found it

 Clue 01
The Barcelona Chair was originally designed by Mies van der Rohe. The trademark rights are currently owned by a company called Knoll, but there are many knock-offs of the chair which have caused them considerable legal trouble over the years.

Clue 02
This is the Coconut Chair, designed in 1956 by George Nelson. Nelson's intent was to design a chair that could accommodate any possible seating position. Here I'm reading L'Arca Magazine.

Clue 03

Controversial Design: Eisenman has been critiqued for his design due to the fact that after just 10 years the Wexner Center required a 10 million dollar renovation. 

 Clue 04

Philip Johnson's design of the Science and Engineering Library is about as boring as... well science and engineering. I do kinda like the big arches though.

Clue 05

Fun Fact: Thompson Library's latest addition was designed by Acock and Associates, but they chose to restore the original East facade (designed in 1910) rather than designing a new one.

How we did it:

Our method was pretty simple; I already knew the first three due to the fact that I spend so much time in Knowlton and had to take an architecture history course my first year, and we just googled the other two. Carl  provided the computer, while Telina organized the info and, as the person who's spent the most time on campus, I helped us get around as efficiently as possible. We took turns taking photos and ended up doing the research individually.

Week 4

The first thing that I absolutely must say about this week is this; landscape architects (NOT architects) figure out curb cuts. Also, landscape archs design the ramps that get you to the building. Sometimes architects do, but usually not well (see: example in the lecture). Aside from that, I thought the ADA lecture was pretty interesting. We deal with ADA restrictions all the time in landscape arch, but until now, I was unaware of how ADA plays a part in other design fields. I think that universal design is a really great concept. I hate seeing places and things that were clearly not designed to be universal that were later adapted to fit the needs of disabled individuals. It seems a bit irresponsible to be a designer without thinking about the needs of every possible user and figuring out how to accommodate them. Granted, this is rarely easy and sometimes impossible. For example, no one will ever design a bicycle for paraplegics. As far as the scavenger hunt, it was interesting to learn about some of the buildings on campus. I grew up in Clintonville and spent a lot of time on campus in high school, so I'm already familiar with how to get around, which definitely made things easier. Also, I spend a lot of time in Knowlton, which made a couple of the clues really easy.

Five Faces

 Front yard tree 1

 Front yard tree 2 (same tree)

 Mr Clean

 Big mouth sink (kinda looks like a muppet)

Silly (and a bit creepy) smile

Identities and systems

Overall, I found these chapters much more interesting than previous ones. I thought it was interesting that Japan has the highest rate of plastic surgery in the world. I saw a video on Vice Magazine's website a while ago about "donut heads," people who inject saline into their foreheads. In the video, they said that this practice is becoming pretty common in Japan. Not to sound xenophobic, but there's something odd to me about putting saline in your head. Also, I recently heard that women in a lot of Asian countries wear pupil enhancing contacts. I think the fact that people go to such lengths to present themselves a certain way is very telling of the importance of identity, whether for individuals or corporations. The point about how people reacted to the new British telephones was interesting too. In Banksy's documentary, Exit Through the Giftshop, one of the pieces shown is an old style British phone booth that's been modified to look like it's been chopped in half by a pick axe. I didn't really understand the point of that piece until reading about the negative attitude people had about the new phone booths. Near the end of the chapter, Heskett made a point ab out how quality of service is still important, regardless of identity. Right after this, he used FedEx as an example. I thought that was kind of funny, given that FedEx, while more innovative in the past, is really not a great company compared to, say, UPS. A friend of mine once saw a FedEx semi plow right into the side of building, and while it might seem like an isolated incident, it's really surprising how often FedEx drivers screw up. They don't have as strict of qualifications for their drivers, and they actually get into accidents pretty often. Also, I don't understand how having one headquarters in Memphis doesn't limit their efficiency. The systems chapter immediately made me think about infrastructure, which is what we're dealing with in my current landscape arch studio. I've been getting more and more interested in infrastructure over the past year and I think it's one of the few things that relates to both my major and my minor. The last paragraph of the chapter was the most interesting to me. Heskett seems to be under the impression that designers don't deal with reconciling natural and artificial systems. Maybe a lot has changed since 2002, but reconciling these systems is probably the largest, most important focus of landscape architecture. I get the impression that a lot of designers are unaware of what landscape architects do, and I think it's kind of a shame, because we focus so much on eco-friendly design and other fields could learn more from ours.

