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The Manifesto of the New Designer

http://www.notesondesign.net/inspiration/design/the-manifesto-of-the-new-designer/#more-1600



I have read couple of manifestos while researching for my socially oriented Thesis.
Even though I love "manifesto" as an idea, I can't see the quality of earlier manifestos. For example http://www.xs4all.nl/~maxb/ftf1964.htm the manifesto so called "First Things First" written by Ken Garland was at least more aggressive and motivating. I say that because there is this sense of unity, "we". This happens with the new version of this manifesto http://www.emigre.com/Editorial.php?sect=1&id=14. I am just not sure how this help. It is a paper with some nice motivating sentences but when I talk with people of my generation I do not see where this is going. I am kind of jealous of the previous generations that would gather together and discuss about likely solutions. Now, people mostly communicate through social networking websites, which is good, but i do not see change coming only from a computer screen.



Encouraging Visual thinking (What is Visual Thinking?)

http://vizthink.com/blog/



I went to this Vizthink workshop last Wednesday. It was good.
These people are trying to encourage visual thinking as a practice for creative thinking, I guess.
Talking about visual thinking what I think they had in mind is the iconic or visual representation of thoughts. There is an effort they make help people think "visually" so they can best organize their creative processes when it comes to solve a problem. The problem could be a really simple one like what "what should I eat today". They proposed 6 different thought processes in order to solve this problem. In general the whole procedure was really inspiring and helpful but I feel that each individual builds up its own process for problem solving. On the other hand I am not sure if this is necessary for people that are not visual and/or creative. I mean that designers in general are creative and visual from their nature (or at least they should be) and I am not sure if that should apply to everybody. It occurred to me that it is mostly about visualizing the data and information we have in mind to keep them in order and easily processed.

Time Machine Pictures.

http://sergey-larenkov.livejournal.com/

Maybe it is really personal but time-machine is one of the inventions I would love to see for real. For Now I think the work of the Russian Artist Larenkov gives a great sense of this time travel back to the Stalingrand battle (65th anniversary of the Siege of Leningrad) aiming to bridge "now" and "then". Even though I am not Russian I can feel this nostalgia emerging from the combined pictures. It looks alive even though it is only an image successfully mixed, in a way that makes you feel like being a part of it. I can imagine how vivid could that be if there was a virtual three dimensional installation to experience this time travel and experience actual events of the past.
(I bet a HIstory class would be much more interesting and memorable.

Blublu.org> Stop Motion Imagination

One of the most successful stop motion videos. The painted characters are literally moving around changing places, daring to go everywhere, climb, transform. As discussed before, a great place where art meets craft and basic technology for a magic result.

http://blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Are Engineers, Scientists And Mathematicians Enemies of Innovation?

Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on June 16

In this article there is an interesting argument emerging : Scientists, Mathematicians and Engineers may even obstruct innovation. According to the author, "Innovation is about social applications of inventions, not about the inventions themselves. Engineers, scientists and mathematicians don't get this. It's not part of their culture." The author finally argues that what we need more is anthropologists and sociologists to work with engineers and scientists "to develop services, products and experiences that people need and want". In addition there is a need for managers in companies to understand what these inventions do and enable their doing. I would add that this whole idea of invention and innovation seems like process (likely for designers to work on as a design process or designers could also built the communication channel among engineers,scientists anthropologists, etc to work together and communicate successfully the needs for a successful outcome that will promote the invention and support an innovation.

MIT Media Lab

http://www.media.mit.edu/research/groups/object-based-media

A great source of inspiration for thesis or for general perspective research and projects. Especially considering the fact that graphic designers seem to get transformed into any kind of designer apart from "graphic" with the old meaning.

Animation Spotlight: The Chimney Sweep

By Maria Popova

What a paper airplane has to do with the quiet art of being human.

I have an emotional internal antithesis considering art and technology.
I think if I could I would do anything by hand and some other times i feel like technology has now its own design and puts aside the old aesthetics of hand skills.
This video is a great example of combining the old with the new skills and the craft with the latest technology. Stop-motion videos in general have a specific way of promoting this idea of combining technology (audio visual) craft (character making) and narrative/concept.





PicoCool - Stop-Motion Spotlight: The Chimney Sweep