks correspond directly to the the motions and placement of movement, duration is read from left to right. These staffs use italian musical symbols. Benesh notation is used for ballet, where Labanotation accommodates other movement forms. Benesh is more directly connected to the body position and is more easily understood with some music reading training.

CONDUCTING

First the conductor studies the composer’s written musical score. During rehearsal verbal cues as well as hand gestures inform and translate the composer’s intention as understood by the conductor through the signs and symbols of the score. Rehearsal and performance are two very separate experiences for performers. The movement patterns of tempo are specific and repeatable from conductor to conductor and are learned by musicians in order to understand the visual-only cues necessary during performances. The conductor’s right hand denotes tempo and melodic shape, the left hand infers emotion, dynamics, cuing, phrasing and expression along with the eyes, face, and body also express intention. From the necessity of translating qualities of sound and time conducting patterns have been written down and passed on while also allowing for expression and the moment; the improvisation of expression.

MOTHER’S CHARTS

When my first child was born I needed a way to see what a day looked like or what tomorrow might bring or something that might indicate when I could sleep next — so I charted his activities in effort to understand patterns or rhythms of his waking, sleeping, or eating. Notations became nuanced form and complex symbols developed over time as Jack’s routine began to include his own expressions beyond basic needs. I kept these up for almost eleven months, finally stopping this daily ritual when his participation in his life exceeded my ability as well as necessity to make visible.

- – -

Basketball charts, dance notation, conducting patterns, and baby notation all emerged from a need to notate time and sequence located within a relative space. Each of these data structures leave room for the improvised, the halfway-point-sweetspot of mediating and interpreting intention with the unplanned. The charts were designed to be informative, useful, and they were to be built upon by the act itself of the game, the performance, the growth of an infant. Bill Russell, Boston Celtics 11x World Champion understood this meeting place of structure and improvisation when he said:

“Playing in the zone is a moment when everything goes so perfectly that you slip into a gear that you didn’t even know was there.”

The post Meeting Halfway appeared first on DesignInquiry.

Each of the authors considers how design responds to improvisation and constraint, using limitations as opportunities in creative practice. As designed by Maia Wright, 16 individually bound booklets in a slipcase can be re-arranged and read in any order: as a book MAKE/DO invites improvisation and play.

Contributors to the MAKE/DO book: Maia Wright, Gabrielle Esperdy, Peter Hall, Ben Van Dyke, Emily Luce, Margo Halverson, Rachele Riley, Lindsey Culpepper, Liz Craig, Brooke Chornyak, Leanne Elias, Glen MacKinnon, Anita Cooney, Richard Kegler, Melle Hammer.

DesignInquiry MAKE/DO © 2013
ISBN-10: 0988991500

Hardcopies of MAKE/DO are available at Amazon for $15 plus shipping & handling.

The post Make/Do Book appeared first on DesignInquiry.

We’re excited to have such a rich array of participants and ideas for the soon-to-be-upon-us DesignInquiry: MAKE/DO. We’ve loosely organized the week based on the content of the proposals and a sense of how the week plays out. Nothing is set in stone, least of all the schedule. The “not the schedule” is to follow.

THE STAGE

Most of the presentations take place in the mornings, with some evening activities, and opening night introductions. (Afternoons are mostly kept free for workshop stuff – making,collaborating, roaming, quarry swimming, etc.) Presenters for each morning typically get together and self-organize the session. This should be done in advance, so that everyone in the group has a sense of how they connect. What you bring individually to the group sessions is obviously based on your proposal, but it need NOT be worked into a full slide-lecture. You could bring objects, books, ideas on paper, install an exhibition or introduce an assignment/workshop (give us an assignment– use us as your researchers). Lectures should be no longer than 20 minutes. It would make sense to try to get all digital media on the same computer for each session if you’re needing projection (we’ll have a projector there, no printer, only your own laptops, and no internet at Pleasant River). Together, we will pick moderators (we’ll sort that out on the first night) to help knead and prod the discussions. The idea is that these sessions are improvisatory and responsive in nature.

Once you’ve taken a look at the “not the schedule”, please contact Ben, Melle or Peter at the addresses below with any questions you may have. Or dive in and start contacting your group-members (email addresses are on the attached not-the-schedule).

See you on Vinalhaven!

Ben, Melle & Peter

DI: MAKE/DO ON THE BLOGOSPHERE:

Andrew Twigg, “Embrace the Strain”, AIGA VOICE http://www.aiga.org/embrace-the-strain/

Sareena Sernsukskul & Pattama Suksakulchai “STREET VENDORS & BANGKOK URBAN SPACE”

http://old.designinquiry.net/journal/?p=1743

COMING SOON: Elliott Earls, “Make Do: The curious problem of the relationship between Sanjaya Malakar, Rachel Harrison and Marcel Duchamp.” Design Observer.

NOT THE SCHEDULE: DesignInquiry Make/Do 2011

Location: The Barn at the Sparrow Farm, Round the Island Road, Vinalhaven ME

SUNDAY EVENING:

Making opening remarks: Margo

Making the journal: Ben

Doing the food: Gabrielle

Doing Make/Do: Melle & Peter

Bartering: Leanne & Glen

Name: Gabrielle Esperdy
Position: Associate Professor of Architecture New Jersey Institute of Technology & DesignInquiry Board Member
Website: www.esperdy.net, aka American Road Trip

Bio
I am an architectural historian and critic based in New York City. My work examines the intersection of architecture, consumerism, and modernism in the urban and suburban landscape, especially in the U.S. in the 20th and 21st centuries. I look mostly at minor or everyday buildings and at the ways that social, economic, and political issues shape the built environment. I’m working on two book projects at present: one is called Architecture’s American Road Trip and it explores how architectural discourse absorbed the ideals and concerns of commercial sphere after World War II. The other, god help me, is The Buildings of New Jersey: half guide book/half reference work, it will be published on line prior to appearing in print as part of the Buildings of the United States series (Society of Architectural Historians/University of Virginia Press). I’m also Editor of SAH Archipedia, an online resource of the history of the built environment scheduled to go live in 2012, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education. Finally, in addition to all that yadda yadda yadda, I’m a proud DesignInquiry board member and one of three Coneheads of the distinguished DesignInquiry Journal.

Proposal
An ongoing DesignInquiry project is the production of a cookbook that documents the improvisational artfulness of DI dining through a series of illustrated trifolds of recipes prepared at DI gatherings. Given our isolated island location, the scant supplies available at the local grocery store, and the limitations of the Joy Farm kitchen, cooking for DI’s 24 participants is, of necessity, an exercise in making/do. And so is editing the DI cookbook: because meals, both their preparation and consumption, are such in the moment celebrations, too many wonderful dishes and superlative flavors exist as fleeting memories rather than transcribed recipes. Thus, with few exceptions, the draft DI cookbook is too drily retrospective, and it fails to capture the lively, ever-evolving collaborations that DI meals actually are. My contribution to make/do will attempt to rectify this situation by capturing this year’s food/meals preparation live and in action. My goal is twofold: to accumulate images, ingredients, and dishes for the DI cookbook AND to foster a deliberate meditation on the profound relationship that exists between/among place, community, food, and design as we make/do at this year’s DI gathering.

Name: Leanne Elias
Position: Assistant Professor, New Media, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge , Ab, Canada
Website: rocketannie.com

I teach in a New Media program that is housed within a Faculty of Fine Arts in a small Canadian University. The students are, for the most part, engaged and critical, and I love my job. My research interests lie in both design and technology: I am looking at how mobile technology can get students out of the computer lab and into the world to discover design through using QR codes and augmented reality.

Although I love working with technology, the lure of spending a week on an island, away from a computer and close to physical materials is almost too much to bear.

AND

Name: Glen MacKinnon
Position: Academic Assistant, Dept of Art, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge , Ab, Canada
Website: http://people.uleth.ca/~glen.mackinnon/

Artist, stagehand, and educator, living in Lethbridge, Canada. My work as an artist is primarily sculpture with an interest in the properties and potential of specific materials; plywood for example. Most recently I have been looking at light as material in sculpture and in lighting design. My recent work has involved collaboration with the Canadian artist Denton Fredrickson and occasionally, other artists. Make-do offers a chance to work with others outside my discipline and possibly make the beginning on continuing collaborative work, either with Leanne or others.

Proposal
Bartering. Negotiating. Sharing. Give-and-take.

While recent economics make the exchange of goods or services in lieu of payment a logical choice, bartering makes sense for all sorts of other reasons. When you barter with someone, you open the door to learning about other abilities and talents that they possess. In doing so, your perception of them changes. You also learn the kinds of things they value and the kinds of things they don’t, and it becomes apparent to you what kinds of things you value and what kinds of things you don’t.

For Make / Do, we propose to involve all of the participants in a week-long bartering extravaganza.

MONDAY MORNING: Improvise (introducing week-long projects)

Liz (improv), Vickie & Ronda (space), Margo (time), Mark (film), Emily (Make-do toys), Ben (exhibition)

Name: Liz Craig
Position: Graphic Designer/Owner, Queen Esther Design, Berkeley, CA
Website www.queenestherdesign.com

I have been running my own studio (Queen Esther Design-named after my mother) and working full-time in companies as a designer for over ten years. Looking back, I realize that my design career officially began at Middlebury College in Vermont where I joint majored in Anthropology and Art. Being interested in other cultures, people and their stories and making art was a natural start to becoming a designer.

In 2005, I received my MFA in Design from California College of the Arts where I studied Improvisational comedy and its relationship to design. I thought that design took itself too seriously and I had seen as much intelligence and craftsmanship in Improv comedy than I had seen in any design campaign. I took off researching to figure out how to imbibe my work with the qualities that made their Improv performances exhilarating. As part of my thesis investigation, I worked in my cousin’s backyard, using a human-powered trampoline to throw found objects into the air and photograph them in mid-flight. Challenged by my thesis advisor, Martin Venezky to walk the walk for all my talk, I began taking Improvisational theater classes and experienced fright and thrill.

Since then I worked as a designer (and magician’s assistant!) in Francis Ford Coppola’s Art Department. I designed wine labels, marketing collateral, sell sheets and brainstormed about new products. Currently I’m working as a consultant in the Communications Department at the University of California and job hunting.

The intersection of improvisation and design is right up my alley! I’m still trying to figure out how to let it inform my work. Spending a week with smart, creative people in Maine where I spent summers as a kid would be the perfect place to do it.

Proposal
I would do an exercise (or several) where I would take the rules of a game used in Improv theater and apply them to design. The outcome would be made vs. being a performance. I believe that creativity happens within constraints and once the “rules” are applied to the process the results will be unexpected!

Name Jonathon Russell
Position Assistant Professor
Company Central Michigan University
Website http://www.jonathonrussell.com

I am a native of southern Illinois and have spent the last 14 years of my life living, working, teaching and moving (with my family) to five different states (we have lived in every time zone) and the United Arab Emirates. The one thing that all of the places I have lived and taught have in common is a lack of readily available resources. I am well schooled in the old adage of “making do, or doing without”.

I am interested in Design Inquiry and the topic of Make/Do to increase my knowledge and understanding of working inside the constraints of limited resources, and being creative with what you have and can easily find. They say two minds are better than one. I am hoping that 24 minds will be a revelatory experience.

