Frequencies: Paper Sculpture

[Frequencies is a semi-regular post series focusing on the random design/pop/pointless/happening trends I pick up on from time to time. This particular episode may have suffered slightly at the hands of my busy schedule...yet I think it's still fresh enough to be worth posting.]

There seems to be something inherently playful about paper sculpture. Maybe it's the ephemeral nature of the medium, or the lightness and lack of weight to a blank page. There's something about this unmarked, wide open medium that allows certain artists to expand beyond the page's edge, creating altogether new forms.

Peter Callesen

First up, we have Peter Callesen, whose meticulous cutting from single sheets results in often bittersweet visual puns:

Olivier Gondry

You may have seen this playful yet lovely commercial already. Olivier Gondry recreates the Beringer vineyards in paper:

Jen Stark

Finally, there's Jen Stark, who takes paper sculpture in a completely different direction. Breaking away from the all-white page, Jen uses color and abstract geometrics to transform her medium into something with rigid and almost weighty form:

Roll Your Own

If you're digging these, you can always try your hand at making your own paper sculptures. As a writer and graphic designer, I love the idea of using the paper itself to tell a story, rather than relying on marks on the page.

Curituba: Making DIfferent Urban Design Decisions

One of my favorite shows, Frontline, has an exceptional story on one of my favorite examples of sustainable urban planning, Curitiba, Brazil:

"Far from an idyllic utopia, Curitiba faces the same problems that metropolises around the world do, including overcrowding, poverty, pollution and limited public funding. What's different about Curitiba is that its planners have come up with some creative and inexpensive ways to go about solving universal problems for cities. They've invested in an extensive bus system that operates for less than a tenth of what a subway costs to operate; developed recycling programs that clean up the environment and also address poverty; attracted new industry while expanding green spaces; and used preserved historical areas to revitalize neighborhoods and grow tourism. Curitiba has a radical approach to city planning, unique not only within Brazil but also globally. I traveled to Curitiba to discover what other cities might learn from this model and to see whether this experiment in urban design will last." [Read the full story]

Perhaps the Most Important Info Graphic Ever

How to nap:

(via SFist)

The Girl Effect

Insights From the HOW Design Conference

After an extended trip back to my hometown (Boston, that is) for the HOW Design Conference, I'm feeling super focused. I've spent the last six months or so mulling over Roughstock and my own goals, and the conference put a lot into perspective for me. Instead of a lengthy review or analysis, I'll just note some of the key takeaways I was left with that I think apply to all organizations...

Challenge yourself to think atypically.
We're all conditioned to take the path of least resistance, but if we give ourselves the chance to step off this path, the results can be incredible. There was no better evidence of this than speaker Bill Strickland's discussion of his journey transforming a failing inner city school into an educational powerhouse for arts and leadership. If you want to lead the competition rather than play catch-up, you need to step outside your comfort zone, challenge your own assumptions, and take a few calculated risks.

Work smarter not harder.
This is one of those nuggets of common sense that seems to always fall by the wayside. It goes right along with measure twice, cut once. Whatever you're doing - whether it's designing a direct mail piece, completely rebranding your company, or giving a speech - think about each small step along the way. By making active decisions with a larger goal in mind, the fruits of your labor will yield bigger and better results.

Play.
As the child of workaholics, it's very hard for me to separate work from personal life. But with careful practice, I keep discovering that the more I invest in my personal world, the better my work becomes. After all, the human mind is not a machine. It's an organic, responsive mess o' brains that needs exercise and excitement. Trips to Fenway Park, Charlie's Kitchen, the Museum of Modern Art et al. provided me with color palettes, patterns, lighting techniques, compositions and insights that I never would have gotten with my eyeballs pinned to a computer screen.

