Multicultural typographic interpretations of the 2011 Icograda Design Education Manifesto.

In her essay “Relevance In a Complex World” for the 2011 Icograda Design Education Manifesto, Meredith Davis speaks about agility and resilience in education systems, imploring design educators to embrace change, flexibility, and modularity:

Platforms for resilience: Creating flexibility and resilience among system failures

This trend acknowledges the instability and uncertainty of today’s world and warns that methods that resist change will not succeed. The authors of the forecast call for lightweight, modular educational infrastructures that can support the wellbeing of learners and learning agents. In recent decades, design schools have added content to full programmes of study in a curriculum-by-accrual attempt to respond to new practices and technologies. Unwilling to sacrifice previously valued concepts, skills and curricular structures, the organisational logic of these curricula became less apparent and infrastructures failed under the burden of having too much to teach in too little time. The fixed expertise of faculty members in a constantly changing field where new knowledge and skills are required and the growing diversity of learning expectations for college students illuminate hindrances in older curricula. There are structural barriers to the interdisciplinary work that is demanded by complex problems. Thus, design educators must develop flexible curricular structures that can respond quickly to changing times.

As someone who has, for her entire 12-year design career, had one foot in industry and the other in academia and is therefore keenly aware of the differences in speed and response to change between the academic and business worlds, I see firsthand this “curriculum-by-accrual” attempt at programme modification and cringe. It is not unlike adding features to a bloated operating system, trying to fix what’s broken by adding more of the same. It won’t work, especially while there exist design faculty who resist all things technical and digital, clinging to outdated, irrelevant methodologies, teaching processes, and print-based artifacts. The Bauhaus and Swiss Style were (are!) great, and the design fundamentals and philosophies they codified and spread remain as invaluable as ever. But the very essence of the work that Gropius, van der Rohe, Bayer, Kandinsky, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Armin Hoffman and other founding members of these schools of thought did was in response to seismic shifts in the technology and culture of their time. They were responding to a zeitgeist. Embracing it. Inhaling it. Swallowing it. Consuming it! These movements were a response to the world we live in, not an excuse to hide in an ivory tower away from it.

Our zeitgeist is very different than the one of the Bauhaus – wow, almost 100 years ago – one hundred years! Or 50 years, 20 years, even five years. As a freshman full-time academic, I scratch my head and wonder: why are we still using an educational interface that barely works anymore? Why are digital educational components considered course add-ons and “special topics” as it were, to stale design curricula focused on print, when pixels, not paper, are the default output. When gestures, not pencils, are how we input information. Design education, like a bloated operating system, is ripe for deconstruction, reconsideration, and reassembly to reflect the revolutionary zeitgeist of our own time. We owe it to ourselves and the students we teach to consume it just as passionately, reflecting that consumption in our design methodologies and philosophies.

That’s what Gropius would do.

Map of Alaska via the University of Washington libraries.

I can’t stop thinking about Alaska. One might wonder how people survive in such a remote place. Remote yet breathtakingly raw and beautiful. I wondered this myself, until I read this passage by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

One day, when I decide to devote myself to writing a book, I will move to Alaska. Looking out over the Cook Inlet, I know I’ll get a lot done.

Sometimes, I’m inspired to sing at the top of the stairs, where the acoustics are lovely.

Looking south across the Cook Inlet near Anchorage, Alaska, a plane approaches the Ted Stevens International Airport. Photo by Callie Neylan, January 11, 2012.

Snow scattered softly around my ears and eyelashes while I waited for him to open the door. It was metal. Slate blue. Cold like the Alaska winter. Which is a lot like a Colorado winter. The snow crunching. The flakes hushing. January sky swirled pink with wonder. Right before it snows, the sky takes a deep breath and holds it for a minute. If you pay attention, you can feel the earth breathe.

It was a cheap apartment in a non-descript part of town. But they were young, happy, practical. It was all they could afford right now. He opened the door to the hallway and I followed him. My nose, still adjusting to the frigid air, burned when I took my first breath going up the stairs. Acrid. Pungent. Marlboro. Black. “Wow. It smells like smoke in here.” We plodded up the padded stairs. Padded with cheap blue carpet, the flat all-purpose kind, stained and rumpled like a homeless drunk passed out under I-5.