Proposal
While teaching in the UAE, a student gave me a gift of a modified book. Nothing fancy, just a catalog from the company where she was completing an internship with the outside corners folded down to create an object shaped like a yurt. She made it because she was bored, but it made me think about the ways designers use objects they have available to them to create design objects. These objects can be for client use or self-promotional, but use cast-off materials or modified pieces of existing design to create the work. I would like to give a presentation that outlines some of this type of project and incorporate a workshop that allows participants to do the same.

Workshop: We will take an existing piece of design, a stack of materials, or both and create a new piece of work that could be personal, political or social in nature. The existing designs can be anything from a pizza flyer to the New York Times. I would provide the materials to be used for the workshop. I feel that if participants bring their own it would be a conscious choice, and I want the experience to be immediate rather than reflective. My plan is to visit departments around the university and collect the books,

binders, pamphlets and catalogs that can be found in the “free!” boxes outside of faculty offices. This would provide a broad range of printed subject matter of various quality and content to work with. The public library and the thrift store are also good sources for material. The work that is produced in the workshop would be limited by the facilities in Vinalhaven. In the most ideal situation we would have access to either a letterpress (with type) or screen printing facilities. The workshop would work just as well with a color laser or inkjet printer, and if that is not available knives, scissors, glue, markers and paint will do. The goal is to look at what is available and use it to express your message. The type of work that will be produced in the workshop is not something that could be used for every client project, but the experience of creating something from scraps can influence the way designers look at those scraps and the potential they hold for design solutions.

Name vickie r phipps
Position Graphic Design MFA Graduate Student, University of Tennessee
Website http://www.behance.net/vickiephipps

AND

Name Ronda L. Phipps
Position Sculptor and Metal Fabrication/ Lecturer at the School of Architecture
Company Self/University of Tennessee
Website http://thewomanofsteel.com/

We are an artist/designer couple working together and independently on a variety of projects. Our collaborative projects have been primarily community oriented performance works:

• Our most recent project was an outdoor installation of “road-sign-like” metal posters atop bases made from the bodies of motorcycle/bicycle/mufflers.
• The Society of Civil Fights humorously questioned how we make decisions as a society including a variety of dueling options ranging from marshmallow guns to paintball guns (photo gallery of participants.)

Make/Do often informs the way we work: our process, material selection, and concept. Also, we are in the early stages of founding Bent, a shared creative space that we hope will very much be in line with ideas of make/do. We would be very excited for the chance to take a step back and explore make/do with a group of creative thinkers.

Vickie: I was once told that I was “raised by the trees.” I grew up in a small coalfield town two hours from the closest mall or interstate. A quick sampling of my life experiences: fire fighter, Women’s Profession Football player, residential counselor for kids in state custody, educator at Community Television in Knoxville. For recreation, I have been known to do chainsaw art or spend all day kayaking (flat water only please.) I came to graphic design later in life and fell completely in love. At the moment, I am just finishing up my second year of graduate studies at UT. In addition to being a full time student, I hold a full time position at Home & Garden Television (HGTV) as the Director of Program Planning.

Ronda: When I was a little girl, a tornado was headed toward where I lived. My mother told me to grab something I wanted to save and we hurried to shelter. I took my most valued possessions a bag of metal I had been collection. Later my mother threw the bag away and told me it was trash.

After returning to college for animal science, pre-vet tract, making the dean’s list, I found myself captivated with metal once again. Everyone thought I lost my mind when I decided to follow that passion and pursue a sculpture degree.

It took me almost 20 years to find metal again.

Whenever possible, my work is about repurposing materials and using what others discard as trash or scrap.

Proposal
Space for Life: An experiment in open-ended, multi-authored something around a Question:

How can we embrace creativity in finding New uses for space that will transform social interactions?

Shared Framework:

1. Seed: the Initial question written on reclaimed material from a glove factory along with pens + supplies (reclaimed also)
2. Open-ended nature of project: If the criteria were written down/they would be restrictive
3. Closing: near the end of the week a Conversation around the experiment will occur
4. Host Motivations: The content generated by the experiment will be used to inspire/inform unscripted performance projects
5. Provided Background: The question derives from a July 2007 Report by the thinktank Demos entitled Equally Spaced? Public Space and interaction between diverse communities which examined how we live together. The report concludes with 4 recommendations including:
   1. aim to create a setting for “trusted” spaces, where people feel secure to take part in unfamiliar interactions
   2. embrace creativity and innovation in finding new and imaginative uses for space that will transform the interactions between people
6. 6. Reference material available For the curious (not necessary material for participation):
   1. 3 copies of the Demos report
   2. A list of questions the hosts currently have around public space, Make/Do, and unscripted performance

Name: Ben Van Dyke
Position: Head of Graphic Design, University at Buffalo
Website: benjaminvandyke.com

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from?
I am a designer and educator in Buffalo, NY. I teach typography and design history at the University at Buffalo where I am the head of the graphic design program.

What are your interests in the topic MAKE / DO:
My research revolves around gallery installations and occasionally two-dimensional printed posters. I produce complex typographic installations made of steel, acrylic, paint, piano wire and any other materials I can bend, fold, twist, mutilate and spray paint. These exhibitions are site-specific, improvised uses of spaces and materials that flirt with the territory between turbulence and unity. These three-dimensional typographic structures form a code, illuminating modes of communication that go beyond language ultimately revealing new areas of research.

I rarely see the exhibition space before installation and I make no sketches or plans ahead of time, often arriving only days before the opening date. This not only maximizes the pressure to work quickly and intuitively but also focuses the energy of the exhibition on the value of Uncertainty and disconnects the work from pre-existing expectations of what Design is.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
Throughout the course of the week, I would like to initiate and help develop a DI group exhibition somewhere on Vinalhaven. This will be an improvised process of scouting locations, finding materials and gathering work made during DesignInquiry. I am excited by the idea that on the day we arrive, there is no work to speak of, no gallery, no theme and no participants but by the end of the week, there will be a celebration of making and doing.

MONDAY EVENING: Screening “Making Faces”

TUESDAY MORNING: Type, film, print & chance

Richard, Mark, Brooke, Jonathon, Maia & Eric

Name Richard Kegler
Position Director, P22 type foundry
WNY Book Arts Center
Making Faces film
Website: http://www.p22.com, http://www.wnybookarts.org, http://makingfacesfilm.blogspot.com/

I am based in Buffalo NY. My type design company, P22 type foundry has been making and distributing digital fonts for over 15 years. I have overseen/directed/executed most of the type design and support graphic design for P22. A few years ago I decided to attempt a re-immersion into analog via starting the WNY Book Arts Center (WNYBAC) in a disused building in downtown Buffalo. The center is a 501-c-3 not-for-profit organization with a gallery, printshop, library, gift shop and printing museum. The mission of WNYBAC is essentially to MAKE and to DO. The printshop hosts visiting artists in residence as well as thousands of students on one time and extended projects. The fuzzy areas that overlap between Art, Design and Craft are of the greatest interest to me. My current film project manages to merge my professional and personal interest in typography, hand craft and my Masters degree in Media Study into one project.

Proposal
I can adapt a presentation on any of my 3 major projects: From a presentation on P22’s unorthodox uses of OpenType technology in fonts that create interactivity with designers (which may be considered a hindrance to design by some, or pushing the possibilities of the often underused programming capabilities with fonts), to the other end of the spectrum on how the WNY Book Arts Center’s design aesthetic is reliant on the type faces and image cuts found within our cases and hand printed using reclaimed inks and papers for a truly “Make/Do” exemplar. A third option is to screen and discuss the Making faces film which follows the late Canadian Type designer Jim Rimmer, through his process on making a metal and digital typeface. All three presentation options very much fit within the Make/Do premise. I feel the interaction with other artists/designers/craftspeople is crucial in having an honest evaluation with ones own work. This, and I have been to Vinalhaven and love the idea of going back.

Name eric eng
Position: designer, eric eng design
Website ericeng.com

I have participated and assisted with DI ’04+’05, after which I later left the US to pursue my post graduate in London. Since completing my MA, I have worked for various architectural practices and cultural institutions throughout Europe. Recently I have been working with the St Brides Library’s letterpress studio in producing type specimens and personal work. Having come to London to study printing and letterpress in particular, I am fortunate to have the opportunity to be part of a new venture of the St Brides Library. I have also mentored/assisted on the FdA/BA Design for Graphic Communication course at London College of Communication, where I received my MA degree. Currently I am working on an exhibition for the Musée royal de l’Afrique Centrale which opens in Brussels in April 2011. Spanning seven languages in six museums across Europe, the traveling exhibition has several design challenges consisting of usability, wayfinding, linguistic, graphic and typographic as well as technical and spatial constraints. The opportunity to teach graphic design, work in the letterpress studio and maintain a base of clients has brought a good balance to my life and ultimately to my work. My focus has been in wayfinding and exhibition design, an area which relies on a unique approach to the technical and graphic challenges. This also reflects my interest in linguistics, information systems, typography and spatial/environmental design.

I was really interested in the text from the website saying ‘celebrate designs that produce something out of nothing’ as it is how I work with letterpress and producing books in particular. My goal is to build on the process of development, in the area of conceptualization. I would like to play with both the process of pre-conceptualization and the stages of making or producing.

Proposal
In my pursuit of developing alternative design approaches, I would like to use the Montessori teaching approach, which supports self-directed learning, prepared environments for learning, observation and indirect teaching. I propose to continue developing my own approach to generative problem-solving, which could be defined by the making of a series of outcomes within defined parameters of time, space, materials, etc. This idea also reflects the process of remediation, which the message or meaning take on new meanings through the appropriate of the various traces of the various mediums. I would like it to be typography-related, possibly looking at letterforms and linguistics and supported by my musical background in Suzuki violin. In the true spirit of recording/referencing, Vinalhaven could prove to be a perfect environment for developing a new printing techniques! I would aim to visually document the whole process which in the end is the bridge to the next progression.

As I discussed with Melle over a dinner we both contributed to a couple of months ago, I could see from that moment the process of which this idea grew in my head. As we discussed the various teaching methods that apply hands-on development, and the upcoming DI… there was this interest inside to go to DI and work. To make, be involved with absorbing a process that is creative and spontaneous. For me it’s not a break from anything new, but a chance to refine/redefine a moment or the whole process that really intrigues me.

Name: Brooke Chornyak
Position: Faculty, Designer in Residence, Virginia Commonwealth University
Website: http://brookechornyak.com/

Currently I’m living in Richmond, researching and teaching at VCU in the art foundation and graphic design departments. I received a master of graphic design this past May from North Carolina State University. During grad school I had the opportunity to make an examination of current design methods in terms of the client / designer relationship and became curious in other strategies that altered this dependent mode to one of co-creation.

On reading the topic for this year’s DI, the questions and statements posed fit with my current relationship with design practice. DI is a wonderful platform in which you meet and discuss/make together in a collaborative way ideas that you feel very passionate about.

Proposal
Open Works – Lecture / Workshop

Creators have always been agents of social change, often defining new paradigms in society. The design world is currently experiencing just such a shift — as individuals increasingly desire greater degrees of participation and creativity in their lives, the role of the designer is growing to encompass that of catalyst and collaborator.

