This past week I received my copy of Gary Hustwit’s film Objectified. You can imagine my excitement to have the opportunity to finally press play, but seventy-five minutes later I found myself asking: “–That was it?” Just as with Helvetica, I enjoyed the film, I truly did, but I found it too closed niched, too much in the preference of a certain kind of designer and object.
Where were the Campana brothers? Did the One-Laptop Per Child deny an interview? Was Phillip Stark not available? Javier Mariscal? How come no electric cars made it to the edit? How about Massimo and Lella Vignelli? And those unsung heroes who today produce some of the most amazing work on the sustainability front? How about Catalan designer Juli Capella who constantly writes about Spanish objects, their design and influence in culture? How come Scandinavia’s and India’s work did not make it? And why were there no architects? (they happen to design a large percentage of the objects that surround us) I bet you can also instantly think of a few more examples.
This project being a film, I understand its need for editing and focus. Not everything can make it. I understand that, but… Would it have been too hard to minimize the fourth showing of one person and introduce the perspective of an up-and-coming designer? And how come Latin American design has not been referenced? (I am so shocked about the non-showing of the Brazilian Campana brothers).
As you can tell, I am a bit disappointed, but don’t let that discourage you from watching it. The film offers a rare look into the process and thinking of some of those whose work has changed the contemporary way of living. It is a good reference. It just left me with too many questions that probably only a design nerd like me will ever make…
Commemorative piece given to the 2009 recipients of Puerto Rico's Architecture Awards. Design and concept by Alberto Rigau. Fabrication by Roberto Pérez.
This past Thursday, Puerto Rico’s professional college of architects and landscape architects awarded the 2009 medals in architecture. These awards, named after Ricardo Alegría, are given to individuals and/or entities who are not directly related to the discipline of architecture but who have contributed to the field in a way that can be evidenced in a substantial body of work.
Previously, this prestigious recognition had been given four times, and to my knowledge, recipients were given only a certificate. This year I volunteered and gifted the College with a design of commemorative piece to be handed out in the naming ceremony. Read the rest of this entry »
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? Read the rest of this entry »
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?
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.
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.
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! Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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.
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.
1 Text adapted from the original narration of the opening credits in Season 1 of The Twilight Zone television series.
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 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.
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.
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 »
The book, designed by the amazing Rodrigo Corral, was published by Rotovision and distributed in the U.S. by HOW Books. It contains 35 case studies by designers, featuring a look at how they work and come up with ideas…
…AND SOME COMMENTS OF MINE HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED AS PART OF THE PUBLICATION!
The book is described by the author as both visual and verbal journies of projects from concept to creation. It also includes basic primers to the principles of Graphic Design, written by experts in each discipline. Some of the other designers included are Stephen Doyle, Marian Bantjes, Fabian Monheim, Peter Buchanan-Smith, Vault 49, Yves Behar, Hillman Curtis, Jacob Trollback and many, many more…
I have not seen it yet, but I just hope that I have not embarrassed myself next to all of the other great designers showcased in the publication.
Detrás del Silencio, Gilda Navarra’s retrospective, has been chosen to be part of Gateways, an international exhibition of contemporary book design that will take place in Porto, Portugal. It will open on July 30th.
As part of my academic charge this semester, I underwent an independent study with Santiago Piedrafita. In it, we explored various possibilities on how to develop, build and maintain a common curricular system between the different faculty members and the students of the department. What follows is just one of the many presentations since the final work is still underway.
Betwixt being and non-being An ontologically altered perception through the personal blog platform
In developing an individual identity and its consequential representations, a human being, as a cultural, social, and psychological entity, interprets, uses, and garners information from its surrounding environments. In the process, contexts are synthesized and associations are established. The management of these intuitive processes leads to the creation of personal thoughts, views and perspectives which are later shared through various forms of exchange.
The emergence of social networking sites, instant messaging platforms, discussion forums, email, collaborative online games, digital worlds, and particularly blogs, have transmuted the nature of these exchanges. Introspection has now become projection. Private realities have now expanded into contemporary shared conditions of public life. These outlets of personality provide versatile ways of sharing internal, and beforehand private anecdotal information with others.
The introduction of online blogging platforms during the late 1990’s made it easier than ever to share, communicate and contrast one’s individuality with the ideas of others in similar techno-social realities. As of March 2008, Technorati1 calculated an estimated 112.8 million online blogs worldwide, a datum that needs to be pruned carefully since online does not equal active. There maybe that many blogs, but that does not mean there are exactly that same amount of active content generators behind them. There is no precise quantitative data on how many abandoned blogs exist, yet the available data does suggest a parallel growth between that of new blogs being published and those being simultaneously abandoned. Due to the free-of-charge nature of the majority of blog hosting domains, most of the blogs, even after being abandoned, remain online indefinitely.
I will try to make that case that through this ever-lasting online presence, contemporary communication platforms, such as the blog, can extend our sense of being, even after we become non-being. Read the rest of this entry »
The current undergraduate graphic design curriculum at the College of Design, like others in the country, introduces its students to the field through a fundamental year of art, form, rules, exploration, and little or basic software use. As the pedagogical experience progresses into sophomore year, students move, within the timeframe of 2 months, from custom methodological ways of working within a handmade environment into an automatized, software dependent sterile digital scenario.
Design concepts are still explored through the making of artifacts, yet this very process now relies on the manipulation of software tools for their very execution. Previous experience on creative software platforms shapes many of the student’s individual experiences, some having an easier time than others. No matter the case, the commonality between all levels of expertise becomes them having to learn it.
Learning software moves to the forefront of the student’s interests. Pressure is exerted on the professors to teach the various platforms required for successful execution. Teaching strategies, ranging from in-class demos, to online tutorials, and even reference books, become a hindrance to the students, while one-to-one gesture based exchanges between them seem to provide a more stable source of growth and understanding. How can online digital tools help with this learning process? Could such tools offer a possible platform for pedagogical reinterpretation? Would a grassroots approach to software instruction lead to a flourishing of its understanding?
The last few months I’ve working around these issues. All of my projects have concentrated around the struggles of sophomore graphic design students at the College of Design as they experience the initial steps of learning software. Community, values, needs and outcomes have been studied, tested… and hopefully address. As final review gets near, now its time to polish the projects into presentable shape. More to come…
Two daily planner page designs, one for a fourth grader and the other for a college freshman.
Last semester was all about the graphic designer’s role in culture. I can’t speak for the whole class, but it would be safe to say that sometimes it would concur, even if for a moment —you can imagine how hard is to get 12 people to agree on an idea—, that owning up to the title of graphic designer not only relates to the things one can make, but also to the understanding and acceptance of one’s role as a gatekeeper of culture. You may or may not agree with this, (maybe it’s a bit too much for you to fathom… A designer is more than just pretty things?), but the following text knows that a (good) graphic designer is not dictated by what it makes, but by a combination of the artifacts with what he or she thinks. Since such is the case, shouldn’t it, then, be part of our social responsibility to design according to how we should, and not according to how we know? Read the rest of this entry »
Armando Rigau currently pursues a Master in Architecture I at Cornell University. He received his bachelor's degree in Philosophy with History and Spanish minors from Georgetown University.