Remember why you do what you do.
Chances are, you've gotten so caught up in the logistics of your work that you've forgotten what drew you to it in the first place. Revisit that attraction, and ask yourself if you're doing exactly what you want to do. You don't have to drop everything and hit the high seas on a sailing ship, either; try asking yourself how you can adjust your businesses practices to better reflect your own values. As I practice this myself, Roughstock's future becomes a motivating goalpost rather than a logistical nightmare, and opportunities are already poking me affectionately in the ribs.

I love that just a few days of mental and visual stimulation can make such a difference in both my personal and work lives. Sharing stories with colleagues, meeting new people who I've only ever heard of before, and absorbing the experiences and values of others has been powerful. I can't wait to see it all seep into my work over the months ahead.

How to Create a DIY Art Gallery

The Budget Gallery is a "temporary art show in co-opted public spaces" that are curated, promoted and executed with the intention of making fine art accessible to the general public. Stay Free/Anti-Advertising Agency man Steve Lambert has now created a wiki for staging your own DIY Budget Gallery.

Now hop to it!

Carrotmob: Harnessing Consumer Power so Everybody Wins

What happens when hundreds of people agree to give a single business their business in exchange for an environmental commitment? Watch and find out:

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

This really is the perfect example of how the strength of individuals can benefit business and the environment. It bridges the typically hostile gap between activists and Big Corpo. It appeals to the everyday shopper. It has the potential to make real change. And they've even got a business plan (okay, not yet). If you're an angel investor looking for the next perfect project, this might be it.

Engaging Environment: The NYC Air Bear

I've mentioned Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo, or Seasons in the City, before and I'm reminded of it once again. The book is about a man who manages to see the bits and pieces of our environment that the rest of us overlook. I love what the Air Bear does: it captures what we can't see, using it to engage and entertain.



The work is part of a series by artist Joshua Allen Harris (if anyone can point me to his website, which I couldn't manage to dig up, please do).

Six Word Memoirs Summarize It All

My sis sent me a link yesterday to Six Word Memoirs, a new book from Smith Magazine. It's exactly what you'd think: a collection of memoirs only six words long. Have you ever attempted to summarize your life in six words only? It ain't easy.

Go ahead, try it.

Like many of the examples on an NPR feature about the book, my initial attempts tended toward the philosophical:

The world confuses me – always will.
Wonder when I’ll figure it out?
Fear is powerful—love more so.

These kinds of creative exercises are important to any writer, because they make you focus on word choice, on intention, on voice. They force you to decide what exactly you're trying to accomplish - am I summing up my entire life, or just my views on life? Should I take a single moment and spend six words describing it and what it meant to me in the grand scheme of my more-than-six-word life? This was the list I ended up with:

The memories are mixed – mostly good.
Angry early on; I’m calmer now.
Over time, life became about love.
Never thought I’d be a writer!
My family is nuts – me, too.
Boston born...California bound...home soon?
I don’t see my nephew enough.

I found that with just six words to spare, there's room to convey only a single emotion, or expose only a single moment or sentiment. You have to choose between silly or solemn. I suppose that's fitting, like life.

How does your six word memoir read?

Drunk Driving Campaign

Nice environmental installation from Jupiter Drawing Room for Arrive Alive South Africa. These appeared in nightclub restroom stalls:



[Via Osocio]

The Utterly Brilliant Limerick Database

Yes, I am a dork. But I have a deep love of limericks for no good reason, other than that I am a dork. Thanks to Coudal, I now have a huge (though sometimes hit-or-miss) repository to distract myself with.

From the Limerick Database:

Famous books rewritten as limericks: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
In PJs, no planet, oh poo!
What is the last earthman to do?
In despair with no tea,
he's now forced to flee
as his brain now explains 42
---

, ` & #
$ @ | + . -
8 7 6 5 4
" * _
? ; ! AS;DOFB2

(Comma tick ampersand hash,
Dollar at pipe plus dot dash.
Eight sev'n six five four,
Quote star underscore,
Question mark semi-colon bang MASH.)
---

A woman in liquor production
Owns a still of exquisite construction.
The alcohol boils
Through magnetic coils.
She says that it's "proof by induction."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No comments from the peanut gallery!