In the 1960’s, Ivan Illich became concerned with the lack of creative tools available to individuals and subsequently argued for a balance between consumption and creative activities. He believed that gains in technology and mass production came at the cost of individual initiative and the desire to create. It is my belief that all people wish to engage in the creative process as a means of establishing agency and authorship within their own lives. For example, if a particular audience possesses a creative aspiration toward an artifact, then how might we as designers reexamine and reformat its lifecycle in a way, which compels audience members to reinterpret and refashion said artifact? These trends require a collaborative design process, which alters the traditional codependent, controlled relationship between designers and clients.

Umberto Eco highlighted a participatory approach to visual arts, music and literature in his 1962 publication, The Open Work. In Eco’s terms, “open” refers to an artist leaving the composition of a portion of his or her work to either the public or to chance. In design, I believe the concept of open work can push beyond the confines of product customization by establishing the conditions for a co-creative relationship where clients and audiences become collaborators and equals.

I’m proposing a brief lecture leading to a workshop on the adaptation and application of Eco’s concept of open work in design practice, which addresses the following questions through various examples:

How can design motivate and encourage creativity in individuals?

What are examples of these types of tools and their attributes of experience?

What are some ways that we, as designers, can create “open” artifacts and tools to enable others to participate in the design process?

In the workshop we will scrutinize two “open” methods for creating typography. First participants will be able to experiment with a recreation of a strict rule based stencil, the ‘Plaque Découpée Universelle’: designed in the 1870s by Joseph A. David to produce the entire alphabet, numbers and symbols from a single device.

Second, attendants will take part in a looser, less constrained method for typography construction.

(TBD) Either I want to have people fashion the alphabet from dough used to make bagels, but I’m not sure about the kitchen restrictions. Or I can devise a less structured tool that is a bit ambiguous and be open to interpretation by participants.

Name Maia Wright
Position Designer / assistant professor of design, Texas State University
Website www.maiawright.com

I’m a designer who recently moved to Austin from Chicago. I was born and raised in Alaska, and have been steadily making my way south ever since. I’m currently teaching typography, book arts, and design history in the Communication Design MFA program at Texas State University–San Marcos. I am primarily a book designer. My previous design experience includes 5 years of designing books at the University of Chicago Press, and prior to that, 3 years of working collaboratively on book, print collateral, and environmental design at Studio Blue (also in Chicago).

I would like to be a part of Design Inquiry because:

•  get a charge from the sense of open-ended possibility that comes from engaging in thinking/making/doing with other creative people.
• I have always been drawn to islands—being surrounded by water feels at once isolating and also deeply in touch. The one time I visited Maine, I took a ferry to an island, borrowed a bicycle, and spent the day biking around the island (I have good memories of that day).

I gravitate to designing books because of their internal complexity and the demands they put on me as a designer to create a system of parts that work together as a whole. In order to make a book that functions well for the reader, the design process requires organization, restraint, and diligence. I see myself very much as a maker — a craftsman fashioning a well-wrought and useable object.

My interest in MAKE/DO is twofold:

1. In the past several months, the tactic of using chance operations in the creative process has repeatedly surfaced in various ways in my life, through the work of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and the Dadaists. I am interested in the tension between surrendering artistic control to the vagaries of chance, and yet maintaining authority over one’s own work. As someone who practices in the very disciplined discipline of book design, the idea of deliberately enfolding accidents and randomness into my work holds a forbidden appeal.
2. I am currently developing a project about a museum employee who used the museum in a way for which it was not intended: staging clandestine exhibitions in overlooked public spaces in the building. I will be designing an exhibition catalog as a document of his exhibits. The book will also present the information in a way that is unexpected and surreptitious (not in the way we expect an exhibition catalog to traditionally function). This project is about investigating new ways of making well-known spaces/formats do something surprising.

Proposal
I have two ideas:

1. I could present a workshop for the DI participants that makes do with materials at hand to create a project, following a process decided by chance operations. The question will be where do we draw the line between the haphazard and the controlled: What variables will each person decide to leave to chance? How do we maintain authority over our work while still leaving space for serendipity and the unexpected?
2. If my project with the exhibition catalog is far enough along, I would like to present it to the group and tell the story of the museum employee who inspired it. It could spark a conversation about how to rethink books (and museum spaces) in order to make them do things in unexpected ways.

Name Jonathon Russell
Position Assistant Professor
Company Central Michigan University
Website http://www.jonathonrussell.com

I am a native of southern Illinois and have spent the last 14 years of my life living, working, teaching and moving (with my family) to five different states (we have lived in every time zone) and the United Arab Emirates. The one thing that all of the places I have lived and taught have in common is a lack of readily available resources. I am well schooled in the old adage of “making do, or doing without”.

I am interested in Design Inquiry and the topic of Make/Do to increase my knowledge and understanding of working inside the constraints of limited resources, and being creative with what you have and can easily find. They say two minds are better than one. I am hoping that 24 minds will be a revelatory experience.

Proposal
While teaching in the UAE, a student gave me a gift of a modified book. Nothing fancy, just a catalog from the company where she was completing an internship with the outside corners folded down to create an object shaped like a yurt. She made it because she was bored, but it made me think about the ways designers use objects they have available to them to create design objects. These objects can be for client use or self-promotional, but use cast-off materials or modified pieces of existing design to create the work. I would like to give a presentation that outlines some of this type of project and incorporate a workshop that allows participants to do the same.

Workshop
We will take an existing piece of design, a stack of materials, or both and create a new piece of work that could be personal, political or social in nature. The existing designs can be anything from a pizza flyer to the New York Times. I would provide the materials to be used for the workshop. I feel that if participants bring their own it would be a conscious choice, and I want the experience to be immediate rather than reflective. My plan is to visit departments around the university and collect the books, binders, pamphlets and catalogs that can be found in the “free!” boxes outside of faculty offices. This would provide a broad range of printed subject matter of various quality and content to work with. The public library and the thrift store are also good sources for material. The work that is produced in the workshop would be limited by the facilities in Vinalhaven. In the most ideal situation we would have access to either a letterpress (with type) or screen printing facilities. The workshop would work just as well with a color laser or inkjet printer, and if that is not available knives, scissors, glue, markers and paint will do. The goal is to look at what is available and use it to express your message. The type of work that will be produced in the workshop is not something that could be used for every client project, but the experience of creating something from scraps can influence the way designers look at those scraps and the potential they hold for design solutions.

TUESDAY EVENING: Stop motion (Mark), writing & reflection (Charles)

Name Mark Jamra
Position CEO, TypeCulture LLC
Website www.typeculture.com

I am a type designer, educator and amateur filmmaker in Portland, Maine. My company, TypeCulture, a digital type foundry and academic resource, was founded in 2004. Obviously, this all requires making and doing. What interests me more is the other connotation: “making do.” This is something that I do every day and it does not necessarily mean making a compromise (although many times it does). I would like to experience how other people “make do.” This is not to say that I’m not coming for the food, which I am. As well.

Proposal
Firstly, I’m pretty good at frying bacon and flipping pancakes. Secondly, I will be screening some short videos made in one of the most resource-deficient classes I have ever taught. In between the screenings, I will explain the processes involved in the making of the videos, in the hope of sparking an exchange in experiences in teaching creative problem-solving and creating no-budget, low-resource projects.

Name: Charles Melcher
Position: Associate Professor, Graphic Design, Maine College of Art , Designer, Co-owner, Alice Design Communication Portland, Maine
Website: Alicedesign.com mecagd.com

Bio
I am co-owner of Alice Design Communication 1998–present with Margo Halverson. I received a BFA in photography from Mass Art and a decade later followed with an MFA in graphic design from Yale University school of Art. I am currently an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Maine College of Art. I grew up sailing on Cape Cod working in the summer community of my family’s co-ed sailing camp, I learned to bake bread from my mom. This experience of community still influences my life.

Proposal #1
One morning I woke from a dream – my father was standing in a room declaring he was ‘Leaving Land’ in a week – which was typical in his life. He had a deadline and he was preparing for it. This power of a self-directed deadline was his way of making-do. He sailed around the world, deadline by deadline, declaration by declaration. He moved from one thing to the next.This thread made a curious link to MAKE/DO and inspired a connection to; self direction, a deadline, and ‘use what you have’. I will make a 10 minute presentation from this starting point.

Proposal #2
I will lead an evening workshop in Proprioceptive Writing®, a meditational discipline. It is a method of listening to thoughts and feelings, a method of reflection. In this process, we can slow down, notice details, and give ourselves permission to experience emotions as they arise. Over time, the writer is able to reflect more clearly. As chatter dissipates, stories emerge and the relationship with the inner self becomes more familiar and more intimate.

WEDNESDAY MORNING: Making the abstract visible

Tim, Margo, Rachele, Emily & Lindsey

Name: Margo Halverson
Position: Professor, Graphic Design, Maine College of Art Designer, Co-owner, Alice Design Communication Co-founder, Framer, DesignInquiry Portland, Maine
Website: Alicedesign.com mecagd.com

Bio
I am co-owner of Alice Design Communication 1998–present with Charles Melcher. My love of language and the narrative power of the photograph led me to the world of typography and graphic design. I received a BFA and MFA in photography from Arizona State University where, post-graduation, I studied graphic design with Rob Roy Kelly. I am currently Professor of Graphic Design and Program Chair at Maine College of Art. I grew up in North Dakota and after moving to Maine from Arizona, I still miss living in grids within the landscape of flat, white, horizontal bands interspersed with telephone poles and shelterbelts.

Proposal
I think MAKE/DO implies constraints of some sort. I notice this attitude (which becomes CAN/DO) kicks in when I have run up against lack of time. From grabbing what I need for a trip to planning a class or project, the result reflects and blends the time I was able to spend in the process with what I made of the constraints.

For DesignInquiry’s MAKE/DO I will share variations of time-work that necessitates the design of a visual language. What do various structures of time look like? Not the data visualization of timelines made by graphic designers, but looking at how other fields map time in space — how might dance be diagrammed, how is conducting music drawn, how do the marks of directing a theater play or notating speech represent time. I’ll present a visual menu of notation and diagramming from a curiosity of -how do ‘they’ do it- then we can collaborate and play with opportunities at MAKE/DO to design a structured formal language that notates time, space, and content(s) of our inquiry.

Name Tim McCreight
Position Vertical, Brynmorgen Press
Website www.brynmorgen.com

I trained as a metalsmith and taught in that subject for thirty years. I continue to make work but I also write, design, and publish books on metalworking and design. I consult for industry and run a small independent publishing house.

I come from a world that spans business, design, and making. A typical day includes hauling boxes of books, copy editing, page layout, and research in metal clay. I have long been intrigued by the topics and the collaborative nature of DesignInquiry and I feel it’s time to stop looking on and start participating. I’ve been making jewelry for more than 40 years (ack!) and I feel that tradition-laden field has given me some insight into the interface between thinking and making. Somewhat unusual in my field, I have generally veered away from exacting traditional techniques in favor of those that not only make use of their immediate context but celebrate it.

Proposal
In the early 1990s a Japanese company invented a material called Precious Metal Clay (PMC). I was among the first US artists to use this material and have since written and taught extensively with it. The material yields honest-to-god silver objects but bypasses the need for special skills and equipment. I would like to introduce this material to the group with particular interest in seeing the objects that are created are unique to the time and place. I can provide all the required materials and tools, and as much or as little background about jewelry-thinking as is desired.

