I don’t know what it is about the Pacific Northwest and food, but I’m really glad to be going back to it (I’m seriously considering writing a book about it someday, though – what do you think?). One of the things I’ve missed the most while living on the East Coast is the ubiquitous artisanal [...]

When Seth was little, one of his favorite audio stories was The Velveteen Rabbit, narrated by Meryl Streep and accompanied by George Winston. He listened to this cassette tape over and over and over when he was little. I found the album online and while listening to it again after a long absence, I realized [...]

I took a few students on a quick field trip to MoMA on Saturday. I have a rule. The MoMA Rule. It states that I cannot leave the museum without at least one new design book. Photos by Callie Neylan Since I’m planning on designing a chair with my friend Melissa this summer (there, I [...]

I’ve been bantering back and forth with designers about aesthetics in design, via this fascinating discussion. Someone suggested that if aesthetics is so important (which it is), then design students should study the philosophical origins of aesthetics. I completely agree (why isn’t this already a given in design education? – !!). Inspired, I started reading [...]

Beauty is mathematics. Beauty is objective. Or subjective if you insist, but only within a range of mathematical objectiveness. But it is not perfection. On the contrary. There comes a point, actually, when perfection is not only not beautiful, but weird. In Donald Norman’s Emotional Design: Why We Love or Hate Everyday Things, he writes: [...]

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the eye of the beholder has a biological preference based on mathematical proportions. Within the context of the man-made environment and the natural world, there is a documented human cognitive preference for golden section proportions throughout recorded history. Some of the earliest evidence of the [...]