_i exist by implication_

• BAGGU
  A reusable shopping bag
  (tags: industrialDesign)
• Turn Nocturnal — Home
  Great Tshirts
  (tags: textiles screenPrint typography)

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Last semester I taught a seminar course at NC State University’s College of Design where I asked the students to identify, as part of a weekly assignment, two instances: one where design thinking had thrived and another where it had failed. Towards the end of the course, students had collected a series moments that proved that only a simple nudge was required, many times at no extra cost to anyone, to set a series of problems right. Recently, I came across one such example.

Last week, due to the birth of my nephew Gonzalo, I got to spend some time in the maternity wing of the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital. It was indeed a short time, yet most of it was spent waiting for the baby to make its appearance. I had time to look around. A few things came to my attention, but this particular emergency door stood out the most out of anything else that caught my eye.

An Emergency Door in the Maternity Wing of the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The subject in question is located on a hallway directly across from the nursery of newborns. As you can imagine, a lot of people congregate in this area. Upon further investigation, four things were of interest to me:

1) The standard, internationally used emergency exit sign;
2) An ink-jet printed sign which informs that this door does not provide access to the ground floor;
3) The familiar red sign that indicates to use this exit in case of an emergency; and
4) A photocopy which explains, in paragraphs, what to do in case of a problem.

Can you imagine what would happen, God forbid, if there was an emergency in this space?
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• Which Student are You?
  A great, and funny profile of contemporary student profiles
  (tags: education funny illustration)
• Apple Does it Again. Incredible Interactive wall
  Apple stuns WWDC crowd with pulsating App Store hyperwall
  (tags: interactive interface)

Recently, a few people have asked about the work I carried out in graduate school. Part of my time in the last few weeks has been spent formatting the work to share it online. Today I am happy to share:

http://www.estudiointerlinea.com/archives/category/designwork/graduate-school

You can visit and see a selection of some of the larger investigations carried out, many as part of larger collaborative groups. The final project is the only one not up yet. It will be coming soon.

• Kinetic and Sequential Graphics 2 (KSU) on Vimeo
  The site of the great work by Gretchen Rinnert's motion classes
  (tags: motion animation movies academic)
• Reel 09 : James Gundersen
  incredible motion work
  (tags: animation motion movies portfolio)

In the last few weeks I have been moving from meeting to meeting, introducing myself to new clients and re-connecting with some older ones. Face to face conversation has been at the core of most interactions.

During the time, I have become aware of the many identities others bestow on me: artist, graphic artist, digital artist, the creative, the person who makes logos, sign-maker, event planner, the guy who did that exhibit on the train, the kid who makes things pretty, web-site maker, and I have even been introduced as an architect. Not once in three weeks has anyone (other than in the office space from which I now work) used the term graphic designer, or even the idea of design to refer to me or to what I do.

In the Puerto Rican corporate and academic spheres that I have been exposed to, the practice of design (even if called by other names) is still seen as, talked about, and referred to as an icing on a cake which provides decoration (and an extra boost of sugar) to an already functional product. Designers are not at the decision table, and I have yet encountered one example of design included in a larger strategic process. The techniques, strategies and tools of design thinking are nowhere to be found. The idea of graphic designers having a process and knowledge of specific strategies that might foster innovation is scarce. Inspiration, creativity and talent are still at the core of the generally accepted understanding of how designers work and come up with ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

I am a designer. The term, today employed across various contexts and business models to signify different things, is actually not as hard to understand as many people make it out to be. It basically means that I like a few essential things: sexy typography (this is like the one ring made to rule them all), apple equipment, black t-shirts, fancy eyeglasses, ergonomic pencils, reading about the implications of structuring information, funky-colored shoes, colors, markers, anything Italian, and the smell of old books. (among others) This list is easy to assemble since most of these are stereotypical images society can associate easily with this professional path I have chosen to investigate. And yet, there is one aspect of being a designer that is not as obvious (and sad since it is the best part): as a designer I am in the constant search of problems.

Sounds interesting right? Well, in reality, it is. Yet, being on a constant search for problems to solve brings about a series of problems of its own. The best way I can describe it is that sometimes I find myself in an alternate reality; others talking about the color red and me asking why red?

As a more concrete example, Read the rest of this entry »

• Using CSS and a simple list to create radically different list options
  Can you take a simple list and use different Cascading Style Sheets to create radically different list options? The Listamatic shows the power of CSS when applied to one simple list.
  (tags: css)
• Garamond
  Great deconstructionist approach at the typeface Garamond.
  (tags: typography animation)

During the past few days I have been pulling together a small amount of my photography. Today I am happy to share the publishing of http://photo.estudiointerlinea.com/.

I hope you enjoy the glimpse into one of the ways that I look at the world. You can count on updates as my next shooting adventures come along…

I have spent the past few weeks making presentations about who I am and what I do. You know the drill … –Hi, I am a designer… I can help with x, y and z… etc, etc.

This time around, I have been given the opportunities to meet with other designers, museum curators, CEOs, individual decision-markers, and larger groups. At most, I speak for a short 3 mins, quickly showing some of my work while speaking of design thinking and design strategy as core to my way of working. I try to communicate bits that relate to things that I consider myself to be good at and capable of handling.