Flags of the World: What They Really Stand For

Here's a striking ad campaign for Grande Reportagem making the rounds. It features lush yet no-nonsense representations of various country flags, with a small map legend inset in each. Reading the copy reveals a much larger truth than the viewer was likely prepared for. It's everything I love in (information) design: subtle, commanding, and quietly thought-provoking.



The campaign comes from Draft FCB Lisbon.

Why Do People Do Weird Things?

I've never been a fan of performance art, but this one takes the cake. Several hundred people freezing throughout Grand Central Station in NYC for five minutes. That's it.



From the website:

"We got great reactions from the folks who encountered us. Strangers started talking to each other, trying to figure out what was going on. With wireless microphones hidden in our shirts, a few agents and I struck up conversations with folks. I convinced one guy to grab a cell phone from a frozen woman’s hand. He did it, laughing uncontrollably as he gently put it back in her hand. My favorite reaction was from a female cop who witnessed the whole thing from behind her NYPD recruitment booth:

Me: Do you know what that was?
Cop: I have no idea! That is the craziest shit I’ve ever seen in my life, AND I’M A COP!
Me: Ha. Yeah, it was weird.
Cop: You wanna sign up to be in the NYPD?
Me: No thanks."

So why would you do this? Practically speaking, it accomplishes nothing. But isn't the idea of making people stop in their tracks, wonder about their surroundings, and really think about what they are seeing and experiencing worth something in and of itself?

[via SwissMiss via Gawker]

Ambigramtastic

My pop gave The Captain a great book this Christmas—Wordplay: The Philosophy, Art and Science of Ambigrams by John Langdon. It offers an inside-out look at how an ambigram—a type-based graphic that reads the same both upright and upside-down—is born. It's a great reminder that the process of seeing and creating altogether new solutions to what might seem to be stale or already-solved problems are really remarkable skill sets. And some of them are just plain cool!



For more ambigram goodness, check out this ambigram photo set on Flickr and read Typographic Doppelgängers, an article by Langdon on the subject of creating these masterpieces.

Social Justice is a Numbers Game

If it weren't for teachers, this country would be seriously screwed.

"Radical Math Teachers are educators who work to integrate issues of economic and social justice into our math classes, and we seek to inspire and support other educators to do the same.

We believe that math literacy is a civil right, and that our nation's failure to provide students, especially low-income youth of color, with a high-quality math education, is a terrible injustice...

We encourage our students to ask the question: 'What are the problems that my community is facing, and how can I use math to understand and help solve them?'"

[via Social Design Notes]

Sorted Books Project by Nina Katchadourian

This is so up my alley. Artist Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books project groups titles to create a flash of meaning between texts. Each arrangement is intended to reflect the library from which the books were pulled.



I'm tempted to see what my own bookshelves say about me...

[via Swiss Miss]

"Making Good Use of Bad Rubbish"

Here's a great little example of creative thinking:



[via via com it]

iPod Ransom Note Proves There Are Chinks in the Armor

Think Apple controls the world? You might have reason to believe so, given the ubiquity of the iPod and those little white earbuds. But you'd be wrong.

A little girl who recently received an iPod purchased at a local Wal*Mart got a ransom note, instead:

"Reclaim your mind from the media's shackles. Read a book and resurrect yourself. To claim your capitalistic garbage, go to your nearest Apple store."

This little act of rebellion seems to be taking shopdropping (a.k.a. droplifting) to a new level. Whereas shopdropping involves sneaking customized "merchandise" (usually, some form of art) onto store shelves to make a statement about consumerism and value, this incident actually replaces an item outright (otherwise known as theft).

