VOLUME 37

VOLUME 37

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(N)EVERLASTING: IMPERMANENCE IN DESIGN CULTURE Volume 37 Full PDF (2015) Abstract With the arrival of the digital age and a culture dedicated to speed and efficiency, much of contemporary design has lost an old motivation: to create artifacts or experiences of permanence. Not even incredible breakthroughs remain for very long before they become the undiscussed norm or are replaced with new successes and new advances. Often it falls upon the shoulders of the designer to keep up with the perpetual flow of invention and reinvention, today more active and integrated into the flesh of society than ever. The river of progress is merciless and inevitable, and it’s only getting faster: but what does that mean, and how do we address it as consumers and creators? One of the hallmarks of this fast-paced environment is the concept of immutable impermanence: a strict recognition of the fact that not everything will last, and that not everything should last. Impermanence is far from a new idea, but...
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Volume 36

Volume 36

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Form and Fiction: The role of design and designers in shaping, framing and reflecting reality “The idea of probable, preferable, plausible and possible futures – the space between reality and the impossible – allows designers to challenge design orthodoxy and prevailing technological visions so that fresh perspectives can begin to emerge." —Dunne & Raby Volume 37_Full PDF Abstract In Volume 36 of The Student Publication, we look to engage a discussion on the role of design and designers in shaping, framing, and reflecting reality. While the notion of the designer as a constructor or visionary of a future reality is not a new one, the increasing complexity and connectivity of our world begs for renewed vigor in its evaluation. As more people and entities are engaged with design, the traditional role of the designer as a creator of a single reality is shifting (credit kimberley). Yet one area that distinguishes the designer is our capacity and propensity to envision new futures through fiction. The dialogue...
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The Designer as Moral Intermediary

The Designer as Moral Intermediary

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The Role of the Designer as Moral Intermediary by Nick Gregory In Peter-Paul Verbeek’s “Materializing Morality: Design Ethics and Technological Mediation,” the author argues that designed technology shapes both the way that we interact with the world and the way that we perceive the world. He defines technological mediation as “the role of technology in human action (conceived as the ways in which human beings are present in their world) and human experience (conceived as the ways in which their world is present to them).” In summary, designed objects affect us through mediation of perception and mediation of action. Technology can shape the way that we perceive the world. mediating our perception of anything and everything. Objects such as glasses modify the way in which we see the world in a literal sense. A thermometer “establishes a relationship between humans and reality in terms of temperature.” These objects are tools that give us insight into situations that we previously may not have had....
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The Evolution of Design Methodology, Science, and Research

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  The Evolution of Design Methodology, Science, and Research by Julia Paret, Graphic Design '19 Surviving on the streets is not as simple as finding food and shelter. In the country of Cote d’Ivoire, the modern day version of Oliver Twist is the young man wearing brand name clothing in a flashy display of wealth. These conmen, also known as bluffeurs, exist on the fringes of a society where survival is dependent upon the ability to shift identity (Newell 15). Young men with limited financial resources spend more than half of their annual income on clothing in a masquerade of wealth (Newell 15). In the current Ivoirian cultural economy, deception based on artifice, is viewed as an artform and an act of national pride despite its connection to assimilation and the European colonization of Africa. Rather, it is an achievement in its own right that authenticates a man’s reputation by establishing the ability to make a living through artifice (Newell 261). Despite having...
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Design as a Vehicle for Social Change

Design as a Vehicle for Social Change

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Design Activism by Amanda Nguyen Like any citizen, all actions of a designer impact others and they must be professionally, culturally, and socially responsible for their impact. Victor Margolin, co-editor of Design Issues, suggests that in a world of emerging manufacturing technologies, communication networks, and global marketing structures, designers can affect social change by embracing activism and entrepreneurship (Sisson). Designers are promoting conversation and social change through their work at a local level. such as Skillet Gilmore’s “Shame Pat McCrory” banners to fight against HB2 and Kevin Lyons’ Raleigh mural in collaboration with the anti-smoking campaign, Truth. “Design activism” has disrupted the world of design by empowering designers to be a part of a movement for social change, explore answers to problems in the community, and change their role as designers. Design as a vehicle for social change In 2012, a graphic design conference in Belgrade, Serbia, called “Graphic Designer: Author or Universal Soldier.” underscored the idea that designers need to produce content beyond...
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Public Interest Design in Transition