Recently though, I have realized an issue: I now speak in a language that is not familiar to a non-designerly culture, resulting in me not being understood. I speak of a visual system and I get asked if that’s the logo. I introduce the idea of design strategy and others wonder if that’s the advertising. I propose an interactive online experience and I end up talking about Flash.

I need to find a way to present my approach and ideas to better illustrate what I am trying to offer. In a way, I have to help others, because it will eventually help me, not feel like I did in my first week of graduate school: lost in translation.

On May 9th 2009, NC State University’s College of Design carried out its graduation exercises. The event recognized undergraduates, graduates and PhDs who successfully met the degree requirements in one the disciplines of Architecture, Art and Design, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, and Landscape Architecture.

As part of the event’s protocol, students were individually called onto the stage to receive a diploma from Dean Marvin Malecha, FAIA, and each of the department chairs. In the case of the Graphic Design Department, Santiago Piedrafita was there to give us an official hug.

When each student is called, a photograph is projected on a screen in the stage, and as you can expect, the master of graphic design graduates came together and agreed on a template*:

Thanks to Sidney Fritts and Cady Bean-Smith for having the initiative for these colored-sunglasses images. Without them, we would not have been able to pull this off.

Thank you Rebecca Tegtmeyer, Marty Maxwell Lane and Kelly Murdoch-Kitt, it was a good run!

* It is also important to share that the undergraduates in graphic design also came together and created their own little system for the graduation slideshow. They made 3-D images of themselves and handed out red/green glasses to the audience. Pretty cool.

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At the end of every spring semester the College of Design hosts a Student Awards Ceremony for the current graduating class. This is an opportunity for each of the departments to hand out a series of awards to both graduate and undergraduate students.

The graphic design department has traditionally handed out the Book Award. The basic idea is that a faculty member in the program awards a student with a book that will be of benefit in life after graduate school. This year, I shared the graduate book award with Rebecca Tegtmeyer and Marty Lane. Each of us was awarded a different book by a faculty member… I was given The Design Dictionary: Perspectives on Design Terminology (Board of International Research in Design). :)

During the graduation ceremony of the College of Design I was awarded with one of the three Wings on Wings Dean’s recognitions. Better than explaining what it was all about, I have included the original text as read by the College’s Dean, Marvin Malecha, FAIA:

On occasion there are individuals who stand out among the graduating class for outstanding citizenship in the College community and academic excellence. For this reason I have established the Dean’s Award known as Wings on Wings. It is inspired by the constructivist painting of Natalia Goncherova depicting the Archangel Michael, the good citizen angel, astride Pegasus, the ancient symbol for opportunity. It is a fitting symbol to recognize individuals who have taken advantage of the opportunity that the College presents and acted as a good citizen.

It is the practice of the College that nominations come to me from the academic units and since it is the dean’s award I make the final choice. There have been ceremonies when no award is made, very infrequent thankfully, but our usual custom is one, maybe two recognitions. Perhaps I am becoming soft this year because I could not make one, or even two choices. I have chosen to recognize three outstanding individuals from our graduating class. This is a reflection of just how good our students are!

The third recipient is graduating with a Master of Graphic Design, Mr. Alberto Rigau. In the nomination Professor Denise Gonzales Crisp observes, “Alberto has been a tireless contributor to the design community as a T.A., a teacher at the College Design Camp Program for aspiring design students, as a designer for the Student Publication and for the University undergraduate information publication The Brick. His enthusiasm is responsible for new curricular ideas in the Graphic Design Program. He was a student leader in 2007 for the Graduate Graphic Design Symposium, Option-Shift-Control. He has consistently had papers accepted at professional conferences around the nation. Most recently, he has won the first prize at the NC State University Graduate Research Symposium for the Humanities.” Alberto, please come forward to accept your much-deserved recognition.

Thank you Denise for your faith and support!

On May 4th 2009 I carried out the last of three formal presentations related to my Final Project at NC State University’s College of Design. Even though the step is a required component of the academic requirements at the graphic design program, I enjoyed the opportunity to share some of my interests, ideas and research with faculty, students, and other members of the community.

The presentation was a 25 minute summary of the research and work carried out on my final study at the graduate program: Design as Choice Architecture: informing consumers about debt-related behaviors. The following video is a recording of the original May 4th exposition.

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In retrospect, having worked on this final project felt more like a rite of passage than anything else, signaling a transition into a deeper and meaningful design life. I am happy to report that all requirements for graduation were successfully met and I have been granted the degree of Master of Graphic Design. :)

I recently visited The Bain Project in Raleigh, North Carolina. The thing is, I ended there out of pure luck due to a friend who simply said: I want to stop at “a thing”.

As I arrived on the location all that I could think to myself was: “How did I not know about this earlier? How had nobody told me?”. In retrospect, I did know of the activity. In fact, its promotional poster hung 5 feet from me in my studio for the last 3 weeks of classes.

What went wrong?
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This past Sunday I had the opportunity to visit and participate in The Bain Project. This site-specific artistic exploration took place at the historic E. B. Bain Waterworks building in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I have to say this was a special event where quality, organization, people, atmosphere, mood, and setting all came together in a composition worthy of utmost praise.

As part of the event, the E. B. Bain Waterworks building served as canvas to varied musical compositions that engaged the senses and added to the mystery and nostalgia caused by the historic structure.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

In my opinion, the most captivating aspect was its location. Rebecca Tegtmeyer documented our visit there and has shared some of her images here.