So, just what is the value of awakening one's loving-kindness (along with the ransom note was Pema Chodron's Awakening Loving-Kindness, a Buddhist self-help book)? Is it worth exchanging for an iPod? Is there a lesson to be learned here other than "it's bad to make someone buy a philosophical text when they thought they were buying electronics"?

Of course there is: the supply chain cannot be trusted. Someone, somewhere, switched out the iPod with a diatribe against capitalism; so what did they do with the iPod?

[news story via Boing Boing]

Thinking About Buying a Website Template? Think Again.

Zen goddess Dani Nordin has a great post about the pitfalls of off-the-shelf templates over on her blog, including this gem that most folks overlook:

"It takes time away from activities that you're already good at, and takes you away from growing your business. When you went into business for yourself, was it because you wanted to learn HTML, SEO or logo design? Unless your business is graphic or web design, the answer is most likely no. Forcing yourself into a situation where you are doing all of the marketing, logo design, etc. for your business not only takes your valuable time away from your business, it forces you to do a lot more work with a lot less results than if you had found the right designer to partner with on your materials."

DIY seems to have a stranglehold on popular culture right now. But when you get down to the real nitty-gritty, business success relies on knowing when to get your hands dirty and when to invest in professional expertise. We're all on a budget, but if you're not willing to invest in your own business, how can you possibly expect your customers to?

Map: New Brainland

After studying neuropsychology for a couple of years back during my first attempt at a degree, I sometimes felt lost in this land:



Pretty cool topographical images, created directly from actual brain models.

How to wrap five eggs (or Christmas presents)

When I was first introduced to How to Wrap Five Eggs, an incredible picture book of Japanese packaging, almost two decades ago I couldn't afford a copy of the out-of-print book. Instead, I got my hands on How to Wrap Five More Eggs (now also out of print and not affordable).

I've just pulled the book off my shelf after being reminded of it by the furoshiki instructions posted the other day.

You should see some the stuff in here, it's beautiful:







The idea of packaging something in a reusable container is a brilliant one. It's at once luxurious and—provided the package is produced thoughtfully—sustainable. I can think of several products in the contemporary marketplace that do this...I'll have to pull together some images and do a post dedicated to them.

Wine Packaging: Increasing sales by increasing creativity

From Portfolio:

"To make their products stand out, many winemakers are taking clever, daring, and sometimes even radical approaches to labeling. They’re putting as much attention into what’s on the bottle as what’s in it, turning to labels that shout 'Buy me!' or, in some cases, 'Touch me!...'

...Though winemakers must take on the expense—and time—involved in designing such labels, they often cost only slightly more than conventional stickers. (One winemaker said they’re cheaper than the better-quality labels he uses on his more expensive wines.) Even the Mollydooker Velvet Glove Shiraz label costs just $1.43, close to the $1.20 price of the cork. Many winemakers, though, are simply using playful labels that don’t add any extra expense."

[via Megan at HOW Blog]

Furoshiki: Wrapping packages with a single piece of cloth

Pretty cool bit from Japan's Ministry of Environment:

Frequencies: Hand-held portfolio presentations

[Frequencies is a new semi-regular post series focusing on the random design/pop/pointless/happening trends I pick up on from time to time.]

Designers like to be clever and when I first saw this method of presenting one's portfolio, I thought oh, how clever! But I wasn't the only one, and now all those designers who know clever but can't or aren't inclined to come up with clever on their own seem to feel this is the most appropriate way to present one's portfolio pieces.

The hand-holding does bring human and dimensional elements to the image, pulling the viewer into the frame little bit, perhaps.




It also (sometimes) contextualizes the portfolio piece itself. This is particularly true for business cards, which get passed from hand to hand in real life.





It also creates, scale, of course. Posters look, well, big and postery.




It certainly isn't the most annoying design trend out there, but it's ubiquitousness is starting to wear thin. And I'm not the only one who thinks so:




I suppose, like all design trends, the technique has its place. I still like it.