The walls, ruined and gray from the smoke, reflected the rude, yellow light exposing flaws in everything. I closed my eyes, focusing instead on the sounds; there was something good about this place. The muffled clomping and wooded groaning. Clomp, clomp, clomp. I closed my eyes and ascended the remaining stairs, imagining metal grates where the carpet was, the grinding plastic and clanking metal of rigid ski boots, and clingy, melted snow. The cigarette smoke burning my nose became instead hot, melting wax, applied to the bottom of my skis by a tall, blonde, bearded youth, not unlike the one in front of me. I was transported to the snowy winters of my youth, while he lead me up the stairs, through the doorway of his.

PocketCop is mobile technology whose goal is to get police out of their cars and onto the streets, so they can be more efficient and spend time doing real police work:

[Police] can all quickly and easily get the time-critical information they need, without dispatcher involvement and waiting for a verbal response-making everyone more efficient and effective, while reducing support costs and radio traffic. And because communications between users can’t be overheard or monitored by scanners like normal radio traffic, PocketCop is ideal for undercover use or other situations where the officer doesn’t want to draw attention.

With PocketCop, officers are no longer tethered to their vehicles or their radios. They can be where they need to be in the community at any time, and still get the information and communications they depend on to make them smarter and safer.

Which reminds me of The Wire, of course. I can imagine a sixth season that analyzes how smart cities will help combat crime. Please, David Simon. Please say yes….

On a related note, Baltimore police commissioner blasts The Wire.

On the flip side, could you imagine a suite of mobile apps designed to make Stringer, Avon, and Omar’s lives easier?

Cardinal, webwallpapers.net.

I got a beautiful pair of Bushnell binoculars for Christmas. “Because you’re so visual. So observant.” said Will. “I want to nurture that.” He also noticed that I’ve fallen in love with a little cardinal that’s taken up in our backyard and my insistence on getting the bird feeder left by the previous owners of This Old House in working order.

I don’t know what exactly spawned my newfound interest in birds. Oh, wait. Yes I do. That little cardinal in my backyard. So cheery, happy, and red. He makes me smile every time I see him flutter across the alley, a little crimson blur skimming the phone wires until landing in the branches of our holly tree. Jonathan Rosen, in his book The Life of the Skies, describes our affinity for birds like this:

Everyone is a birdwatcher, but there are two kinds of birdwatchers: those who know what they are and those who haven’t yet realized it. In the United States, a lot of people have realized it — 47.8 million Americans, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service — and yet my passion is constantly greeted with surprise. You? Perhaps it is because I live in a city and lead an urban life. But why should people wonder that I watch birds? It’s like being surprised that someone has sex or goes to the bathroom. The surprise reveals ignorance not so much about birds—their beauty, their abundance, their wild allure — as about human nature. We need, as the great biologist Edward O. Wilson has argued, to affiliate with nature in order to be happy. He calls this phenomenon “biophilia.”

Coincidentally, I also came across these bird-related links in the past week:
The Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count
To Flirt In The City, Birds Adjust Their Pitch

The historical B&O rail station. Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

I need a sandbox full of consonants and vowels. Full, crisp, contrasty ones. Like the ones found in “Camden Yards”.

Camden Yards is one of my favorite things to say. From the first time I ever heard it (which, incidentally, I can’t remember). Maybe it was back when I lived in baked, broiled, heat-cracked New Mexico. But wait. No. Probably not. The innovative, historical ballfield didn’t open until 1992 and I was in Washington state by then.

It had to have been after I moved from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Northwest and before I met Will. And way before my first-ever trip to Baltimore, back in 2001 or 2002 when Will took me to Fell’s Point and Federal Hill. Seeing all that brick and cobblestone all in one place, live, in person, made me feel like I’d fallen into one of my 8th-grade history books. Nothing makes history come alive like visiting historical places.

But anyway, I’m not here to talk about the field itself, or its history. Just its name. At some point in my life, I heard about the famous ballfield and fell in love with those words, letting the crisp, decisive “kuh” in “Camden” and the broad, airy “aahr” in “Yards” roll over my tongue and around my throat like a smooth, warm dessert. Kind of like that crême brulée I told you about. Because that’s what words are like sometimes. Like foreplay for your mouth. Audible dessert. An orgy of consonants and vowels – tumbled directly onto your palate, compliments of your lungs – for a make-out session with your tongue.

Words are sensuous. Words are beautiful.

See also: Vowels Control Your Brain and 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language.

My latest Camper acquisition, the Peu Nara. Made of partially recycled materials.

You should listen to this Do Things the Long, Hard, Stupid Way Lecture by Frank Chimero. No, really. You should. Then, I want you to go out and buy yourself a pair of Camper shoes for Christmas. Then you’ll know what it’s like to wear the long, hard, stupid way on your feet.