Name Rachele Riley
Position Designer, Educator, The University of the Arts
Website www.racheleriley.com

I am originally from Washington, DC. I began my studies in New York as a studio artist in 1990. After a year as an artist-in-residence with the National Park Service (1996) I recognized my strong interest in communication design and digital/video imaging. Seeking adventure, I moved to Germany. I first learned the language and then studied design at the Hochschule fur Kunst und Design Halle. I returned to the U.S. in 2001 and eventually earned my MFA in Design/Visual Communication at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. I am currently Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at The University of the Arts.

In my own work I explore various media and address topics of control, accumulation and the visualization of information. My graphic responses (videos, web-based interactive works, and print media) are made in response to place and fact, offer degrees of interpretation, and provide a forum for considering the impact of war and violence on human society.

The opportunity to participate in this summer’s Design Inquiry MAKE/DO workshop will inspire my own work and approach. I will be sharing the experience with my students as we all manage the balance between research and making, and navigate between what is fixed and what is flexible. I am especially looking forward to gaining new perspectives on design by working closely with others and having conversations while in residence. The Design Inquiry workshop would be an invaluable creative and intellectual experience for me.

Proposal
In response to the theme MAKE/DO I propose to discuss the constraints of technique (vis-à-vis digital technology) and how the spirit of improvisation leads a project into new meaningful territory.

I will present as case studies two projects of mine in which ‘making do’ technically shaped the process and project’s result in enlightening ways for me creatively and conceptually, often providing points of departure for future endeavors and discussions. The two particular projects are slightly different technically: a video, Visualizing the Art of War (2005) and an interactive web-based experience, The Evolution of Silence (in progress).

Visualizing the Art of War examines the power of numbers and visual abstraction to address the media experience of war. The Evolution of Silence is a multi-faceted visual exploration of the destruction conducted at the Nevada Test Site. The project currently focuses on the craters of Yucca Flat—the site of experimental, post-World War II nuclear detonations—and on the 50 L.A. Darling Company display mannequins, which (representing human subjects) experienced the force of several nuclear explosions in the 1950′s.

http://www.racheleriley.com/work_evolsilence.html

http://www.racheleriley.com/work_visualizing.html

workshop
framing war

(in the age of extreme documentation and information accumulation)

how can designers interpret the information of war?

what is a meaningful focus?

what makes an impact?

1

making do with constraints

(technical, informational, timeframe, or etc.)

participants perform design experiments within expressed parameters

how does the imagination leap?

how does transformation surprise?

2

making design do something other than what is expected

(something radical or seemingly wrong)

participants share in the evolution and definition of a work

is pleasure in the unexpected?

does a design always need to know what it is at the start?

what is the value in becoming?

process

using everyday iconography to do something other

using everyday language to say something other

thwarting constraints, finding other ways to make and manipulate images

embrace a scenario that is controlled (where there are known and unknown factors) as an opportunity for improvisation and interpretation

Name: Lindsey Culpepper
Position: MFA Candidate in Design, UT Austin

I love odd objects and the handcrafted, I am a 3-D thinker and maker. I am originally from El Paso, Texas. I received my Bachelors of Science in Industrial Design from Arizona State University in 2007. After working as an industrial designer for a company specializing in office products and craft tools, I returned to school at the University of Texas to complete my MFA. My focus is craft and low-volume fabrication and also interested in the emerging idea of open-design. I am interested in the Make/Do topic because it allows investigation of improvisational design-solutions in a workshop environment.

Proposal
Old things and places show signs of wear and use, they are descriptive of human interaction. As a place ages, makeshift objects begin to describe how people have adapted their environment to meet their changing needs over time. Makeshift objects are created to meet these needs according to a variety of inputs, resulting in a various levels of craft.

For my MakeShift project, I documented and analyzed instances of adaptive and intuitive design, as it relates to functional objects, within an East Austin neighborhood. Within the group of makeshift objects, I was able to discern functional categories like Shield, Contain and Furnish. The level of modification to materials, the level of intention of the project and perceived permanence begin to describe a level of craft. I considered how these factors relate to each other and how they begin to describe the motivations of the maker. What is implied by the vernacular and what opportunities does it offer?

I would be interested in organizing a workshop that considers the characteristics of permanence, intention and modification as they relate to the improvised object. How will these “factors of makeshift” be represented in the improvised solutions that we create to accommodate our needs as visitors to VinalHaven? I would like to document these as a group, as well as instances of makeshift from around the island. As we create these adaptive and intuitive solutions quickly and often temporarily, we often overlook the value of these objects. By documenting these instances, I think we can become more attuned to seeing these where they exist and may serve as inspiration for our creative endeavors.

Name: Emily Luce
Position: Assistant Professor New Media, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Artist. Designer. DesignInquiry Board member. Misguided Gardener.
Website: ugh

Bio
I am a designer, artist and researcher based in Western Canada. I keep one foot in Lethbridge, Alberta where I teach, and one foot in Port Alberni BC, where my partner is based and our garden is, and fly off at almost every opportunity. When DesignInquiry is over this year, I’ll be heading west to build a miniature, inhabitable replica of the house owned by artists Janet Cardiff and George Burres-Miller which has been lived in, altered, worn down and loved and by a long list of artists over the years. Two years of work finally coming to fruition and I just realized it’s a knockoff, too. Wow.

Proposal
Knockoffs, Stone Skipping, and Make/Do Parts

My original proposal for Make/Do involved exploring the idea of the knockoff. I’ve recently started researching the graphical, troubled history of the iconic Canadian Hudson’s Bay Blanket. In the course of this research, I’ve come across more knockoffs than I could have imagined and after months of trolling thrift stores and ebay, have decided to develop a collection of Bay blanket knockoffs. I think the idea of copying or generating a slightly altered idea is an approach to consider for Make/Do. Rather than focusing on the negative connotations of knocking off (I’m looking at you, Urban Outfitters), there is an immediacy and a connectivity of thinking, meeting the audience in a different way, and a bit of a wild west spirit that’s worth exploring. I can show you some images of the blankets, and I’d love to hear the group’s thoughts on this subject. A journal piece would come out of that.

Meanwhile…there are a couple of other items on my Make/Do to-do list. I’m still buzzing from DesignInquiry Montréal, and there’s a point in my notes about using the flow even if you’re going against it. I want to test this theory out in the physical world by skipping some stones in tidal waters to see what happens. I’d like to invite anyone who is interested in this design-and-physics experiment to try that out with me. Maybe we’ll get somewhere.

And finally, the Australian company MakeDo has generously donated several sets of their toy assembly parts for the DesignInquiry participants to play with over the course of the week. We can make things, and send them pictures of what we’ve done, and they will respond back to us.

THURSDAY MORNING: Constraints & everyday life

Miriam, Dan, & Peter

Name Miriam Simun
Position: Masters Student, Interactive Telecommunications Program/ NYU
Website http://www.miriamsimun.com

I was raised by Soviet refugees in the heart of Boston. We had rugs on the walls and at night my grandfather would sit in the kitchen drinking tea and cognac, and explain to me nothing is permanent.

My work explores the promise of objects and experiences to serve as visions of possible futures, interventionist ethnographic research tools, and catalysts for conversations that engage a wider public in questions of progress. I am interested in design as a mode of inquiry, not only in process but also in end result: a question, now materialized. In this material form questions can be asked, explored, and perhaps answered through our visceral senses, put our rational mind on hold for just a minute, and appealing to emotional and embodied forms of knowledge.

Make/Do addresses relates to my work in key ways: designers understand that they think through making, but how do our ‘users’ think through doing? And how can we encourage more thoughtful, critical, and playful ‘doing’? As well, the Make/Do concept addresses a questions I have been working with for a while now: How do we enjoyably make do? (make “making-do” be pleasurable?). Scarcity of resources in our society of false over-abundance is often viewed as unwelcome constraint, sacrifice, leading to a not-as-good-as-it-could-have-been result. Instead, how do we, as designers especially (thus trained in creativity within constraint) reframe to impending society-wide turn to “making do” into a moment of possibility: making-do amidst limited resources can be about simplicity, refinement and elegant solutions, and joy.

More formally, I am a 2011 Masters candidate at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. I have served as Graduate Fellow at Stern Business School’s Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning, a Project Development Assistant to Natalie Jeremijenko at the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic, and Social Media Strategist at R/GA. Previously I was a researcher at the Digital Natives Project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and a researcher at the Research Center for Information Law at the University of Sank Gallen. My work has been published in New Media & Society and International Journal for Learning and New Media and exhibited at Conflux Festival, Postmasters Gallery, and CUNY Graduate Center. I have a BSc in Sociology from the London School of Economics.

Proposal
Making for thinking through doing: Make Do better.

I would love an opportunity to lead a design charette around how to design better interactions with our natural resources. Living within our means is not a punishment, it should not be boring or a sacrifice. Taking constraints as opportunities, each group will choose a daily mundane interaction with natural resources (water, energy, air – a laptop, a cigarette, a teapot) and prototype better interactions, ones that are both pleasurable to perform and make us think about what we are using when we are doing. We will prototype these pleasurable interactions with limited resources, a portion of which will be scavenged from around Vinalhaven. Making do with what you have can be a pleasure.

Name: Peter Hall
Position: Senior Lecturer in Design, University of Texas at Austin
Website: http://peterahall.com

I have written about design in its various forms for a variety of publications since the 1980s. I currently teach design theory and history in the design program at UT Austin and seminars and lecture on mapping as a design practice. This summer I taught a 1-week mapping workshop at the New University of Lisbon in Portugal, and now I’m trying to gather together some of my writings around the theme of failure and its uses to practice and criticism–a DI topic a few years back. I grew up and was educated in the UK but am now fully acclimatized, living with my (American) family in Austin where we enjoy swimming, camping, fish tacos and fried pickles.

Proposal
I would like to present a book project I’m working on in collaboration with the illustrator Jeanne Verdoux, featuring sketches (as drawings and text) of people riding on the New York City subway. I’d like to situate this project in terms of other projects that illustrate what De Certeau called the “practice of everyday life”: how, contrary to the perception that our lives are increasingly described and dictated by commercial systems, we also produce our own lifestyles through the art of walking, moving, and adapting readymade products. So, it’s an optimistic “thinkpiece” on the art of “making do” as a constant and often unconscious creative act.

Name: Dan McCafferty
Position: Faculty of Design, OCAD University
Website: (currently offline) www.dannershellerphillershuber.com

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from?
My name is Dan McCafferty. I would be coming to Design Inquiry from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, though I am originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba. I moved back to Toronto after a brief but wonderful time living in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I graduated with my Master’s degree in Graphic Design from NC State.

What kind of work you do?
Before moving to Raleigh, I worked for several years in Toronto as a graphic designer at two (I believe) respectable studios. These places were “high-end” corporate identity/communications in focus. Since returning from NC State, I have not returned to studio life. I am currently working in the Faculty of Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. I have taught design studio classes, typography studios and an interdisciplinary (graphic/industrial/environmental/material design) course called Think Tank. This year I am the faculty mentor Shift, the OCAD-U Student Publication. I am also trying to engage at a curricular level, and I have proposed a new multidisciplinary course for the OCAD-U Design Department called Critical Design. The course proposal has been approved and will start next year for 3rd and 4th year students. The course emphasizes connections between technology, market forces, society and the environment through the design of discursive artifacts.