Week 3

It was a short week, but interesting nonetheless. I really liked the video about IDEO. I found it a bit strange and surprising that so many of the people on their staff don't have formal design training. I thought it was kind of cool how one of the team members turned down medical school to work there and I think I would do the same thing in his shoes. I've seen some videos of other firms, most recently in the documentary Objectified, but none of them look as laid back and innovative as IDEO. We're reading Tim Brown's book Change by Design in my other design class this quarter, so I've been getting a lot of exposure to the IDEO way of doing things. I have to say, I would really really love to work there some day, or somewhere with a similar mentality. I had a lot of fun with this week's assignments, especially the survey one. I decided to try to do all of the icons myself, but I ended up having to do a lot of tracing in Illustrator. Still, it was really fun to give it a try.

objects, communications, and environments oh my

This reading was pretty interesting, although most of what it covered was already familiar to me. Nonetheless, there were some very interesting points made. I remember reading about Philippe Starck's juicer a while back in Donald Norman's book Emotional Design. I've always had mixed feelings about that product. Norman mentions that he bought one of the special edition golden ones, and that it couldn't even be used for juice, because the acid would damage the gold coating. In my mind, that doesn't really seem like design, at least the special edition ones that don't even function. In the same book, Norman mentions ATM's, which were also discussed in this chapter. He talks about an experiment conducted in Israel, in which two ATM's were tested against each other. Each one had the same exact functions and used the same system, with the same display, but one of them had been re-designed to be more aesthetically pleasing. Customers who used the ATM's were asked to rate the machine's usability, and it was found that people actually thought the aesthetically pleasing machines worked faster and were easier to understand. I always thought that was interesting, and I think it's something that every designer should know. We had a discussion in one of my landscape classes last quarter about the role of beauty in landscape architecture. In contemporary practice, most landscape architects will write off the value of beauty, choosing instead to focus environmental and ecological aspects. I'm all for that, but I think that beauty plays a more important role than most designers (or at least landscape architects) think it does. In the chapter about communications, I found it strange that the Weather Channel's website was used as an example of good interactive design. Sure, its great to have quick access to the weather forecast for the next ten days, but that website sucks. Half of it is advertisements, and they constantly change the layout, making it confusing and difficult to get the most out of. The environment chapter was interesting to me for obvious reasons, but even more so because it dealt with the type of environments that I don't spend 60 hours a week thinking about. The point I found most interesting was about how Japanese homes utilize vertical dimensions. I stumbled upon a video of a Japanese man who converted his apartment to be made up of move-able pieces, so that he could reconfigure it into several different rooms. It was really cool because each room looked like something you would see in an American home (size-wise at least), but he was able to fit it all in a couple hundred square feet.

designer investigation

10 things to know about Stefan Sagmeister
- educated first at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna, and later at the Pratt Institute (NYC), where he graduated in 1988
- chose to study design because he wanted to do visual work in the music industry
- in contrast to his latest work, Sagmeister's early work was functional and very cold
- he worked briefly with Tibor Kalman and M&Co Labs, until being forced to return to Austria for military service, after which he worked freelance
- at the Hong Kong office of Leo Burnett, Sagmeister gained his current radical reputation when he designed the poster for the Southeast Asia Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies' call for entries, which depicted several businessmen mooning the viewer
- his design for the band Pro-Pain's cd cover (which depicts a dead girl sewn up after an autopsy) added to his reputation as a radical designer, but caused him to re-evaluate his style
- founded Sagmeister, Inc. in 1993
- prefers to work as part of a very small team
- published Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far in 2008
- hates T.V. because it is uninspiring

works consulted
Radical Graphics/Graphic Radicals by Laurel Harper
Inspirability by Matt Pashkow
Stefan Sagmeister / Design Museum Collection; http://designmuseum.org/design/stefan-sagmeister 


10 things to know about Paula Scher
- studied illustration at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia
- began career as record cover art director for Atlantic & CBS Records in the 1970's
- Scher has been a principal at Pentagram (NYC office) since 1991
- best known for her heavily type-based approach
- her Best Of Jazz poster (1970's) was considered unorthodox at the time, due to its heavy focus on typography
- her design for the Public Theater identity (1994) has gained Scher much acclaim
- her Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk poster (1996) is perhaps Scher's most well-known piece, reflecting her typographic style
- inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1998
- received Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design in 2000
- received AIGA Medal in 2001
- granted Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa from the Corcoran College of Art and Design

works consulted
Make it Bigger by Paula Scher
Radical Graphics/Graphic Radicals by Laurel Harper
Inspirability by Matt Pashkow
Paula Scher - AIGA; http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/medalist-paulascher