I have a shoe problem. I buy a lot of shoes. I mean a lot (at last count, I have…well, I’m ashamed to admit the number of shoes I have). Most of the time, my purchases are based on seeing something I like. I don’t generally exhibit much brand loyalty when it comes to shoes. Except when it comes to Camper. I will go significantly out of my way to buy Camper shoes. I have three pairs of Camper boots and two pairs of sandals. Love love love them. Why? Because Camper approaches things the long, hard, stupid (which, ironically, can actually be the smart) way:

Camper is not a specific shoe, but rather a style, a philosophy of life, a way of thinking and a way of making shoes. Camper is a of way walking!

Camper shoes cannot be truly understood without understanding our origins and traditions. Camper was born in the Mediterranean. A unique part of the world known for the integration of cultures and therefore diversity. It is also famous for the established tradition of shoemaking. Started back in1877, a tradition that has always combined both design and function at its core.

So Camper is twofold and contradictory – diversity/coherence (the origins) and design/function (the traditions), existing side by side in the spirit of the brand, transmitted through the products. The shoes are, as a consequence, the link between the origins and traditions, and the urban reality of the market place. They – the shoes – evoke the solid values of the Mediterranean rural world – comfort, durability and simplicity. Incorporated into the urban world they illustrate this through informal sophistication, careful design, irony and above all imagination. The shoes blend comfort with imagination, tradition with modernity, technology with aesthetics.

and

Last but by no means least, the other outstanding innate characteristic of Camper shoes is their quality. Only the world’s best, natural, water resistant and sturdy leathers can make quality and lightness compatible. Moulds that adapt to the bone structure and natural movements of the foot, together with soles created with exclusive innovative designs that embody our unique way of contact with the earth. Products that make the best craftsmanship compatible with modern methods of manufacture, products made with technology that is respectful and appropriate to the environment. Comfort for our feet and for our conscience. Shoes that care for the physical health of their wearer, as well as stimulating their imagination.

The Camper philosophy and product line also illustrate Dieter Rams’ 10 Principles for Good Design, specifically bringing to mind No. 8: Good design is thorough, down to the last detail. Look at that cheery red tag and the quality stitching!

Last night, Will and I had his friend Glotz (aka Chris Glotzbach) over for dinner. Glotz is an old friend of Will’s. They met at the University of Maryland. He’s been Will’s financial advisor since before I met him and our dogsitter every once in a while. Everybody calls him Glotz, not Chris. So even today, after 10 years of knowing him, when he is referred to as Chris on that rare occasion, I always say, “Chris? Chris who?”

I told him I’d make crême brulée for his birthday. I love crême brulée. It’s one of my favorite desserts. It’s one of those foods that you hesitate to eat because it’s so elegant. So beautiful. It’s a food of amazing tactile qualities, with references to design elements: unity and variety, contrast, texture, and rhythm. Unified in its aesthetics –burnt golden atop a butter yellow lustre; layered in variety and contrast – a dark for a light, a caramel acrid for a creamy sweet. And finally, what I like best of all, steeped in texture and rhythm: the tap of a spoon to break the ice, plunging deep into waters of eggs, cream, and sugar; the rhythm of your tongue as it finds its way back to the surface of your spoon.

Heaven.

While I love the beauty of my Apple products as much as you do, it’s encouraging to note – very encouraging – that there are many companies in the world that produce products equally as beautiful in form and function. I’m going to start showcasing my own personal favorites every now and then, starting with this Fuji FinePix X100 camera. I saw an ad for it in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. My heart skipped a beat.

On the beautiful design of this camera; an excerpt from this site:

The detailed, high-quality design of the X100 was inspired by the classic beauty and feel of traditional film cameras. The top cover of the upper control deck and the bottom surface have been die-cast from magnesium alloy (semi-solid metal casting), contributing to a high-precision camera body. All dials and rings are precision milled from metal, and the traditional ‘manual’ dials let the user confirm the position of the settings without turning on the power. Design ergonomics offer the perfect balance between compact convenience and user-friendly functionality, featuring a chassis finished with high-quality leather-like accents.

The camera controls have been carefully thought out to give the photographer simple and speedy access to aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO, allowing maximum creative expression with minimum hassle. The custom modes can also be used for a one-touch change in settings.

Every design tells a story. Every design has a story. I want to know the stories behind the design.