Thoughts on why I want to do what I want to do

Michael Chabon is high on my list of favorite authors, not only for his novels but also for his numerous essays. At the moment, I am attempting to emulate his nonfiction style in a writing assignment. It has become a bit of an uphill battle, which I think is understandable just from reading opening sentences of this piece:

"There may never again be a tedium so wretched and marvelous as that produced by television in the heyday of the aerial. It’s a cliché act of contemporary parenthood to inform one’s children—in our endless parental quest to engender in them that nameless emotion, the inverse of awe, whose purest expression is embodied by the four timeless words Who gives a shit?—that when one was a boy there were only three channels, or four, or at most five."

So, in trying to get a grip of how the heck this man comes up with such grandiose sentences about something as mundane as vintage television, I started looking up interviews with Chabon and stumbled upon the above Youtube clip. Rather than just inspire my essay, Chabon has unwittingly managed to sum up my viewpoint on research and design.

Chabon talks about two things that I think have become really important to me in my design education: always research something that interests you personally and also show that you have authority with what you are talking about. Research (or, more broadly termed, knowledge) has become the single most important thing in my design education. In every project brief I'm given I tend to find a niche, some part of the topic that I sparks my creativity, and then I latch onto it for dear life and spend the next few weeks (or months) becoming an expert in that field. I read every book, every blog, every newspaper and then move onto interview and observation. I read, I write, I just plain think about the topic as much as possible before even delving into the final "what" of the piece (what it will do, what it will look like).

Even though he's talking about authority in terms of fiction, the same holds true of design. By becoming the expert, the designer has full authority of their design and the client has full trust in the designer. As readers, we generally give an author only one chance to "wow" us. The first novel we read is the most important because if we like it we'll buy more and if we don't, odds are we will never read another word from this person. If, as Chabon points out, the writer exercises their authority then we the readers know we are in good hands and we'll probably want more. It's the same with design: without that meticulous research, the design falls short and the client is let down, probably never to return. The design didn't "wow" the client because the designer did have the authority to back it up.

So that's where I stand at the moment: inspired by a novelist to pursue better design through knowledge and research, so that my future clients will know they are in good hands.

Semiotics

My Symbology and Semiotics midterm, a strange form of puppetry to answer a given question. Can you guess the question? We've been discussing perception in class, in terms of user/viewer understanding. It's interesting, because there were six of us answering the same question, but each of us had different visual ideas (though for the most part, the same verbal answer). Visual versus verbal has kind of fascinated me lately, I've been struggling to find a balance between the two. Hopefully, I'll have time to write up some sort of longer explanation of what I mean.

This was a very fun problem to solve. I really love the forms created by the shadows:





Behind the scenes:

Cupcakes

Work in progress for my bookmaking class. Used Alton Brown's recipe from "Good Eats":


Unfortunately, we ate the cupcakes before I could get a shot. They were gooey and awesome cooked in mugs!

Treehouses

A video of a group project I did last year of an installation we made. The assignment was to translate a written, abstract expression of a space into a full-scale model, entirely out of cardboard. We created these sort of treehouses, which, as you can see, were quite structurally sound.

Just posting this reminds me of the warm weather Syracuse was experiencing at the time. It was only April, yet we had 75 degree, sunny days. I think all the groups decided to make their pieces outside, just to have more time to soak up the rays.

Beautiful

Saw this posted over on Cinematical. Absolutely stunning use of still photography to create the animation. The song is pretty good, but really would be nothing without the visuals. It makes me extremely happy to know that there are still plenty of people out there willing to take the time to make something so complex and beautiful. My roomate found a video of stills of London, I shall have to find it and add it to this post. Oh, how I wish I had the time to learn to do all these things. I guess I will jsut have to learn them later.

Happy Friday! I am making mushroom soup and going to a dinner party! I hope your weekend is just as lovely.

a WTF? moment

Yesterday morning, I came downstairs to find my roomate on the couch watching Spongebob after pulling an all-nighter. Since I had time to eat breakfast, I sat down with her. Spongebob was fairly entertaining, but I think the infomercial I saw was moreso:



I laughed quite hard. Basically, the Snuggie is a backwards robe. The commercial is badly made and the concept is a bit inane. I figured I'd post it here as a laugh. Well, in searching for the product, I found a lot of posts of people actually praising the product. WHAT? Not only that, but apparently it's on backorder at the moment!

I am flabbergasted that a blanket with sleeves is actually intriguing enough to people that they would buy it. I mean, put on a sweater if your arms are cold! Yes, it is probably comfortable, but it looks ridiculous and is a "solution" to a problem that never really existed or already had solutions to go with it.

I think the biggest problem I have with the Snuggie is that it is another wasteful product put on the market that no one really needs. There are bathrobes and sweaters. Also, your hands are still going to get cold. Sometimes it's disgusting how consumerism runs rampant in this country.

In conclusion: I can't beleive that something so ridiculous has got me thinking quite so seriously. I just wanted a good laugh!