would you rather...

 

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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.