Why you are coming?
I am hoping to come to Design Inquiry because I am keen to meet other design thinkers, researchers and makers who share inquisitiveness about design. I want to contribute to help build a sense of community around design inquiry and speculative approaches. As a young professor, I am interested in how the discipline and practice of design is changing, and how this could affect what and how design is taught. I also want to learn much more about what other design researchers and practitioners are currently looking at and considering, and how Make/Do relates to their form of practice; as well as share some of my own directions and hopefully get feedback.

What are your interests in the topic MAKE / DO:
I identified with the topic in both ways that were used to frame this year’s retreat. On one hand, I have often found myself struggling with the difference between having an idea, and its actual implementation or completion, so I am always eager to find approaches to either letting go and making; or more practically, to stay focused, inspired and productive. On the other hand, I have also experienced the challenge of working within various constraints that most design problems present, whether those be time, budgetary constraints, etc.

Although I feel that there are a ton of possibilities for investigation on either side of this coin, my current personal interest in the topic Make / Do is around the idea of constraints. I would like to look at constraints as a possible avenue for overcoming the barrier between ideas and implementation.

My interest is primarily conceptual, or speculative, meaning that I do not intend to present a comfortable, navel-gazing talk on such practical concerns as how liberating it can be finding creative ways to design a stationary system (for example) with only two colors, when you wish you could have four.

Instead, I intend to look outside of design to find where other practices have identified systematic, ontological-level constraints, and sought ways of embracing them, or methods for exploiting them, to ultimately create new work that pushes the boundaries of that discipline.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
I would contribute in a few different ways. I would really enjoy contributing to the tradition of meal preparation/discussions that I have read about. At home, I do some of my favorite thinking while in the “cooking zone.”*

I would certainly be an active contributor to more focused dialogues on ideas directly to the theme of Make/Do. I really enjoy discussions about broad ideas, notions, theories. I love to push ideas around, ask questions, be critical, and so on. I believe that the whole format for Design Inquiry is well suited to my strengths.

More constructively, I would like to contribute a brief presentation on this idea of constraints, and the idea of constraints being used as creative, generative tools, in the service of producing new work. Canadian poet Christian Bok is an active and significant figure in the contemporary Oulipan world. My presentation would be—in part—an introduction to, and consideration of, his work and the work of this group’s approaches to structure at large. I’d like to consider ways design might be influenced to find speculative ways to use constraints as tools for improvisation. This could potentially be followed by a workshop that considers applying some of the kinds of constraints discussed in the presentation, to some form of making.

Beyond this, I would also be really happy to contribute to any ongoing dialogues or efforts that seek to extend the findings of the week’s gathering. I would be happy to be involved in helping to shape a community through working on tangible documents or artifacts, post-Design Inquiry, 2011.

* An example of what I might perhaps contribute in this vein is a discussion about design and “feel.” As a musician (drummer), I often speak about “feel” in reference to music—like most musicians do. I also—occasionally—speak or think about design in this way, too. In the kitchen, I tend to work this way—by feel—so I think it might present a perfect aligning of interests.

FRIDAY MORNING: Exhibition/performance/journal/leftovers brunch

Jordan & everyone

NAME / Jordan Gushwa
POSITION / Sr. Graphic Designer, VCUQatar
WEBSITE / www.qatar.vcu.edu & www.luvinart.com

Since June 2009 I have been directing the graphic design studio at VCUQatar which is the branch campus of Virginia Commonwealth University school of the Arts in Richmond Virginia. VCUQatar is located in Doha the capital of the Gulf state of Qatar. The studio is responsible for all communications, web and print material for the VCUQatar undergrad programs, MFA program, gallery, & the Tasmeem international design conference. We are a multi national shop where on any day you could hear 5 different languages.

Prior to 2009 I was a member of the Cranbrook 2d design studio. While at Cranbrook I became both a grown and ruined man and so now labor under the glorious knowledge of complete self indulgent freedom. Because of this I continue to make the mistake of turning professional work into personal work.

Proposal
To MAKE/DO or COOKING WITH SUBSTITUTIONS.

My wife and I are Americans living in the Gulf. Our life is a mixture of new experiences and simulated familiar experiences from home, SUBSTITUTIONS. We are however not alone in our displacement as VCUQatar’s faculty represent 23 countries and two thirds of Qatar’s population are expats from; India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, England, Sweden, Canada … EATING and family life dominate Qatar’ s multi layered culture and distinct classes/nationalities congregate in hotspots well known within a particular expat community. A southern Indian restaurant serves up a variety dosas to a family with three children, they are born and educated in Qatar but will grow up to know the place of Kerala through it’s people and food.

At our home in Qatar we are into cooking. Food can open a window to a familiar place but also an opportunity for innovation when ingredient substitutions happen out of necessity. An example: paneer enchiladas.

I will contribute to DesignInquiry through writing for the journal & a participatory cooking workshop exploring the theme MAKE/DO through COOKING WITH SUBSTITUTION. (CWS could become a metaphor driven design methodology or a lens through which I can interrogate the nature of expat design practice.)

Friday 3pm – Departures

The post Not-The-Schedule appeared first on DesignInquiry.

http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=27998

http://www.aiga.org/embrace-the-strain/

The post Residual Works appeared first on DesignInquiry.

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Look a little closer and “make do” unfolds to reveal another interesting side of design practice. Between making and doing, it hints, there might be a difference; between the having the idea to make something and its execution. Often the material or contextual constraints bend the concept and the piece gains a life of its own. Or someone else makes your design do something it wasn’t supposed to.

When you think about it, there are very few designs that are used exactly as they were intended. Books are read and interpreted in different ways, but also used to decorate rooms and prop up tables. Software only becomes robust once people have used it and misused it. Products and buildings age, crack, loose their luster, get repaired, remodeled and gain character over time. Buildings are never really finished, even when the architect takes the photos, the curtains cover the windows and the laundry is drying on the porch. Cities, no matter how carefully planned, are really created by people, and how they use them and improvise in them, as part of their daily lives.

DesignInquiry 2011: MAKE/DO, will investigate the idea that all design in some sense requires improvisation, and that no design is really the work of a single author, even if it seems that way. It will celebrate designs that produce something out of nothing, and design as setting the rules of a game in which time-budget-material-context-user are partners and playmates. We will ask whether we can design in such a way that encourages people to make do–to make our thing do something new.

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MAKE/DO  •  June 19-24, 2011  •  Vinalhaven, Maine
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Everyday the streets of Bangkok are shaped by the improvisational culture of street vendors, a make/do phenomenon of organic territorialization. Sidewalks designed for pedestrians often turn into congregations of shoppers and street vendors of a variety of sorts — selling clothes, accessories, music, food and drinks. Tables and stools line sidewalks, transforming a portion of the streets into open-air restaurants — some remaining the whole day while others disappear during off-peak hours. These gatherings reconstruct the urban space into communities and bazaars that are created by citizens operating under an organic social structure.

Just as improvised are the street vending stalls themselves. The designs are often an eclectic mixture of objects and materials that have been given a second life and put together in commonsensical ways to provide functionality, but often with a standardized structure.

On Soi Convent, street vendors line the sidewalks from the break of dawn to hours of the night. During the day, they serve office workers, Bangkokians and tourists; at night, party-goers and more tourists. Soi Convent is located as a side street (soi) that runs off Silom Road, the main commercial street. Within this district stand financial centers such as the headquarters of Bangkok Bank (Thailand’s biggest bank) [1], businesses such as the headquarter of Charoen Pokphand (Thailand’s biggest business conglomerate) [2], shopping centers such as Central Department Store (part of the largest retail conglomerate in Thailand) [3], and entertainment zones such as Silom Soi 4 and Soi Patpong. Street vendors are drawn to this area as customers abound, but contrary to the branded and controlled environments of the surrounding businesses, these street vendors exist as temporary micro commercial entities, loosely strung together into communities as part of the ecosystem of this Southeast Asian metropolis. These communities are self-generated as vendors transition in and out of their occupied space — settling for a period of time before moving away. Some are more transient than others.

This occupancy, albeit temporary, is an after-effect of the “design” of the city. Sidewalks were intended for pedestrians but are now being used for business transactions. They encroach on the common rights of urban space, but through the history of vending in Thai culture, the compromising nature of Thais, the dependency of many Bangkokians for affordable goods as well as the necessity of the majority of Thais to make a living through this informal means, this activity becomes readily embraced on the most part [4] and becomes a social, economic and cultural force that shapes the urban life of Bangkok.

Historically, Thai society existed through self-sufficient means surviving on its own agricultural produce, through the barter system and through civil service. It was not until the arrival of the Chinese that trading began to affect the livelihood of the indigenous Thais. Trading with the Chinese goes as far back as the Sukhothai period (1238). It is thought that the tradition of haab ray may have been influenced by the Chinese: Haab means “to carry” and ray means “to wander”. Hence, the vendor with a bamboo stave balanced on his shoulder and with a basket of goods hung from each end of the pole, wanders into neighborhoods as a direct salesperson, bringing the buying and selling of goods to the doors of consumers; he might also gather with other traders, forming a bazaar.

The territorialization of public space by street vendors and their transient nature can be seen in another aspect of Thai tradition — that of trading by boat. Settlements in the early days of Bangkok were made on the river and canal systems. In 1911, Salvatore Besso, an Italian visiting Bangkok, described this capital city as “Venice of the East” [5]. Houses were built next to and on water. The river and canals acted as transportation routes as well as places of commercial transaction. Trading occurred on the banks and in waterways. Lucian Fournereau wrote of Bangkok in 1892:

“…it is even a most curious sight in the morning to see these thousands of small boats, some of which are not longer than one and a half meters, loaded to the brim with fruits or vegetables with the merchant who disappears under his goods. Sometimes these floating shops group together north of the city and they form various specialized markets… The buyers, also in boats, engage in their commercial transactions. This is the really characteristic and local side of Bangkok.” [6]

As the livelihood of Thais evolved from water to land, the habituation of the past is subconsciously brought to the present: The fluidity of trading on water is reflected in the transient nature of street vendors, and the free use of waterways is reflected in the vendors’ view of public space (of the sidewalks).

Bangkok currently is a metropolis of over nine million [7]. Canals are being filled to make way for roads. Settlements move inland as concrete buildings rise vertically and spread horizontally as a sprawl. Soi Convent sits in the midst of this growth, and it sits in the main commercial district and an entertainment hotspot of Bangkok, making it a much sought-after area for business. Eateries, small businesses, retail shops, office buildings, a hotel and apartment buildings flank both sides of this street. It is also layered by the historical settlement of Westerners and missionaries in Bangkok.

A prestigious Catholic School, a church, a monastery and a hospital are part of this landscape. On a weekday, Soi Convent is teeming with activities. Street vendors line both sides of the soi from the junction on Silom Road to the end of the street only leaving intervals in front of the more regulated buildings such as St. Joseph Convent School, Bangkok Nursing Home Hospital, Q House (office building) and other boutique shops. However, at the confluence, the street stalls selling goods — ranging from clothes to accessories to music — are an extension of the makeshift vending community that occupies this part of Silom Road. People make their way through the narrow space that is left by the vendors — sometimes squeezing past those who stop by to shop and slow down the traffic. The “designs” of the stalls possess a fragile quality (notwithstanding long-term use) that speaks of the convenience in installation and dismantlement.