Last summer I collaborated with Rebecca Tegtmeyer and Marty Maxwell Lane in the design of two projects for NC State University.

In May, Marty and I worked for the First Year College to design The Brick, a 120 page book to welcome and orient the 2008 incoming freshman class into the university. The rest of the summer, Rebecca joined us as we worked for the College of Design on Collective Intelligence, Collaborative Design, the college’s research publication.

Last night, our work was recognized with two Merit Awards from the AIGA Chapters of Charlotte and Raleigh in their Fifth Biennial Design Competition, BOOM!
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The interface for my final project is slowly changing… incredible the difference that a small change can produce…

• Alkaline - Litmus
  Alkaline
  17 Windows browsers on your Mac.
  Testing heaven.*
  (tags: software internet interface webDesign)
• typo/graphic posters
  typo/graphic posters, a directory of typographic and graphic posters.
  (tags: typography design inspiration print posters)

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Myself in front of my research poster. Photograph by Rebecca Kirkland.

As I have written before before, this past week was the Fourth Annual NC State University Graduate Student Research Symposium. Marty Maxwell Lane, Deb Littlejohn and I were asked to present our current research at the event. In retrospect, it was just like presenting for judges back in one of my high school science fairs… Presentations were made with the aid of posters. We participated in the Humanities and Design category, where I am happy to report that I was recognized with a first prize for the current research I am carrying out with my final project. :)
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• newenglandruins.com
  Photos of Ruins… pretty cool
  (tags: photography portfolio)
• Visual Culture » Microsoft Sustainability
  This is indeed something unique. Microsoft has developed an interesting glimpse into the future of the digital world.
  (tags: animation future interactive interface)

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The University Graduate Student Association and the Graduate School hosted the Fourth Annual NC State University Graduate Student Research Symposium. The goals of the symposium were to showcase the outstanding quality and diversity of graduate-level research at NC State, and to share it with state decision-makers.

Marty Maxwell Lane, Deb Littlejohn and I were asked to present our projects at the event. We each made posters, like mine shown at top, to share and explain the goals of our investigations. We participated in the Humanities and Design category, where I am happy to report that I was awarded the first prize. :)

Today was a day for/of presentations.

In the morning I had the opportunity to share my current research with the accepted candidates for next year’s incoming graduate graphic design class. The presentation, a shortened version of my Orals Presentation, went really well.

In the evening, I volunteered to present at the 2nd annual Intercom Research Exchange at the College of Design. The event had two ways in which we could share our research with the university community: via a poster where the research was presented in a printed format (you can see Rebecca Tegtmeyer’s poster here), or via a Pecha Kucha styled projected presentation.

[qt:http://blog.estudiointerlinea.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/Rigau_Intercom.mov 400 250]
This is a self playing movie, but please click on it to get it started. The first 14 seconds are static, so be patient. This is the Pecha Kucha version of my final project presentation

Marty Maxwell Lane also did a Pecha Kucha style presentation to share her research on the way teens understand visual content online (it’s much more than that, but that my version of her project in a sentence. I am sure she will kill me soon over this butchering… ;)

As second-year students of the NC State Graduate Program in Graphic Design, our final semester is dedicated to the work on our final project. As part of the process, we are required to make three major presentations.

The first presentation serves as a public unveiling of our interests to the entire graphic design department. At this point we are supposed to have an initial idea about our interests while we are still negotiating with all of the research that we have so far collected. This point also helps the first-year students, for it allows them to get an idea about what a final project investigation is all about.

The second, the Orals Presentation, occurs the week after Spring Break, half-way between that first exposition and the conclusion of the investigation. At this point, there should be a cohesive argument that makes sense. A design project should exist. The final project must be on its way… and this is the presentation that I recently made.

This post includes the slides of that presentation. You will see notes underneath each one, but the morning of the event I decided not to read any of them. I presented using my train of thought. Of course, what I eventually said is rooted in these notes, but I really did not have time to cover these and read them over. The full development of my ideas will be expressed in the final written document, which will be the core of the third and final presentation coming in up on May 4th.

Any comments on my research are welcome! :)

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• Deco Vinilos
  Great website for wall decorations and environmental design.
  (tags: environmentalGraphics environmetal)
• Carbonmade : Your online portfolio.
  Great tool for teens to have a professional looking portfolio site.
  (tags: photography portfolio design inspiration)

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• Ed Ulbrich shows how Benjamin Button got his face
  Ted talk about the technology behind the film
  (tags: film interactive interface)

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• Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie
  Incredible stop animation video.
  (tags: stopAnimation storytelling animation inspiration)

Sometimes some of the best surprises come after-the-fact. In this case, after the pilot project was over, the words were sent down stream to the pickup location. Video by Miguel Ortiz. Photos by Gus Pantell. Editing by Alberto Rigau.

All photos by Gus Pantell.

The early part of the XXth century witnessed the construction of an extensive web of irrigation channels to distribute water to homes and farmlands in Puerto Rico along more than 35 kms. Still in operation to this day, throughout time different individuals and groups have acknowledged the scenic value of these channels; however, to most they remain unknown.