Calendars and usability

Elzr.com issued a challenge: submit any design for a full-year calendar that fits a standard business card. That's 2" x 3.5" of timely joy, ladies and gentlemen, and no easy task. There were some elegant solutions"



And some other solutions that may have solved the specific problem, but failed to look at context and usability:





It's all well and good to innovate, but if you're working with something as universally familiar as a calendar, the user still needs to be able to look at it and know how to use it. (That's why, for example, Target's redesign of the prescription pill bottle was so elegant; it made a universally recognizable object even easier to understand.)



[view all calendar submissions at elzr.com]

The Project

When was the last time you worked on a project that felt like this?



Sure, it's an awfully cynical look at what should be a well-oiled process. But the above results are entirely avoidable by dropping the egos, working within acknowledged limitations, remaining open and flexible, and skipping ahead to the last panel.

Create your own at TheProjectCartoon.com! [via Freelance Switch]

How does your language define your future?

The Aymara language reverses past and future by referring to forward-occurring events using language denoting the past. Huh? Simply put, Aymara speakers do not subscribe to the same past-present-future tenses that almost the entire rest of the world does.

Just imagine what it would be like if your future depended on your past, and the only way you could communicate "will" or "want to" was to speak as though you already "had" or "did."



When we communicate with one another—be it in words, pictures, or hand gestures for that matter—we make some basic assumptions. We assume the other person is parsing our message the same way we would. We assume that the other person believes in a chronological past-present-future, connects the dots the same way we do, implicitly understands what the hell we are talking about.

But this isn't always the case and our assumptions often cause our messages to fall not on deaf ears, but simply different ears. Or eyes—let's take another example: about 10 million people in the U.S. have difficulty distinguishing red from green (a simple form of color blindness). What does that mean if you are a mapmaker and you color two neighboring countries red and green, respectively? Or if an architect uses these two colors to signify where load-bearing columns should go? These are unlikely examples, of course, but they demonstrate how imperative it is to consider our assumptions about the viewer.

While most of us don't encounter many folks like the Aymara, we still must carefully consider our messages and how we deliver them to others. Whether we're exchanging pleasantries with the coffee shop clerk in the morning, talking our way out of a speeding ticket on the freeway, or teaching surgeons how to handle a scalpel, the words and images we use to convey meaning may have a much different effect than we anticipate.

So don't let assumptions about your audience ruin your chances of communicating your message. Think about how they process information, what they value, how they speak and read and write. Just think about them and then worry about how to say what you want to say.

Fulminate: Behavior-Influencing Design

Just found a great blog called Fulminate, which focuses on design intended to change user behavior. This is such a cool world to explore, and is relevant on so many levels, across so many industries.

As a company, how we deliver our message to customers, or the world at large, matters. If we want to increase sales, for example, the message delivery mechanism (a print ad, a website, an e-newsletter) must be designed to influence behavior.

If we want to educate people, we need to design a message delivery system that engages the recipient, and encourages information retention. I'm struggling with this particular challenge right now, as I try to balance how much information to include in a training program for a client. I need to provide enough information to make it useful (providing context, applying the information to the reader's own personal life, etc.), but I don't want to provide so much information that it overwhelms their ability to hold it all in their head at once.

Fulminate explores the various methods designers might use to influence us and make us do (or not do) particular things. Wicked cool.

Sustainability vs. Luxury: Are They Really At Odds?

Whatever you personal feelings about Al Gore, he must be doing something right (you don’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, after all, for failing miserably). Thanks in no small part to Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, the American public’s awareness of environmental concerns has grown considerably in recent years. This increased awareness brings with it a fascinating process of learning, questioning, justifying, arguing and, sometimes, changing. Since our industrial revolution, America has been a society of consumers, embracing values of luxury and carefree (careless?) spending. With the advent of the climate crisis, this consumerism is being challenged. But is luxury truly anathema to sustainability? Must we really choose between consumption and abstinence?