Sunglasses and Mango snacks

We stopped by to talk to Pii Pook [8] who was selling sunglasses and mango snack. Her stall occupies a small area of about one meter wide at the corner of Silom Road and Soi Convent, but a huge umbrella also marks a more ambiguous territory to her occupancy. She has set up her stall for over ten years and her products have changed from time to time. The display of her sunglasses is configured on a step-like structure that is covered with synthetic fur so as to add presence and a level of sensuality to the glasses. She told us that her stall is designed to lightweight and mobile. The main structure, originally used for a lottery stand, is made of metal tubes. A gridded metal frame creates the tops and plastic baskets act as elevated platforms. Just as candid is the display of the mango snack: two stools stacked one on top of another, topped by a tray containing the snack and a handwritten sign indicating the item and price.

Sidewalks are of course public space meant for pedestrians. However, due to the need by a large part of Thai society to make a living in this informal, low-cost manner, as well as the history of vending in traditional Thai culture, and general advocacy from the public, sidewalks have become shared space between commerce and pedestrians. Certain areas are designated for vending in Bangkok with a fee of approximately 300 Baht per month per vendor (US$10 per month per vendor) for the maintenance of sidewalks that goes to the city. However, fines are also imposed on vendors who do not abide with the charges paid to city officers, or to a person of power such as a mafia who collects them en masse. According to Thai Recent, the online Thai newspaper, each year 100 million Baht (US$3,320,000) are collected from vendors by Bangkok city officers. Half is rewarded to the officers. The same amount or more is collected by the mafia. Vendors, nevertheless, are willing to compromise so as to be able to conduct their business. [9] The multiplicity in the use of public space inevitably reflects the complexity underlying Thai society in terms of culture, politics, and economics. Pii Pook is registered with the district and pays a monthly sidewalk maintenance fee to the city. She conducts business from Monday to Saturday before noon to around seven in the evening. After that the space that she occupies is taken over by other vendors. Her relationship with other vendors and clients is such that she feels that she is part of a community.

Regular clients stop by to greet, and other vendors may sit in for her if she has to be somewhere else. “We look after each other,” she says. An office worker who seems to know the vendors well very energetically chats with the lottery vendor who is located near Pii Pook. At the same time, he is calling out to others to help the sales of lottery. Indeed it feels like a community. When we asked Pii Pook about street vendors’ encroachment of the sidewalk, she very pleasantly said that they know where the limits of their stalls are and take into consideration the pedestrians so that the vendors are not an annoyance. In this micro context of the politics of the sidewalk, there seems to be a sense of conviviality between clients, vendors and state, likely due to the fact that vendors abide by the rules and regulations set up by Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA). “We obey the city officers, keep the area clean as demanded and are considerate of the pedestrians,” Pii Pook told us.

Ground Sales

Adjacent to Pii Pook is another form of street vending. Products of a variety of sorts from flashlights to wallets to perfume are spread in a disorderly manner on merely a piece of cloth that sits on a sheet of plastic. This type of street vending is called bair ga din in Thai. (Bair means “to spread,” ga is the colloquial form for “and”, and din means “ground,” hence, bair ga din are stalls with products displayed on the ground.) This kind of vending is the least permanent and is often carried out by those who have not gained permission to trade on the street. The temporality of their stalls, therefore, besides serving for the ease of mobility, also serves for the quick evasion from city officers as they quickly wrap their goods in their cloth or plastic sheet. The owner of this stall is Pii Noom. [10] He is from Pichit, a province in the north of Thailand. He only sells after the harvesting period is over when there is nothing else to do on the farm. He comes to Bangkok and sets up his stall in this corner of the city, operating daily (except for Mondays) before noon to about seven in the evening. Like Pii Pook, he feels part of the community in this section of Soi Convent. Just as the “design” of his stall is an indication of impermanence, the existence of his stall is equally transitory.

The making-do of street vendors on Soi Convent creates the diversity Jane Jacobs talks about in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, producing microcosms linked together to form a community:

“…both types of ecosystems, [natural and manmade] …require much diversity to sustain themselves. …the diversity develops organically over time, and the varied components are interdependent in complex ways. The more niches for diversity of life and livelihoods in either kind of ecosystem, the greater its carrying capacity for life. In both types of ecosystems, many small and obscure components — easily overlooked by superficial observation — can be vital to the whole…” [11]

As we make our way down the soi during this lunch hour, stalls vary, providing the numerous needs of the office workers, residents, tourists and vendors themselves. It is an ecosystem that provides “something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody” as Jacobs put it. [12] People queue up at the fried banana stand or the cart of the fresh fruit vendor. Open-air noodle and rice stalls are filled, as these places provide affordable food to those working and living around this area. However, once lunch hour is over around, food stalls pack up — vendors folding and stacking tables and stools placing them in a trolley, undoing the canvas that acted as a canopy, gathering other equipment that was used for a stall and cleaning up the areas they occupied. Those vacated areas may be left without a replacement or another stall may come to fill in the shift. There is a fluctuation in the occupation of the sidewalk not only by pedestrians but also by vendors making the sidewalk a living body in this urban context.

The politics of the sidewalk is not devoid of friction. The intervention of street vendors in the area by the skytrain at Siam Square has been an issue in the use of public space with the Bangkok Sabai Walk campaign — which advocates for a more walkable Bangkok, particularly in this prime shopping area. At the same time, however, the present government has initiated a “people’s progress” (prachawiwat) policy in order to help the economic means of the lower income sector. More areas (that is, of sidewalks) are being designated for street vending and registered street vendors will be put into the formal sector which would include taxation, but also the security of a place to earn a living. All these vendors have to pay is a monthly maintenance fee for the sidewalk in the amount of 300 Baht per month per vendor (US$10 per month per vendor) and they will be allowed to sell in the designated area under the condition that they obey the rules and regulations set by BMA. [13] This move might bring structure and less unpredictability to the make/do culture of the streets of Bangkok. The occupancy is no longer merely through the power of a certain group of citizens but also through the advocacy of the state. A bottom-up practice by the people is being integrated with the top down approach of the government. Design as strategy and planning is being incorporated into the improvisational practice of street vending.

1. “Bangkok Bank,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok_Bank

2. “Charoen Pokphand,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charoen_Pokphand

3. “Central Group,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Group

4. There is currently a dispute between street vendors and Chulalongkorn University’s Management Office over the use of the sidewalk at Siam Square by the skytrain station. “Siam Square Vendors fight Chula’s Plant Pot Project”, 8 Mar. 2011, http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/Siamsquare-vendors-fight-Chulas-plant-pot-project-30150328.html

5. Marc Askew, “Bangkok: place, practice and representation” (Routledge 2002) P.41

6. Lucien Fournereau, “Bangkok in 1892” (White Lotus 1998) P.21

7. “Bangkok,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok

8. Pii Pook. This name is made up for the convenience of identifying with the vendor. (Pii is a title placed in front of a name when addressing a person whose age could be of one’s older sibling.)

9. “People’s Progress for Street Vendors: Who Wins, Who loses?”, 17 Jan. 2011, http://thairecent.com/Bangkok/2011/786722/

10. Pii Noom. This name is made up for the convenience of identifying with the vendor. (Pii is a title placed in front of a name when addressing a person whose age could be of one’s older sibling.)

11. Jane Jacobs, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (Modern Library, 1993) p.xvi

12. Jane Jacobs, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (Modern Library, 1993)p.312

13. “People’s Progress for Street Vendors: Who Wins, Who loses?”, 17 Jan. 2011,

http://thairecent.com/Bangkok/2011/786722/

The post Make/Do: Street Vendors & Bangkok Urban Space appeared first on DesignInquiry.

Whenever I arrive at Poor Farm, it always gives me the sensation that it was just yesterday that I was here last year. It’s like a time trip that makes me lose my sense of time. And the people I see only once a year feel like family. These days I don’t care what kind of design matters we talk about at DesignInquiry, I come here because it is like an informal gathering, or another thanksgiving where we all talk about how we have been and we let each other know that we care.

The dinner that some of us prepared is very tasty and comforting. I wasn’t going to drink any alcohol, but I drink it anyway and head out to bed early.

The rain at night wakes me up. For some reasons, I start thinking about what I am going to do about my presentation. I always come here without preparing anything for my presentation, but I try to pick up some key events, comments made by the attendees, or whatever strikes me as day goes by and put it into a quick and entertaining presentation.

It seems like this method works every year. Everyone shares enough insights related to the topic, which allows me to articulate what I want to communicate.

I can’t remember when I fell asleep after my mind was going with endless thoughts, but my gut tells me that things will be fine.

I just thought that I should have spent some time talking to people before I went to bed.

Day 1
I wake up early in the morning and enjoy the moment I can’t afford to have in NYC, and the day starts with the smell of bacon and egg.

Melle and Matt give their presentations, which already sparks the conversations on this year’s topic, “Fail Again”.

Matt’s presentation is quite interesting because his point of view represents how we, as designers, look at signs or whatever we can find on the street, figuring out what was done wrongly or analyzing what the intention of the creators of the thing would have been. We are basically obsessed with anything to do with letters. We are bunch of nerds, but this crazy obsession can push us to do something unexpected or lead us to create some amazing piece of design or whatever although it often makes us realize that it may fail.

I take a short nap in the afternoon. I am tired from drinking last night. I really shouldn’t drink like I used to.

After Lauri Churchman’s presentation on boat lettering, ideas for my presentation start forming in my mind. The next step would be to visualize the ideas by making some sketches. It will be how to describe my name, Satoru, typographically in English.

Later that night, I find out that Lynn Fleming, one of the DesignInquiry board members, has been accepted to Cranbrook Academy of Art. This news makes me so happy since I have known her for almost 3 years through DesignInquiry, and I knew from the beginning that she had something to offer. It will be curious to see what Lynn is going to get out of the Cranbrook education.

Karen cooks fantastic pasta and salad for dinner, which is the magic moment of DesignInquiry.

Peter Hall also gives his presentation on Neon Sign Typography, which shows some creative and well designed neon signs from back in the day. Sadly we have lost the aesthetics of making neon signs today.

Following Peter, George, a documentary film maker, presents his film booth video. What he does for his work is not something I want to do even though I guess that’s what pays the bills, but I love his personal work, which is a documentary that he asked people to tell their stories, whatever they are, in the video booth he made.

It’s always fascinating to see someone’s personal work because that’s when some interesting things happens, and your audience can immediately sense the authenticity of it and shows their interests and enthusiastic reactions to it.

It is now 11:26 pm, and some people, staying at Poor Farm, are still talking about design matters that came up today with a help of wine and beer.

I feel like I should join in.

Day 2
A scraping noise wakes me up in the morning.

Charles is alone in the kitchen preparing our breakfast and trying to do the dishes at the same time. No one is helping him, so I quickly go down to the kitchen and start doing the dishes. Most of them are wine glasses from last night, and I break one of them.

Every year we have a lot of wine drinkers and beer drinkers, and I notice that the wine drinkers tend to stay up too late and love to argue. They also hate to be called a post modernist. On the other hand, the beer drinkers are a bit mellow and laid-back. They tend to go to bed early and love dancing and playing music.

It looks like it is going to be a lovely day.