Conceived by the architectural firm, Jorge Rigau FAIA, Architects, the pilot project was designed to garner support from government officials, institutions, and the general public for the development of Isabela’s irrigation channels as a key ecotourism attraction in Puerto Rico. The “canales” travel across plains, mountains, and forests of varying microclimate, flora, fauna, and views. Maintenance paths that run continuously next to them could today be refashioned as nature trails accessible to the general public, children, senior citizens, and handicapped people alike. This pilot project set out to prove the feasibility of this initiative.

After public access to these facilities had been denied for eighty years, one kilometer of channels was opened up for two days, attracting an audience of over 3,000 registered people, including key decision-makers like the Island’s Interim Governor. Environmental leaders and university professors joined the long lines of visitors from all over the Island.Advocacy is often linked to demonstrations, more than often committed to stop something from happening. In our case, we chose to demonstrate otherwise: How something can, in fact, happen. Letters of support have started to come and decision makers - already engaged – have invited us to sit and dialogue. This is what we planned for.

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I am getting a bit nervous. The calendar dates keep progressing and my making seems to be resting stagnantly. Nonetheless, major progress was achieved this morning through the discussion and appreciation of smaller details. These procedural wireframes have begun to seriously integrate much of the research, expressing itself through a series of functionalities.

As it can be anticipated, my system has already changed again, but here I present what I showed in the meeting today.
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I think that the secret for the behavioral success of this project lies in articulating the difference of needs and wants to the users.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Last semester, before I got interested in consumer behaviors and their repercussions, I explored gesture based interfaces as a possibility for my final project. Today, while organizing my current archive, I found this old copy of the HP Touch Smart ad. It is still impressive.

After the most recent discussion about the progress of the final project, I decided to stir things a bit… and materialize the sketching. I’ve devised a usable paper-prototype that allows me to explore the possibilities for the interface and its contents.
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The view, looking east from the command center.

As you can imagine, as the oral defense presentation gets closer, the perception of the world around me is slowly shifting. The apartment is no longer home-base, my chair is my best friend, and my desk the center of all of the world’s operations… again, of all of the world’s operations…!

So… I have proven that I have time to bother other classmates while they do their work, I can make stop-animation movies, and I can spy on what others are doing… but what have I been up to? Where am I in my process?
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Visual exploration by Robert Ruehlman

Why is it that this moment always comes?

You know… When you wish you were doing everybody else’s project but your own? Don’t get me wrong. I am immersed and excited over what I am working on, but there is always that little instance when you just become extremely jealous of the inspiring work your classmates make. I mean, how can I not be?

Marty Maxwell Lane is doing these amazing explorations that still have me speechless. Rebecca Tegtmeyer has created these gorgeous compositions that provide structural cues to her content. Robert Ruehlman works on animated typographic explorations (like the one at the top of this post) aiming directly at my past with Spirographs… and Kelly Murdoch-Kitt, the cyber-hippie who sits in the back, would not even share her super-secret thesis blog… which kills my curiosity now.

The body of work of these individuals serves to remind me of the right choice I made in coming to this particular program.

A few days ago Rebecca Tegtmeyer sent a few friends an email with a challenge to do something like this. It was not until today that I was able to see the link, and to be honest, I just found it too fun to ignore. Since last night I did not get to sleep much, my productivity today was very low, so I decided to give this a shot.

By now, I have shared the video with a few friends which have pointed out many crucial missing moments like the photography from the Option Shift Control Symposium, from our class trip to DC, the Design Band, and others. With all the missing parts I might have to consider Meat Loaf for the soundtrack… hehehe. I will update the file, probably after the Final Project is done. But for now… I hope you enjoy…

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

At the end of last semester the graduate class came together to work on a calendar for 2009. The project, headed by Caroline Prietz, Liese Zahabi and Lauren Waugh, was hand letterpressed and distributed to our family and friends. Each of the months was divided among the participants. To show the process to the faculty, I made this short video which pretty much tells the story of that one particular weekend when thinner became our therapist and biscuits were king.

Two nights ago, while my friend Cady Bean-Smith was trying to work, I made it a point to let her know that I needed some attention… hahahaha. This projection was part of her Interface for Interfaces project that she designed and I decided to come play with.

• mdm design matthew mcbride
  The personal website of matthew mcbride | media design | art direction
  (tags: interactive interface informationDesign thesis)
• School of Visual Arts — MFA in Interaction Design — Recommended Readings
  A publishing of the department's reading list.
  (tags: education interactive interface internet)

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Untitled (I shop therefore I am)
by Barbara Kruger
111″ by 113″
photographic silkscreen/vinyl
1987

Power-Hog is a power consumption metering piggy bank designed to sensitize kids to energy cost associated with running electronics devices. Plug the tail into the outlet and the device into the snout; feed a coin to meter 30 minutes of use.
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A maquette? The active verb of a process. A model? Just the passive object in the predicate of such steps.

• Record Envelope
  A website dedicated to Vynil Record Envelops… pretty cool
  (tags: design music)

‘And what do you mean to be?’
The kind old Bishop said
As he took the boy on his ample knee…

‘I want to be a Consumer,’
The bright-haired lad replied
As he gazed up into the Bishop’s face
In innocence open-eyed.
‘I’ve never had aims of a selfish sort,
For that, as I know is wrong,
I want to be a Consumer, Sir, And help the word along.