Public Interest Design in Transition

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Public Interest Design in Transition by Lauren Krutchen “The human backside is a dimension architects seem to have forgotten,” said William H. Whyte, a well-known American urbanist (“William H. Whyte”). Whyte is describing how, historically, architects failed to include human perspective in their designs. However, Whyte, and a handful of other designers, realize that the most important goal of a design is that it responds to the needs of the people and communities it’s made for. Public interest design is a human-centered practice that enables designers to serve specific needs in communities, with an emphasis on social, economical, and environmental developments (“Public Interest Design”). It relies on a participatory approach of community development in which designers assess the needs and resources existing within a community and involve citizens in the process of “putting creative abilities to practical use to improve communities,” according to Bryan Bell, architect and founder of Design Corps (“Bryan Bell, AIA”). Public interest design got its start in 1968...
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Sharon Joines

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Sharon Joines is an Associate Professor of Industrial Design at NC State University. She is also a researcher and ergonomist, teaching courses in human centered design and ergonomics. Joines' research is focused on quantifying the interaction between individuals, products, and their environment. She has addressed challenges in consumer markets, warehousing and distribution, medical applications, and manufacturing environments ranging from forging to clean rooms. As the director of the Research in Ergonomics and Design (RED) Lab, Joines seeks to provide answers to the concern about the manner in which people interact and react to products and processes....
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Teddy Cruz

Teddy Cruz

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Teddy Cruz is an architect and 'activist'. He is recognized internationally for his urban research of the Tijuana-San Diego border, advancing border immigrant neighborhoods as sites of cultural production, from which he rethinks urban policy, affordable housing and civic infrastructure. His investigation of this geography of conflict has inspired a practice and pedagogy that emerges from the particularities of this bicultural territory and the integration of theoretical research, pedagogy and design production. His practice and research convene knowledge from across the fields of architecture and urbanism, environmental and social practice, political theory and urban policy, visual arts and public culture, and mediate the interface between top-down institutions (governments, universities, foundations), and bottom-up socio-economic, cultural and environmental intelligence embedded in communities. His project, "Earning From Tijuana" reframes where designers and architects might look for innovation....
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Bryan Bell

Bryan Bell

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Bryan Bell is a current Professor of Architecture at the NC State College of Design. He is also the founder of Design Corps, who's mission is to to provide the benefits of architecture to those traditionally un-served by the profession in order to create a positive change within communities. Design Corps utilizes design advocacy and education to help communities shape their environments and address their social, economic, and environmental challenges. Bell's current focus is on public interest design, which he describes as a needs-driven practice that "puts creative abilities to practical use to improve communities." He has revolutionized public interest design using interdisciplinary and innovative protocols, procedures, and economic models to adapt to the changing nature of clients and economic conditions....
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Writing Assignment: Opinion

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Using the reading Tania assigned you as a starting place (see below), you will create a 1000-word opinion piece that reacts to the ideas in that article. Think about how the article as a whole, or some topic within it, is arguing for, or against, design in transition. A constraint to this assignment: You may not use the phrase "I think" nor any variation of that phrase. See this overview of writing a critical essay. Drossscape by Alan Berger (Landscape Urbanism) Mapping Social Messes in Elsewhere Mapping (Cartographies) Why Problems Like Homelessness might be easier to solve than manage (Malcolm Gladwell) Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital by Robert Putnam Clutter, Writing and Design by Steven Baker in Emigre, vol 35, 1995 What is Digital Cinema? by Lev Manovitch Play Anything by Ian Bogost (Adapted Essay from his book, Play Anything) Introduction to Alone Together by Sherry Turkle The Science of Design: Creating the Artificial by Herb Simon Design Ethics and Technological Mediation by Peter Paul...
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Skillet Gilmore

Skillet Gilmore

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Skillet Gilmore is an artist, musician, former member of the Raleigh-based alternative country band, Whiskeytown, and production design supervisor at INDY Week. He began creating posters and other merchandise for his band, formed in 1994 and disbanded in 2000, which is how he discovered his knack for design. His posters aimed to catch the reader's attention with graphics, text, and hand-crafted artistry that showed off the nature of his music. As the production design supervisor of INDY Week, Gilmore creates covers, illustrations, and other various graphics for the publication. He has noted the flexibility he deals with during the design process, like how a final design is something completely different from the starting point....
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Brittain Storck