Anita and Gabrielle give a presentation on Typographical landscape through their point of view as an interior designer and architect. They present the amount of information rather quickly, but making a point by showing images and words. Their presentation is very intriguing. I just never look at the architecture or the design around it in a way that they describe or observe. The idea that Anita and Gabrielle showed us gives me some ideas to use for my presentation, which is what I love being here at DesignInquiry. I can learn something new from someone who practices another discipline and I use the knowledge I gained for my presentation to try out immediately to see if it works or not within the topic for the year.

After the presentation, it seems to me that the form is the key word here as well, which recalls the conversation I had with Denise Gonzales Crisp before we called it a night yesterday. We had a short conversation about the form we deal with in theory and practice in our discipline and how we thought the form plays a very important role in our life and culture.

The form is the language we can share and understand or differentiate one from another within our diverse community or culture.

Bud Rodecker, a young designer at Thirst of Chicago, gives such an entertaining presentation on the time/embarrassment machine, which shows us every single website he has designed since he was 14 years old. They are so bad and embarrassing to show to anyone, but Bud walks us through his journey of creating his websites with his passion and obsession. It takes courage to show your old work especially when they are just so so so bad.

I respect his courage and honesty. I can see why Rick hired Bud because he proved to me that he is not afraid to be who he is. I feel that Bud is going to be a great designer within a few years.

We have leftovers for lunch from last night.

I spend my afternoon time to sketch out the sequence of my presentation and write half of the journal.

It is 3:10 pm and it sounds like Mark Jamra, my former professor, has just arrived.

Denise Crisp introduces us to her typography book she has been writing for two years. She doesn’t have a book title yet. She states that there is only one rule in Typography, which is “Everything depends on everything”.

We play together too and the conversations can happen anywhere and any time at Poor Farm.

Anita and Gabrielle cook a fabulous meatloaf for dinner. Gabrielle is a great cook.

After dinner, we watch a DesignInquiry Movie Mark made. The outtakes are hilarious. You don’t see often someone like Peter gets lost in his conversation or Nancy Skolos makes a funny joke while they are being interviewed.

I fall asleep while we are doing a writing workshop. It’s just the mellow music and the candle lights.

As soon as the writing workshop is done, I head out to bed, but I can’t sleep. I hear some people are still sharing their writings from the workshop. After they go to bed, I get up and come down to sit on the sofa. I start writing today’s journal, but I can’t seem to organize my thoughts.

Lynn comes down and sees me awake looking at my laptop screen on the sofa. I overheard her share her writing when I was in bed trying to sleep, and some of her thought she wrote kind of concerned me so I grab her to ask some questions.

We talk about how we have been. I share some of my life stories that’s been going through last 4 months and some of my private matters and how I feel about it. Life always surprises.

I can’t remember how long we had a conversation, but I realize that it’s already 2:30 in the morning so we both head out to bed.

Day 3
When I wake up, Charles and Matt are already up preparing breakfast. A peacock is on the deck looking at us through the window.

When I am having a short conversation with Peter about my sleepless book, I drop the banana I was eating for my breakfast.

We go through five presentations before dinner. Denise, David shields, Jimmy Luu, Ann McDonald and Natalie, which inspires me enough for my presentation I will be giving tomorrow.

Bud keeps asking me to go swimming.

The moment, after dinner, for me is when I give my Strickland House Story, in response to Matt’s assignment to everybody. The story I made up must have sounded so fucked up, and I have never seen my former professor, Mark and Charles cracking up and crying over my story that much. Even after I finish my story, Denise has her what-the-hell kind of look on her face and says, “I am done here.”

I must have passed out on the couch for a while. When I wake up in the middle of the night, no one is around, except Peter is working on his stuff.

When I go up to my room, I notice that the light is on by my bed. Someone must have left it on for me, and it is nice.

Thank you.

Day 4
Margo is an archive rat. She keeps everything that her kids has done like their drawings, doodles, sketches and so on and keeps them in the boxes. Margo shares some of them with us in her presentation. Her views and observations on how children develop their visual languages are so personal and touching.

Mark talks about how the spaces between the letters affects readability and legibility in his presentation with his sense of humor as a type designer. Ben and Peter also make their presentations.

Karen’s presentation sparks a big conversation. In her presentation, Karen touches on the issues of class in America, which has deeper in the roots than one might think, with her point of view in design. Karen makes a great point by showing what Wal-mart has started in order for them to gain potential health conscience customers with similar design choices and decisions they employed from another health food store like Whole Foods.

Tonight I am going to give my presentation and I have only a few hours to prepare. Every year I look at everyone’s presentations and prepare mine with what I learned or observed while attending DesignInquiry so I don’t know if my presentation will go well or not until I show it to the attendees. As long as I don’t miss the point in my presentation, it usually works out well.

While I am working on my presentation, some people go swimming and some start preparing lobster dinner and a chocolate cake. It is Charles’ birthday today. Gabrielle is the best cook in town.

The lobster dinner is always great, and it’s not DesignInquiry without it every year. Right after the dinner, we sing a song and celebrate Charles’ birthday with the chocolate cake, which was so rich and tasty.

I give my presentation, which has something to do with my name. When you spell my name in Japanese, the character of my name means something and speaks something about who I am, since Kanji in Japanese are pictograms, but as soon as it’s spelled with alphabets, the meaning of it disappears although it says my name and it sounds like my name. My point is to show in my presentation when something from another culture gets translated, how it loses some of the meanings in a different cultural context, and how I can describe and explain within a broader, but limited cultural context.

My presentation goes well although I was a bit emotional because I was talking about how my parents named me and what they wished for with the meaning of my my Kanji character.

My only criticism about my own presentation is that I should have spent a little bit more time to explore what I am trying to communicate to make the point in my presentation. This will be my homework for the next year. There is always something to learn and improve.

After my presentation, Rosalind Carnes comes to me and apologizes that she missed my presentation last year and she later heard a lot of great things about it. Rosalind says she felt bad about it, but at the same time, she tells me that she thought my presentation this year was so nice. I tell her that she doesn’t have to feel sorry for missing out my presentation. Everything is fine.

I also get some nice feedback from Karen, Natalie, Ann, Ben, George, Bud and Denise.

After my presentation, Lynn shares us a small movie clip, and Ben van Dyke shows his projects he was doing for a quite some time.

Finally it’s the time for the annual dance party. Whether they are good at it or not, graphic designers can dance too. I missed out last year so I join and show off my moon walk. We are dancing until I don’t know, but maybe 3 am in the morning. I think I head out to bed around 4, but I don’t remember.

Day 5
Officially it’s the last day of DesignInquiry, which means that people also start leaving. It’s time to say thank you and good bye.

I have made it and done better than I thought I would. I am very tired now.

I have to get in touch with Stacey Whipple who will host me tomorrow night and Sunday before I go back to NYC on Monday. She also graduated from the same college and I haven’t seen her for three or four years.

I go for a little walk with Melle and Denise in the afternoon. We walk along the beach.

Gabrialle again cooks Lobster stew this year for dinner. She cooked it last year, but I had to leave. Finally I get to taste it.

I go to bed early.

I am very exhausted.

After
I sleep in and I hear everyone is busy cleaning. I wake up and take a shower.

I have a small but big talk with Melle and Margo in the morning.

I have to eat breakfast, clean up my mess and get ready to leave.

Mark gives Melle and I a ride back to Portland.

Dinner with Margo, Charles, Melle and Mark.

I leave to see my old friends, Stacey and Lizzie.

The post DesignInquiry Personal Journal appeared first on DesignInquiry.

one > Margo Halverson was founder and director of msigd Maine Summer Institute Graphic Design beginning in 1992. She invited Melle Hammer as faculty in 2000 & 2002.

two > Together Margo & Melle designed a new program, inviting Peter Hall to help drive this experiment in 2004.

three > DesignInquiry left the umbrella institution Maine College of Art and began again on an island off Maine so we could all cook. Literally.

four > In 2007 DesignInquiry became an educational 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a board of directors. Now we’re flying, grateful, busy, determined, and happy.

THE AMPERSAND AS A PLACE Melle Hammer (2002)

I know I worry over problems that are so simple they might not be considered problems at all, but perhaps you will agree with me that every assignment carries another, personal objective. This is a private matter, and the words to describe it are often hard to find, but there is no law against us trying.

Without clear objectives, design makes no sense. Equipped with the proper tools, some knowledge of history and its conventions, and a healthy curiosity for the changes in typographic and social conditions, it is possible to produce appropriate typography. This doesn’t guarantee good design, and ‘good enough’ is no good at all (unless you have decided to make an impressive blunder).

What I have in mind now is not a simple enumeration of private projects, nor a tea-party, but a cross-roads or a market-place of different insights, interests and questions. By bundling the energy of ‘eager colleagues’, an agreement arises. The foundations for a structure are exposed at which it is possible to question, coach and teach the design of words and images; to build a dynamic social environment in which (real) practical assignments offer the opportunity to focus on all aspects of the design process. Including all those side roads, ‘false’ trails and dead ends, which are apparently necessary to get to where you have to be. Because here every part of a piece of work can be directly discussed out loud and tested for effectiveness, this building site might generate the right level of tension for other questions and new answers.

This ‘place’ does not want to take over anyone’s individual responsibility of a study, but to offer a shelter with a view: a clearly-organized site where anything can happen. To be used. A place without status. Not concerned with commanding respect or satisfying any audience. Because the (real) assignments are supposed to serve the study and not (perhaps in the end, but this is not our goal) the other way around. –We have a license to get lost. By loosening the grip of The Curriculum, individual projects generate the program for the totality. The work of one person becomes the environment for another. Guests, lectures, workshops and symposia might be directed towards a specific project, but will always be open to all, in the belief that what is a learning experience for one person can be entertaining or inspiring for another.

The collectively-generated program and the sharing of results eventually form the quality of this ‘academy’. The most this place has to offer is not facilities, but exchange. In doing so, such an institution will no longer be The Inventor, but The Caretaker, looking after the areas where the research projects can take place, enabling a systematic approach to acquire some knowledge of method rather than work by intuition or accident. And, because madness is a rule in groups, The Organization’s responsibility is to accommodate change and evolving needs, to formulate and defend the conditions by which this ‘fluid state of affairs’ can continue to exist, to tend to the garden, organizing it in such a way that everyone can cross.

FROM MAINLAND TO ISLAND Peter Hall (2006)

Don’t go to conferences! It’s mini-vacations, boondoggling. No more conferences!
—Camille Paglia, Sex, Art, and American Culture

Despite the massive growth in the numbers of designers in recent years, conferences catering for this burgeoning profession are often lacking in consistency and rigor. Common complaints heard about professional design conferences are that they follow a show-and-tell format of celebrity designers wheeling out well-rehearsed presentations of their work, or simply focus on the delivery of tips and tricks of business development and software operation. The large size of conferences often precludes meaningful participation beyond applause and question and- answer sessions. Conference themes are often vague, and the level of discourse often fails to get beyond a general agreement that design is useful/powerful/important. In contrast to related disciplines such as architecture and art history or the relatively new arenas of digital arts, design conferences seem to struggle to get beyond a communally expressed desire for validation. At the same time, professional gatherings are important opportunities for knowledge- sharing, networking, and collaborative learning—activities too important to neglect.