‘I want to be a Consumer
And work both night and day,
For that is the thing that’s needed most,
I’ve heard Economists say.
I won’t just be a Producer,
Like Bobby and James and John;
I want to be a Consumer, Sir,
And help the nation on.’

–Patrick Barrington
Punch, April 25 193, p. 467

Watch CBS Videos Online

Mitch Butler and Josh Landis examine the current crisis now facing credit card companies, who have faced recent difficulty trying to sell off consumer debt to investors.

Next month I will be presenting the progress of my final project at the NC State Graduate Research Symposium to be held in the McKimmon Center on Wednesday, March 18, 2009. What follows is the abstract of the submission, which is still highly speculative since visual making has only just begun.

—–

Alberto Rigau
Graphic Design Master’s Candidate
College of Design

Advisors: Meredith Davis / Martha Scotford

In what ways can design address consumption induced behaviors and provide a set of tools to help consumers manage, control, and personalize fiscal activities?

Credit cards have become an essential financial tool for individuals and families. In 2004, the Census Bureau reported that there were more than 1.4 billion credit cards for 164 million cardholders—an average of 8.5 cards per cardholder, out of which 115 million carry a balance at the end of the month. In the pre–credit card era, households used a pay–as–you–go accounting system. Today, if there is no cash to fill up the car, there is always the credit card. Such a reliance on this payment method generates experiential patterns, more than often translating into family debt. This investigation studies behaviors and patterns associated with credit card use to identify moments in which design intervention can bring about reflective thought about spending habits.

Yiannis Gabriel and Tim Lang, in The Unmanageable Consumer, argue that our actions and experiences as consumers cannot be detached from our actions and experiences as social, political and moral agents. They claim that the fragmentation and contradictions of contemporary consumption are part of the fragmentation and contradictions of contemporary living. It is not the case that at one moment we act as consumers and the next as workers or as citizens, as women or men or as members of ethnic groups. We are creative composites of simultaneous social categories, with histories, presents and futures. The authors see consumers as central characters of stories, many times exhibiting varied behaviors, such as those of explorers, choosers, communicators, identity-seekers, hedonists, victims, rebels, activists, or citizens.

This research focuses on evaluating some of the ways in which design can address these consumption induced behaviors and on proposing a set of tools to help consumers manage, control, and personalize fiscal activities.

The final project is underway, and as such, visualizing is also in the process. This is the first stab at the “Rubix-Cube Metaphor” towards an ecological understanding. Let’s see where this takes me…

***Update: The strategic idea did not last the night. Already exploring other paths… ;)

• Flong - Interactive Art by Golan Levin and Collaborators
  Great exploratory work.
  (tags: visualization interactive design inspiration interface)
• Pretty Loaded - a preloader museum curated by Big Spaceship
  An incredible gallery of web loaders… who would have thought that a museum would be made out of these?

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Dialogues in Design from Lauren T on Vimeo.

This past summer I spent a few weeks in the Design Dialogues Workshop. I posted a ton about this back in June, but it was not till today that I realized that a video had been made of the experience. I had kinda forgotten that Roger Remington had been video recording most of the time. A bit long for a blog video, but it is a good look into what the experience was all about.

• The Homepage of Greig Anderson
  Incredibly talented designer with some very interesting work.
  (tags: inspiration portfolio)

I am one of those rare graduate students who still makes a bit of time to watch some television. I know… I know… Honestly though, I learn from a good show, story, or plot. Battlestar Galactica, the early Gray’s Anatomy, and the initial seasons of Prison Break, Lost, and 24, are some of the contemporary visual narratives that go beyond the mere entertainment they are meant to provide… and there’s plenty to gain from watching them if you are conscious of this. There are other not so good narratives out there, but it’s harder to admit and share what I see in them in a public manner… ;)

Recently, while watching some of these shows, I noted a change in the commercial advertising landscape: the automotive industry is trying to harness the power of typography and verbal communications to make its pitch to us.

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At the end of the fall semester I made a presentation to publicly share with classmates and professors my thoughts, process, and ideas of what I will make my final project to be.

What follows are the slides of such presentation, and the text after each slide are the notes of what I said on each one. This represents my moving forward on this final project, which I hope to conclude by the end of the semester.
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There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which I will call… the final semester.¹

Last December, in preparation for the work of the next few months, I prepared an end of semester presentation which I used to share thoughts and ideas about my final project. This presentation, in a way a rite of passage for my graduate growth, provided a stage to externalize some of the ideas, thoughts, and possibilities of my immediate present, while simultaneously opening a moment to reflect about my time in graduate school.

In my original application to graduate school, I questioned if propinquity to my father’s practice and friends had influenced me by injecting an architectural way of thinking, one way or another dependant upon formal, stylistic or structural considerations. At the time I was afraid that was a bad thing, thinking there was a particular way that graphic designers had to think. Today, three semesters into the most immersive design experience of my life so far, I highly value this multidisciplinary background from which I come from. Having been surrounded by an intense and competitive group of people committed to culture and the arts, I now marvel at the common thread that binds them all constantly, whether in conversations or debate: a relentless search for an eloquent expression of order within the reaffirmation of each individual’s particular outlook of the world.