Ask the average citizen what it takes to be sustainable, or green, and you’ll likely hear something along the lines of, “Give up the fun stuff.” This model is perpetuated by the environmental movement itself, whose primary motto is “reduce, reuse, recycle,” implying we must reduce our indulgences before anything can be done to save us. Charlotte McGuinn Freeman, of the Living Small blog recently summed up this pervasive attitude rather bluntly in a recent entry for The Ethicurian: “I hate to be the one to point it out, but luxury and sustainability are contradictory values.” Clearly, this belief runs deep, regardless of which side of the fence you shop on.

Is it true, though?

Is it possible to live in extravagance without damaging the environment? Is it possible to thoughtlessly consume without essentially shitting your waste all over the place? Right now, the answer is no. Thanks to an unchecked economic system that has never once factored environmental resources into the cost of doing business, we now have a world of goods made from toxins, that produce toxins, and end up as toxins in landfill.

Just imagine if companies— the building blocks of our current economy—assigned a real dollar value to the cost of natural resources. I’m not even talking about the expense of strip mining, for example, with all its OSHA regulations and heavy machinery. I’m talking about costs like the lost productivity of worker-drones who don’t have access to sunlight and fresh air, or the long-term cost of depleting oil reserves without a sufficient energy source to replace them. These are real costs to businesses of all sizes, but when was the last time you took a hard look at the “waste disposal” line item on your P&L?

The truth is that the products we make and sell and buy are damaging us even as they make our lives easier in the short term. Pesticides that help us produce more food faster actually leach into water sources, for example, then leach into the fish swimming in those water sources, then leach into those of us who eat that fish. Or, on a simpler level, take your latest purchase at OfficeMax: how much of what you just paid for is actually for plastic packaging that you sent to a landfill as soon as it passed through your business’ doors?

It’s not doomsday yet, though.

As I write this, R&D departments throughout the world are racing to find new, better alternatives. At one time, recycled paper was a crappy alternative to virgin pulp paper but thanks to technological development, we now have gorgeous, affordable recycled paper options at our disposal. The Prius is another, if imperfect, example. A process once hidden from the public’s gaze is now snowballing into the limelight. Companies are recognizing that the up-front R&D costs generally pale in comparison to the ROI to be seen down the road. And we small businesses get to piggyback on their innovation.

What they’re working on is really incredible, and incredibly sexy. Cars that run on air (they exist!); treatment plants that clean wastewater using the gas from their own processes (okay, that last one's not so sexy, but it's really cool). These advances have already been made, and now it’s a matter of applying our technological capabilities to their mass production so they become the norm and not the exception. Quickly. And that happens through publicity (cue Al Gore) and the build-up of demand.

It’s a beautiful cycle, isn’t it? And it’s why I believe that luxury and sustainability are not contradictory values in and of themselves. With our current production framework, no, of course they can’t coexist. But our current framework is changing. If regenerative products become the norm—products that add to the health of our environment rather than detract from it—it could conceivably mean that carefree consumption can actually be an environmentally friendly action.

One has to happen first for the other to be true, of course. But the change is happening. So as we continue to demand that the end-user change their habits, we need to also demand—even more strenuously—that the producers change theirs.

Design Thinking: Wall Cleat Switchplate

Like any good designer, Karl Zahn created the Wall Cleat to solve a specific problem; what the hell do you do with all the messy cording that piles up at the electrical outlet? His answer is no more and no less than it needs to be:



It's not in production yet, but check out his Boiler Design Office to get a hold of other products he's created. (I wonder how he'd deal with a multi-plug surge protector?)

Simplify This.

One of the easiest ways I have found to simplify my life is to stop reading the absurdly long list of ways to simplify your life continually posted by life-simplifying blogs.

Varini's Three Dimensional Painted Rooms

I came across some anonymous photos a while back and never knew from whence they came. Just found out that these optical illusions are the work of Felice Varini.



See additional roomscapes.