Paul Rand: American modernist
Paul Rand was born Peretz Rosenbaum in Brooklyn in 1914. His Orthodox Jewish upbringing made graphic design and unlikely career, but from an early age Rand showed a passion for creating visual imagery. He began painting as a child, making signs for his father's grocery store and his public school. Although he showed great potential, Rand's father did not see art as an appropriate career for his son, and thus Rand was forced to study at Harren High School in Manhattan, only taking art classes at night. After high school, Rand studied first at the Pratt Institute, later at Parsons, and finally at the Art Students League. Despite his vast artistic education, Rand's modernist style was mostly self-taught, out of his own interest in European modernist artists and designers. Rand began his career working part-time creating stock images for distribution to local newspapers and magazines. It was around this time that he changed his name from Peretz Rosenbaum to Paul Rand. He picked "Paul Rand" because he felt that have four letters in each name would make for a pleasing aesthetic. It didn't take long for Rand to make a name for himself. His designs for Direction Magazine gained Rand much acclaim when he was just in his early 20's. In 1936, Rand did the layout for Apparel Arts Magazine's anniversary issue. The spectacular layout earned him a job offer as art director for Esquire-Coronet Magazines. Initially, Rand turned the offer down, feeling that he was not qualified, but later he accepted. His later career consists almost entirely of logos. Rand's most famous works include the identities of IBM, ABC, UPS, Westinghouse, Cummins Engine, NeXT, Enron, and USSB. Rand believed that a logo ought to be incredibly simple if it is to survive. Perhaps the longevity of his work proves this point. Rand was a strong believer in the importance of play in design. He believed that play was the best way to resolve design problems and encouraged students to be playful when he taught at Yale from 1956 to 1967, and again in 1974. In 1972, Rand was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, further solidifying his reputation. By the end of his career, Rand was able to charge in the neighborhood of $100,000 for a logo, and companies would gladly pay it, knowing that a Paul Rand logo is a timeless logo. Despite his hugely influential role in visual design, Rand has been criticized for his strictly modernist approach, especially near the end of his career. Several contemporaries of Rand's have said that he was scared of new ideas and that he was stuck in his ways. I personally am not the biggest fan of modernism, but even so, Rand's work cannot be considered anything less than hugely influential in the world of design. Regardless of personal preference, Paul Rand has certainly made a lasting mark in the field of visual design. Paul Rand passed away in 1996, leaving a huge legacy behind.

Rand's best known work
http://fionadaniels.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/paul_rand_logos.jpg


works consulted
Design Dialogs by Steven Heller and Elinor Pettit
Paul Rand: Conversations with Students by Michael Kroeger
Paul-Rand.com; http://www.paul-rand.com/  

would you rather...

 

questions taken from <http://www.teampedia.net/wiki/index.php?title=Would_you_rather%3F >

Week 2

To tell the truth, I found myself a bit bored last week. A lot of the material was sort of just a review for me. My major requires an architecture history course which covered some of the material in Monday's lecture. I'm already pretty familiar with the Eames' work as well. As far as the "What do designers do?" lecture, I've studied architecture, am currently majoring in landscape arch, and have plenty of friends in visual communication design, industrial design, and fashion design. I'm not as familiar with interior space design, so that was pretty interesting, and I'd like to learn more about it. I'm doing a way-finding project in my other design class this quarter, so I'd like to do some interior design research (any recommendations?) this weekend. At any rate, I'm glad to be done with the boring stuff, and I'm excited about our upcoming projects.

Patterns, patterns, patterns

 One man's trash
Found on the smoking balcony of Knowlton.
I'm a big fan of purple and yellow and I like this because it's so unintentional. Found a few days ago.

 Op art 1
My girlfriend's researching optical art and I found this one while snooping through one of her books. Trippy
Found this weekend.

 Op art 2
Same book, opposite page. I like the color combination on this one. Also found this weekend.

 Grimy, but kinda cool

I like stuff like this, cause you wouldn't normally notice it. Something about it isn't really what I'd expect an air vent to look like. Found at a friend's house last week.

 My friends rent from Wes Anderson
Wallpaper I found at my friends' house. It makes me feel like one of the Royal Tenenbaums. Found last weekend.