Not deluded by any belief of being able to find my own answers on the subject at such an early stage in my career, my sojourn at NC State has granted me the opportunity to meet, challenge, and be challenged by my peers to elucidate better what I must make the future to be. Here at NC State I have enjoyed the company of a few key people that have had something to say about the world around them, and I have embraced an all-encompassing understanding of the culture of design.

I now have the responsibility of reaching closure to this experience at NC State through my work of a final project, which may prove to be an unthreaded path to venture into at a later stage in life.

• Spatial Interface Systems
  Spatial interfaces are being explored
  (tags: interactive interface gestures)
• :: alCarts ::
  WOW… Airline carts for the home. I LOVE IT
  (tags: shopping industrialDesign)
• Forget the film, watch the titles
  I wish I could do stuff like this. The titles for The Teeth of the Night
  (tags: animation)
• Student apartment studios in Paris / OFIS | Arch Daily
  Wow Dorms!
  (tags: architecture housing)

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Great. By Random House Mondadori.

Last semester I worked to understand how an online community can be brought together through an online experience. The final project, a prototype of many versions and iterations, tries to bring together students learning software with their peers and faculty members. I already posted this earlier, but now I am able to show how the interactions were an essential piece of the experience.

A few weeks ago, in one of those paradoxical afternoons where warmth and clarity are mixed with feelings of confusion, Marty Maxwell Lane, in a sudden look-left ask-question sequence, said: “Where do you stand in the form is content debate?“. (What a way to get my attention right?) For about 10 seconds, my agitated cognitive self shuffled through every single project I ever made…anxiety crept in… I almost found myself questioning my existence… (and from Marty’s reaction, I am sure that my perplexed state was being externalized through my facial configurations.)

I finally was able to respond to her query, even though I’ll admit that I am not quite sure what I said. At the time, I verbally articulated an answer while I simultaneously thought about the question. In retrospect now, where do I stand on this debate?

Three landscapes are important to my work: content, concept, and context. One of my design interests lies in articulating the space between the three, in finding overlays and relational patters among them. It’s like being able to identify and work in that moment when one is between being awake and being asleep, when one still remembers dreams. The point is that I am interested in the relation of these, and it is my belief that an adequate understanding of it leads to, and concludes in formal creations. I see form as the subjective outcome of the interplay of these landscapes.

Answering Marty’s question, since I see form as a subjective outcome of the relationship between content, concept and context, form in itself can only be understood as content. It produces and embodies a particular meaning. If some other person where to receive the same specs and assignment that I got for some of my earlier work, I am sure that the end-product would be different, a different piece, a different outcome, and hence, a different content.

• The Offices of Kat Ran Press : Postage Stamps by Type Designers
  Over 300 postage stamps from our collection of stamps designed by typographers. Nineteen celebrated designers are featured on these pages, including Wim Crouwel, S.H. de Roos, Adrian Frutiger, Eric Gill, S.L. Hartz, Lance Hidy, Erik Spiekermann, Reynolds Stone, Georg Trump, Gerard Unger, Julian Waters, and Hermann Zapf.
  (tags: typography)

• The Sprint Widget
  Very amazing interface, informationa and data
  (tags: informationDesign interactive interface statistics)
• House Industries
  Great Typographers
  (tags: typography design inspiration fonts)
• House Industries
  Just amazing environmental typography!
  (tags: typography environmentalGraphics)
• YouTube - Ensuring the Future of Food
  Great animated illustration
  (tags: inspiration informationDesign illustration)

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Una de Cal y otra de Arena, Editorial Revés latest publication and my most recent book design, has been selected as a runner-up selection in STEP Design’s Reader’s Choice Contest.

The five entries that receive the most votes in the Readers’ Choice contest will also be featured in the STEP Design 100 March/April 2009 Annual, so all you will receive an email to go vote on the entry soon…:)

Thanks to Jorge Rigau and José Lorenzo Torres for your support, comments, feedback, ideation, and moral infrastructure throughout the short and intense design process of the book… to Robert Ruehlman and Santiago Piedrafita for your e-mails, feedback, critiques, and comments on the layout, structure and typography of the book as I was making design decisions… to Alfonso Gómez Arzola, who came in during two of the most critical days of the process to help with the production of the piece… to Eduardo Miranda, who helped make the cover a reality…and last, but never least, to Eric Jukelevics, who not only retouched 4 of the images in the book, but who always provides me with photographic support when it comes to the documentation of my projects.

Photo by Caroline Prietz

On October 18 I had the opportunity to make a presentation in the Time+Motion panel at AIGA’s Social Studies Education Conference, held at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

The panel, moderated by Lily Maya, graphic design faculty member at MICA, included:

Transforming Programming into “Fungramming”
by De Angela L. Duff,
Assistant Professor, Multimedia Department, The University of the Arts

The Language of Motion
Jan Kubasiewicz, Professor, Dynamic Media Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston

and my presentation,
Understanding Interaction through People, Settings, and Scenarios

This was my first presentation at an AIGA event, and as such, I wanted to follow all the guidelines that had been set. The most important one, as you can imagine, was a 15 minute time-limit to my presentation. I followed it, but had to write, re-write, ask for feedback, re-write, and write one more time what I was going to say. Even the night before, at 1am, I was still in the lobby of the hotel touching-up on the final details (Thanks to Cady Bean-Smith for her company and support in those wee hours of the morning).

