Last friday and saturday I attended NC State’s Biennial Graphic Design Graduate Symposium: Design, Community & the Rhetoric of Authenticity. From the get go, know that it was a top notch event, executed with the care and precision of a full-blown international conference. Read the rest of this entry »
Cover | Indice Anotado, 13 years of Mid-Career research investigations from architecture students of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.
Jorge Rigau, FAIA, founding dean of the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico; Miguel Rodríguez, current dean; and funds from the Historic Preservation Office of Puerto Rico have made it possible to publish the Índice Anotado (Anotated Index). This publication documents the Mid-Career research investigations completed by students at the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.
These texts were completed between 1996 and 2009 and executed by students at the end of the 3rd year of study. Their topical range is extensive, and most are complemented by photographs, drawings and inventories that will be useful to others following similar lines of research. While the collection is mainly about Puerto Rico, some projects look at Cuba, Dominican Republic and Panamá.
The index is organized by themes, and while some overlap, researchers will have to asses the focus areas of each of their topics to find relevant investigations. The documents are written in Spanish, but the the index provides a blurb about each of them in English to expand the ideas to a larger audience.
Copies of the full writings will be available for public consult at the library of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico and at the library of the Historic Preservation Office. The Índice Anotado has been designed by Alberto Rigau and published by Editorial Revés.
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.
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.
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.
My father and I many times mused about graphic design and architecture. We conversed about the disciplines’ similitudes and differences. We evaluated how each of us could use our fields to impact the other.
Architecture can aid my understanding of balance (specially when it comes to grid work and the alignment of elements), it can fuel my understanding of the different ways my work will affect others, and it can be a catalyst for three dimensional explorations of a basically two dimensional area of study. Graphic design can influence him by improving his communications, by opening a space to create strategical standpoint for the conceptual exploration of aesthetic representations, and in providing a typographical groundwork on which to develop a new layer of expressive meaning. Read the rest of this entry »
The third in a series of articles published in Mangrove magazine in 2004. These are not deep in academic research, but a fun read.
Photo chop
Fast-food restaurants promote indigestion in more than one way. Customarily, visual references used to advertise the menu –that is, photographs– are more than often fake. Most of the products showcased as value meals were never photographed as a group, but instead “stitched” from different sources. Not only clients save in buying a soda, sandwich and fries. Owners also play cheap by resorting to digital compositions that ultimately deceive the public. To add to the debate about the nutritional attributes of fast food, we can certify it can also endanger visual health. Read the rest of this entry »
The second in a series of articles published in Mangrove magazine in 2004. These are not deep in academic research, but a fun read.
Missing pictures
Movie subtitles, intended to facilitate the enjoyment of foreign films, often hinder more than help the purported aesthetic experience. Who decides on the type, placement, and contents of these words on the big screen? Most people have no idea, and those who do it don’t seem to either. Read the rest of this entry »
The first in a series of articles published in Mangrove magazine in 2004. These are not deep in academic research, but a fun read.
Landscape Muggers
What USA publicists call a junior page advertisement is known in Puerto Rico, more informally, as a “robapágina”, or page mugger. Reference to the “illegality” of a fake full page has less to do with the crime problems currently affecting the island than with the aggressiveness that permeates most advertising endeavors all over the world.
Armando Rigau holds a degree in Philosophy from Georgetown University. Currently he studies at the M.Arch. 1 program at the School of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University. Alberto Rigau recently completed his graduate studies in Design at the College of Design in NC State University. Currently he runs a multidisciplinary design studio in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
On Thursday October 8 2009 3M Company of Puerto Rico held a fashion show to promote some of their Post-it products. For the event, estudio interlínea was commissioned to design and execute the event’s visual language… of course, all of it made out of Post-its. —— To make the video more interesting, I used the […]
Alberto Rigau designed the commemorative object that was given to the recipients of the 2009 medals in architecture. Puerto Rico’s professional college of architects and landscape architects honors 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 [. […]
Alberto Rigau was recognized by Marvin J Malecha, FAIA and Denise Gonzales Crisp for his contributions to the NC State University College of Design community. He was recognized for his roles as a T.A., a teacher at the College’s Design Camp for aspiring design students, as a designer for the Student Publication and for the […]