DesignInquiry was established as a response to a perceived gap between academic and profession-based learning; between the richness of participatory learning at design school and the frequent lack of time for experimentation and research in the working environment. In its first years, 2004 and 2005, the event attracted an extraordinary showing of key figures in graduate-level design education, with heads from programs at schools including California Institute for the Arts, Cranbrook Academy, Rhode Island School of Design, Yale School of Art and Art Institute of Boston. Approximately 50 participants attended each year.

Still based at Maine College of Art, the event was organized around a central topical issue with several concurrent faculty-led workshops supported by frequent “walkabout” inter-room critiques and morning lecture presentations by faculty. These first two years yielded some lessons: The open structure and concentration of high-profile educators initially bred rather lengthy discussions of professional and educational issues in the early days of the event, but this was subsequently subsumed by a frenetic atmosphere of making. This progression from critique to production was in many ways a literal realization of graphic design’s shift in the academy through the early part of the decade from critical theory to the idea that the act of designing can be a form of criticism (also termed critical practice).

In its third year, 2006, DesignInquiry was extracted from its host, Maine College of Art, and test-run in a large farmhouse on the island of Vinalhaven with a smaller group of 22 attendees. Conceptually, this event was the most true to the ambitions of the program, to be participant- driven, seminar-like and non-hierarchical. As before, workshops and shift events were organized around a central topical issue, but each participant was invited to give a lecture presentation relating to the overall theme. The benefits of the more rural, nimble format seemed to outweigh the disadvantages: the sense that the event was a “retreat” helped refresh those of us who commonly default to rote techniques within the classroom or studio. The remote location might have been deterrent to prospective applicants, but by 2007, DesignInquiry was oversubscribed and applicants had to be turned away.

Underlying DesignInquiry’s push for a non-hierarchical learning environment is an implicit nod to the early education concept of proximal learning zones, whereby an unfamiliar setting and focus on a single, topical theme can in fact produce startling developmental progress or, in the professional world, innovation. The incorporation of practical issues, such as catering, into the design “problems” posed at DesignInquiry also aligns the event with recent developments in “relational aesthetics”—the term coined by art theorist Nicholas Bourriaud to describe art rooted in the notion of non-utopian, incremental improvements or deterritorializations of moments of everyday life. More important, preparing food, eating and cleaning can be non-hierarchical moments; particularly when ageing philosophers, famous designers, students and six year olds have an opportunity to discuss the ideas of the day. This, I think, is true design discourse. As Melle Hammer has noticed, it is in the nooks and crannies of the gathering —over dishes or out on the deck—that people have the chance to digest and share what they’ve experienced. So far so good. To conclude with Melle, DesignInquiry is not quite there yet: the experience is certainly there, but the next step is to care for the mission, to contribute to the interdisciplinary discourse of design through publication. This part is just beginning.

DESIGNINQUIRY …an anecdote Margo Halverson (2005)

When the Maine Summer Institute in Graphic Design finished its tenth season in 2002, I found myself questioning the effect of the teacher-student relationship. I had developed and run the summer program since its inception, so I was familiar with challenging its value and continuance. A day in late August 2002 became an anniversary of questions that a decade of MSIGD had brought to a head: could the substance of a workshop make a relevant and urgent contribution to the profession? Weren’t the most inspiring moments at my dinner table when faculty overlapped in the weekends, when hierarchy of teacher-student was removed? I had invited Melle Hammer, typographer and design educator, living and working in the Netherlands, as a MSIGD faculty member several times. He understood these questions.

Our conversation in my backyard garden suggested a different kind of workshop that focused around one design issue — not on teacher-student relationships, not on core skills, not on designers teaching designers. We talked about including people from outside of our design profession to inform and influence the topic, we added a goal of publishing to get the ideas out and into the public.

And so, together, Melle and I pursued developing a flatter hierarchy wherein each participant offers workshops or presentations around one theme. We invited outside influences and began publishing the work. After thirty-something week-long workshops with amazing world-renowned educator/designers*, Maine Summer Institute of Graphic Design became DesignInquiry.

DesignInquiry has become a more responsive, fluid event that brings together cross-disciplinary energies that inspire and connect the personal to the professional endeavor of design. The first couple years of DesignInquiry were transitional: still working within the Maine College of Art’s summer program structure, we invited educators and designers to lead simultaneous workshops around a topic. We added presentations that represented the arenas of psychology, anthropology, journalism, philosophy history, theater, architecture, and even some juggling.

Now, DesignInquiry is no longer connected with Maine College of Art, nor does it partner with AIGA as it did for one year. No one is paid for organizing the events and it has applied for non-profit status. DesignInquiry has a board and is independently run by volunteers who have built the website, the blog, the everything! Each year, DesignInquiry’s ‘framers’—Melle Hammer, Peter Hall and myself—develop a topic, get the word out, and work to get participants to merge and inform. Each year we continue to move to an egalitarian structure with workshops or presentations to push the topic into unfamiliar and unexpected corners; before, during, and after the event.

In 2006, DesignInquiry was held on Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Maine. This was the closest realization of what we had envisioned six years earlier: twenty-two participants worked (around the theme of “More than Business as Usual”) and took turns leading the group. We did this without internet or cellphone reception, with only laptops, a projector, cameras, pens, pencils, and paints we’d brought, along with things scavenged on-site. We were together at The Poor Farm, a large house and studio owned by artist Alisen Hildreth. The experience is like that hallway or that bar outside of the conference. It is that dinner table where we find like minds that inspire and move our work into the arena of “what-if”?

Instrumental in the revamped summer program hitting the ground have been Elliott Earls, Jessica Helfand, William Drenttel, Natalia lyin, Douglass Scott, Nancy Skolos, Thomas Wedell, Lorraine Wild, Ellen Lupton, Marlene McCarty, Matt Soar, Louise Sandhaus, Lucille Tenazas, Rick Valicenti, and everyone who joined in the experiment.

Maine Summer Institute of Graphic Design, 1992–2002
2002
Elliott Earls
Michael Rock & Susan Sellers
Lorraine Wild
Melle Hammer
Mark Jamra

2001
Douglass Scott–Inspiration and Influences: New Ways of Thinking about Design
Frans Oosterhoff–Recharge: Exercises in How to Analyze, Transform and Reload Images
Lucille Tenazas–Lost/Found: Journey Through Public Space

2000
Bruno Monguzzi–Image Interaction/Interacting Images
Melle Hammer–A room with a view/for a few–a journey through typography
Nancy Skolos/Thomas Wedell–Type, Image, Meaning

1999
Hans-Ulrich Allemann–Graphic Identity
Wigger Bierma–Typography as Attitude
Lucille Tenazas–Visual/Verbal Exploration

1998
Wolfgang Weingart–Basic Typography
Hans-Ulrich Allemann–Topic: Graphic Identity
Lucille Tenazas–Experimental Typography

1997
Nancy Skolos/Thomas Wedell–Poster Form and Application
Wolfgang Weingart–Basic Typography
Ken Heibert–Image Transformation Studies
Dorothea Hofmann–Drawing from Still Life and Nature

1996
Wolfgang Weingart–Basic Typography
Deborah Sussman–Exploring the Environment Emphasizing Color
Nancy Skolos/Thomas Wedell–Poster Form and Application

1995
Wolfgang Weingart
Steff Geissbuhler
Dorothea Hofmann

1994
Ken Hiebert
Wolfgang Weingart
Dorothea Hofmann

1993
Hans Ulrich Allemann
Inge Druckrey
Wolfgang Weingart

1992
James Cross
Rudolph de Harak
Bruno Monguzzi

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Next month, DesignInquiry convenes on the Maine island of Vinalhaven to investigate the topic of JOY. Alex Gilliam reflects on the joys of winter weather as a catalyst for better learning, civic engagement and the design of our cities.

This essay originally appeared on Core77

‘When it snows, children take over the city: they sleigh, throw snowballs, make snowmen and are more visible than ever. But what a city needs for its children has to be more durable than snow.’

It is hard not to adore this quote by the architect and playground designer Aldo Van Eyck. Of course there is the simple beauty and wonderment that we all feel when we first poke our head from under the covers, and gaze out the frosty window. But more than this, the first major snowstorms are so utterly magical because they completely reset what was true just a few hours before. Hard becomes soft, what was formerly loud is now a mere murmur, boundaries are erased, wide shrinks to narrow and decades of layered infrastructure, and regulation disappear in just a few short hours. These are some of the few days each year that are universally filled with possibility; where without hesitation you can play in the streets, you can easily reshape the world around you without permission and deeply satisfying challenges abound everywhere.

Now that the weather is finally turning pleasant (in Chicago at least), it’s a rather painful proposition to even mention the word, ‘snow’ but consider for a moment how much micro-experimentation, learning and innovation occur on these days; the jury rigged sled, the simple lever you devised for extricating your car from the ditch, the surprisingly tasty meal you were forced to cobble together from all that was left in the cupboard.

Don’t forget the collaboration that occurred when crafting that snow fort or digging out the block with neighbors when city services fell by the wayside. With the roads made a little narrower and a degree more uncertain by piles of snow, surely you noticed how much more carefully and, at times, considerately people were driving even when the roads themselves were quite clear. Heck, the driver of a passing car may have even waved.

Remember how extra-attuned your muscles and senses were when walking down those icy steps?

Please tell me you haven’t forgotten your whooping and hollering as you slid down the hill your children dragged you up or the deep contentment you felt while carving out a path to and from your house, despite the cold biting against your face. How about the empowerment and satisfaction you found while carving the shortest path to the store?

Now, consider how very different this experience is from how we typically engage with and participate in making the places we live; how completely opposite this is from the design of our educational system; and how our cities are designed.

When surveys, scantron test sheets and powerpoint presentations are the tools of the trade, it’s little wonder that our schools are suffering, public participation in planning processes is minimal at best and the great white hopes of innovation are not big corporations but the garage start-ups that are being fueled by the rise of open source movement, and low-cost rapid prototyping tools (both, virtual snowstorms). When our streets are designed to be as safe and efficient as possible for cars is it really that surprising that their ease of use and the resulting boredom encourages such bad behavior as text messaging or that drivers are surprised by such aberrations as a cyclist?

‘Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.’ William Shakespeare

It should come as no surprise that one of the most difficult, yet compelling lessons from Van Eyck’s snowstorm is the value of making things a little harder, a bit more complicated, a hair more messy and a lot more wondrous……for our own good.

At the very core of this ‘mess’, snow demonstrates that we can and should create situations that ask more of people, individually and collectively; that challenge, meaning and connection are often more important than ease. It reminds us of the value of designing opportunities that encourage a sense of innocence and opportunity, taking advantage of the transformative power of ‘doing’, and the deep seated desire of people to positively impact the world around them. Quite frankly it is remarkable that we ever forgot, but snow helps us remember how powerful and important it is for people to be able to see the tangible fruits of their efforts. And unlike the average classroom, sidewalk or planning meeting, snow reminds us of how satisfying it is to use our full host of mental and physical faculties to solve a problem, learn or traverse the landscape at hand.

It reminds us that we can expect more, much more.

Aldo Van Eyck was wrong. It’s not just our children that need a permanently snowy city, we could all benefit from a little lingering snow.

A cheerleader of possibility, Alex Gilliam is the founder of Public Workshop, an organization dedicated to helping individuals, schools, and communities achieve great things through design. Public Workshop creates projects, tools and events that help people positively change the places they live, work and play.

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