What is the best part of having done all that? Now I can share with you exactly what I said since I have a slide-per-slide script, but before moving into the presentations, I want to thank Rebecca Tegtmeyer, Marty Maxwell Lane, Cady Bean-Smith, Lauren Waugh and Caroline Prietz for all their support, fun times, photos and memories from this conference.

Click on the jump for the presentation.

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(from top left to bottom right: Cady Bean-Smith, Rebecca Tegtmeyer, Lauren Waugh, Alberto Rigau, Marty Maxwell Lane and Caroline Prietz.)

(from top left to bottom right: Cady Bean-Smith, Ryan Clifford, Rebecca Tegtmeyer, Lauren Waugh, Caroline Prietz, Marty Maxwell Lane and Alberto Rigau.)

From October 17th through the 19th a group of us in the Masters Program drove up to Baltimore to attend AIGA’s Social Studies Education Conference, held at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

In the lobby of the event, there was small setup with an iMac running the Photobooh application, so that we could take pictures with our friends to create a visual guest-book of the conference attendees (I so wish we had thought for our symposium last year).

These are some of the photos of us playing around… Read the rest of this entry »

Rebecca and Marty begin with Cady Bean-Smith’s rubber band typography.

Rebecca Tegtmeyer and Marty Maxwell Lane represented the NC State Graphic Design Masters Program at the MFA panel on the last day of the conference. They did incredible.

The presentation, following a format that I do not remember the name, lasted for 10 mins. In that short time, Rebecca and Marty were able to speak about the pedagogical approach of the NC State Curriculum, explain the structure of the program, delve into projects briefings, and they still managed to show 2 fully developed investigations, culminating in the marriage of everything that had been explained before into well executed pieces.
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Ellen Lupton welcomes us to the conference.

From October 17th through the 19th a group of us in the Masters Program drove up to Baltimore to attend AIGA’s Social Studies Education Conference, held at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

It was a great conference on many accounts, but most importantly it gave some of us the opportunity to share with students and academics from other institutions.

Having learned my lesson during the Boston conference (where i did not take my camera), I can now tell a selected visual story of the event. If you are interested for a detailed account, see Louise Sandhaus’ blog where she has some very interesting and detailed notes of many of the sessions, panels, and lectures.
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If you would like a set, send me your address and information. I will send out a complete one to the first 50 email requests at alberto[at]estudiointerlinea[dot]com ***UPDATE: All 50 sets have been assigned. Stay tuned to the blog. I will be giving out more design related buttons soon. Thank you to those who wrote.***

Tired?
All nighter?
Falling asleep?
No need to worry… just…
CHOOSE YOUR CRIT FACE
and let the feedback roll in!

This is the first button set I’ve designed. The idea for it came from an inside-joke with Cady Bean-Smith, Sidney Fritts, Marty Maxwell Lane, Rebecca Tegtmeyer, Lauren Waugh, and Liese Zahabi, graduate classmates of mine at NC State University.

***Update: Thanks to Armin Vit for having Quipped the buttons in Quipsologies, Vol. 23, November 2008.

***Update: Thanks to Jamie Rose for blogging about the buttons.

NC State Design Thinking button set

So the big question after getting the button machine was: what was I going to do as a first button set to share with others? I decided to make a gift to my classmates, and I made a button out of every single one of the Design Thinking Posters that we each made for this semester’s studio class. The set has all 16 concepts represented.

Choose Your Crit Face Special Edition Button.

For a long time I had been fascinated with ping-back buttons, and just like everyone else, every time a new came thru my hands I thought of making one of my own. This cycle, which I thought would end up being just another never-ending thought process, was surprisingly broken a few weeks ago when I acquired a button making machine of my own. Read the rest of this entry »

Swipe… review… sign… pay later [repeat?]
Understanding Martha Augustinos’ and Ian Walker’s approach to schemas and how it can aid a designer frame reflexive behaviors during a consumer experience.

Reflect about the purchases made in the last few days. Did any transactions involve checks, money orders, cash, or even a visit to the bank? Most likely the quantitative answer to this question will be low, if not zero. Physical currency no longer plays a major role in commercial negotiations. Items, information, and services can be acquired, and sometimes are required (try to reserve a vehicle without a credit card), through the use of credit-based-cards in lieu of tangible currency. The benefits of such a system are hard to deny: a credit card is often faster than paying with cash, avoids having to deal with change, offers an ever-present source of funds in case of an emergency, minimizes economically-based social judgments, and serves as an element that grants certain social power.

American critic Frederic Jameson, in Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, wrote: “Any return to the haptic and tactile… seem to hearken back to… the “late modern,” when building materials were expensive and of the finest quality and people still wore suits and ties. It is like the transition from precious metals to the credit card: the “bad new things” are no less expensive, and you no less consume their very value, it is the value of the… equipment you consume first and foremost, and not of its objects.” (Jameson, p.99) The credit card is not only a means to consumption, but it now represents consumption itself, and as such, it has developed its own set of appeals. The credit card is now a must and there is no turning back.
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These are some images of the installation that was part of our first semester studio project where the class attempted to define design thinking in terms of a series of thinking strategies and cognitive frameworks. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently there has been much talk of corporate cultures —and other disciplines— engaging in the practice of “design thinking“. Such announcements are usually paralleled with ideas of creativity, innovation, and user-centeredness; associations that sound cool and hip but many times result in superficial, inaccurate, and vague information. Wether we like it or not, the buzzword of design thinking is everywhere.