2's and 4's
Installation piece at Knowlton. I like the use of rectilinear pieces to make a curved surface. Found yesterday. 

Elephants in the room

Simple pattern, but again, I like purple. I also like elephants. Found a couple of years ago at Import House.

 Memphis 1
We stopped in Memphis last spring on the way to a music festival in Mexico and saw these installation pieces on display. I love recycled art and this was made of street signs. Found last March

Memphis 2
Again, recycled art is cool. In this one you can see how the pattern is just the shapes, but what's inside each one is different. Found last March.

French accent in the kitchen
I like this one because it's kind of a pattern within a pattern. Each tile is completely symmetrical and they're repeated across the wall. Found last year.

Introducing... Design

This reading helped clear up some of the confusion surrounding design. As mentioned early on in the first chapter, there is a lot of confusion regarding design practice. Heskett mentions that the word "design" is over-used and I couldn't agree more. Every time I come back from downtown on Fourth St I see a building that says "DESIGN" in big letters. I looked more closely one time, and realized that it's actually a lighting store. The people who work there don't actually design anything, they just sell lights. I also found it interesting when Heskett states that every aspect of the environment will be designed in the future, and he specifically mentions plants. It's a little known fact that turf grass (as in the kind in your front yard) is not native to the U.S., but it is native to Great Britain, and the settlers really really liked it, so much that it is now ubiquitous in a region where it shouldn't exist. In a sense, the upper class was responsible for this, but designers (landscape architects specifically) had a hand in the spread of turf grass. I also found the point about the wheel not being a natural shape interesting. I suppose I had never thought of it before. I remember reading a long time ago that the ancient Egyptians who built the Great Pyramids did not use wheels (later ancient Eqyptians did, but not the ones who built the pyramids), and instead they used rows of logs. The fact that they did that makes more sense now, as trees are a natural shape and they serve the same functions as wheels. The writing about globalization was also very interesting. Colgate was mentioned, but there's another example from their company that's pretty ridiculous. "Colgate" is Spanish for "F*#! Yourself" and needless to say, they had some trouble marketing toothpaste in Latin America. Also, this is somewhat unrelated, but Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (finally someone with a harder to pronounce last name than mine) was mentioned. I haven't read The Meaning of Things, but I did read his book Flow a couple of years ago, and I would highly recommend it to just about anyone.

Advice from Frank Chimero

Not so much an article as a collection of ideas, I recently read a piece by Frank Chimero. Anonymously asked for "advice for a graphic student," his response makes some very interesting points. In the article, Chimero addresses a few common misconceptions held by many students, myself included. He talks about design education, professional practice, and a few seemingly random snippets of advice that seem somewhat unrelated. I agree with a lot of what Chimero says in the article, for example, "Simple is almost a dirty word. Almost" and, "If you say 'retro' too much you will get hives and maybe die," which made me chuckle, but a good point nonetheless. I wouldn't take any of it as gospel, but I would recommend this article to anyone who is feeling stuck or confused. It's nice to get a point of view from someone who's been around for a while and see how they've gotten to where they are.

Why Design 200?

I took my first design course last winter and I really liked it. It was one of the funnest courses I had taken and I wanted to get some more exposure to the world of design. I ended up deciding to go for a minor in design and couldn't be happier with my decision. So at any rate I need to take this course to earn my minor, but I would probably take it anyway, because I'm very drawn to design and I think that design thinking is an incredibly useful tool. I find every design field interesting, but I'm most interested in visual design. In landscape arch, we study sustainability very extensively, and I'm always intrigued by how other design fields deal with environmental issues. I'm a strong believer in the interdisciplinary approach to design education, so I'm also hoping that this class will give me a fresh perspective on the work I do for my major.

First thing's first...

My name is Jeremy Tinianow and I'm a Columbus native in my third year at OSU. I'm in the Landscape Architecture major here and I really enjoy it. I grew up in Clintonville, just a couple of miles north of campus and, aside from a year in Cincinnati, I've lived here my whole life. I've been skateboarding since I was little and it's shaped a lot of who I am, including the major I've chosen, as I wanted to be a skatepark designer when I started here, but now I've broadened my interests quite a bit. I love drawing (even though I'm no good at it), cycling, bowling, and playing pool. Also, I really love to travel and will be going to Europe for a study abroad this summer, and hopefully to Austin this spring for SXSW. Oh and I'm definitely a dog person.