On a recent article in the New York Times, Unboxed: Design Is More Than Packaging, the author, Janet Rae-Dupree, makes an effort to unbox “design” by concentrating on this thing designers do called design thinking. She says: “…design thinking usually involves a period of field research —usually close observation of people— to generate inspiration and a better understanding of what is needed, followed by open, nonjudgmental generation of ideas. After a brief analysis, a number of the more promising ideas are combined and expanded to go into “rapid prototyping,” which can vary from a simple drawing or text description to a three-dimensional mock-up. Feedback on the prototypes helps hone the ideas so that a select few can be used. The results can be startling.”

On another article in the Fast Company website, Design Thinking… What is that?, its author, Mark Dziersk, defines design thinking as consisting of four steps: defining the problem, creating many options, refining selected directions, and picking a winner for execution. He says: “At this point enough road has been traveled to insure success. It’s the time to commit resources to achieve the early objectives. The byproduct of the process is often other unique ideas and strategies that are tangential to the initial objective as defined. Prototypes of solutions are created in earnest, and testing becomes more critical and intense. At the end of stage 4 the problem is solved or the opportunity is fully uncovered.” He concludes the article with: “Design thinking describes a repeatable process employing unique and creative techniques which yield guaranteed results — usually results that exceed initial expectations. Extraordinary results that leapfrog the expected. This is why it is such an attractive, dynamic and important methodology for businesses to embrace today.”

While these two examples, noble in their intentions and approach, describe a bit of what design thinking can be in terms of a traditional object-oriented approach where processes conclude in tangible objects, they do not elaborate on how design thinking operates in this contemporary landscape of information and ever-changing job descriptions. Read the rest of this entry »

• Design for Emotion and Flow
  (tags: interactive)
• Movie Posters with brand integration
  Some very nice posters
  (tags: no_tag)
• GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface gallery
  A gallery resource of different User Interfaces
  (tags: UI interface interactive inspiration)
• Le Corbusier - Villa Savoye: A LEGO® creation
  I so wish I had the instructions for this.
  (tags: lego architecture)

• Wallstats Store
  The budget of the USA in a poster
  (tags: informationDesign)
• HP Halo telepresence and video conferencing solutions
  Teleconferencing system from HP
  (tags: interactive conference)
• Pomegranate | NS08
  Intresting future-cast at the possibilities of mobile devices.
  (tags: interactive interface cellphone)
• YouTube - Representation
  Stuart Hall on Representation
  (tags: representation)
• Screensavers - Best Of | Graphics | Smashing Magazine
  Some incredible screensavers.
  (tags: interface interactive screensavers)
• Seed and Sprout .:. Amber Howard
  The Personal Website of AmberHoward
  (tags: design interactive inspiration)

It’s that time of year again… it’s back to school time! The adventures of my graduate class continue as we enter our second year of the master’s program. Exciting times are these…

Last year already came and went. The first semester was intense. The second was considerably busy. The third? I can’t wait to find out! I am not at all worried though, for Meredith Davis and Santiago Piedrafita are leading the way…

This semester is special though. Not that the previous ones were not, but this semester I begin to articulate my research interests towards the development of a final project. This experience will force me to concentrate my interests into a series of researchable questions which I will later investigate and work on. About time I got started on this…

Screenshot of the conference website.

This semester’s AIGA education conference, Social Studies Conference: Educating Designers in a Connected World , will be held at the MICA campus from Friday, October 17 through Sunday, October 19 of 2008.

A few days ago I was notified that my original abstract was accepted into the conference. This is my final revised abstract.

Understanding Interaction through People, Settings, and Scenarios

At NC State, the Professional Bachelors of Graphic Design prepares students to understand design from a systems perspective. Among courses that address the issue, three are dedicated to imaging. Last Spring, when co-teaching a three-credit sophomore class —Imaging II: Settings and People (Leading to Activity Scenarios)— with Santiago Piedrafita (faculty member), students were introduced to interaction and time-based media through three key ideas: settings, people and scenarios. Each was addressed through a particular investigation: a “site survey (settings);” a “subject study (people);” and an “activity map (scenarios).”

For the site survey investigation, students were asked to build annotated panoramas through layering techniques, documenting and commenting on a particular location of their daily commute. To visualize the importance of people within a system, students collected ethnographic data of other school members, which they then reinterpreted into one-minute biographical video clips and oversized broadsheets. The semester concluded with an understanding of scenarios, exploring how myriad interfaces found on various mobile platforms shape and affect interactions (scenarios) between users (people) and their environment (setting). This investigation was carried out through hand-made rapid-paper-prototypes, later modeled into stop-animation video clips.

Throughout the semester, concepts were introduced through observation and interpretative methods like annotated tableaus, visual essays, authored journals, video interviews, collaborative ideation techniques, activity maps, paper-prototyping, and stop-animation photography. These “image-making” strategies helped students visualize and actualize key aspects (and phases) of diverse design problems (project-definition-driven, project-building, project-making), understanding issues they will come to terms with when undergoing interactive and time-based media work.