Brittain Storck

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Brittain Storck is a professional landscape architect with a background in natural resource-based recreation projects, greenway and trail design, and active community design and planning. She's Alta's regional landscape architecture studio director and the board director of North Carolina Rail Trails. Storck has managed projects across the nation and cultivated an understanding of the complexities associated with design of open spaces. She considers the essence of her work to be connections, which designers must cultivate using "an awareness and consideration of our environment, culture, health, economy, and aesthetic while creating a variety of solutions for the human experience." Through these connections Storck aims to identify a balance between where we live and how we live....
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Cecilia Mouat Croxatto

Cecilia Mouat Croxatto

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Cecilia Mouat is Assistant Professor and Director of the Graduate Program of Art+Design.  Her background includes a PhD in Design, a Master in filmmaking and a professional degree in architecture. She is originally from Chile, where she worked for 25 years as an architect and visual artist. Mouat’s visual work includes experimental and documentary films, photography, digital collage, and acrylic painting. Her research is multidisciplinary and explores design as discourse, from academic communities, to film representations and fashion....
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Michael Rock

Michael Rock

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Michael Rock is a graphic designer, professor at Yale School of Art and founding partner and creative director of 2x4. He has written the book Multiple Signatures and recently wrote an article for the New York Times entitled, The Accidental Power of Design. Michael Rock received his BA in Humanities from Union in 1981 before receiving his MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Micheal founded 2x4, a design firm based in New York City. He is currently the director of the Graphic Architecture Project at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Michael is the recipient of the 1999 Rome Prize in Design, and was awarded the National Design Award in 2006. In his portrait of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the Illinois Institute of Technology, Rock uses thousands of tiny pictograms depicting various student activities to make up the facial features of van der Rohe. This is just one example of how Rock challenged accepted...
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Terry Irwin

Terry Irwin

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  Terry Irwin is the Head of the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University. She was also one of the founders of the international design firm MetaDesign, which has worked with such brands as Apple, Nike and Nissan. She has been a practicing designer for more than 40 years and has taught courses at numerous places on ecological design thinking and design process to designers and non-designers alike. This experience in particular convinced her that complex issues can only be solved by collaborating with others from many different fields, and that design plays a major role in this collaboration. Additionally, Irwin teaches the newly launched study of "Transition Design", which she defines as a "speculative, experimental form of design practice and design research dedicated to conceiving long-term models for sustainable lifestyles." Her goal for Transition Design is to teach designers how to design effective solutions for complex problems within social and environmental systems by thinking in terms of the future and sustainability. She emphasizes four...
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Sasha Newell

Sasha Newell

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Sasha Newell is a Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at NC State University. He is interested in the contribution that design makes to the field of anthropology and how the integration of the two might provide more channels for practicing anthropologists. Newell's personal research, on collecting and hoarding, looks at the effects of consumer and material culture on what we value and how we behave socially and culturally. His book, The Modernity Bluff: Crime, Consumption, and Citizenship in Côte d'Ivoire, addresses Newell's interests in the processes of cultural engagement across sociocultural boundaries, the relationship between culture and materiality, and the critique of ideologies of modernity and rational subjectivity as tools of global hierarchization....
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Writing Prompt #2: Case Study as Argument

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Writing a Case Study: Case studies are a type of writing and/or research that aims to understand and explain a phenomena or pattern. They are used in many fields to promote critical thinking and to understand a problem better. They are not meant to solve the problem, but instead to provoke an analytical discussion. In this assignment, you are being asked to look at the work of one of our contributors as a case study and to extract from that examination a larger argument about how design is in transition.  Prompt: Using the contributor who's name Tania supplied to you (see below), write a case study of the person + their work and how that is evidence of some aspect of the them of Volume 38 (Flux: Design in Transition.) You should plan to use 1 specific project from their work as a specific example of this relationship. You should also do outside research to validate your ideas for the importance of...
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Phase II: Student Writing + Contributor Reminders

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Tuesday, September 20 Advisory Board Meeting at 12:30 in Leazar 316 Team Debrief; Identify any key action items Share and review initial drafts of Personal Essay Discuss Zinsser reading in the review of essays Tuesday, September 27 Discuss Readings (Turchi, maps of the imagination; Zinsser, On Writing Well, p6-23.) Review initial ideas for Illustration of essay. Team Updates (Editorial: Contributors*; Marketing; Design) We will decide on second pass of contributor "asks" based on confirmed declines. For Tuesday, October 4: Read Zinnser, p. 24 - 45 Tuesday, October 4 Review of illustrated essays 3/4 done Team Updates: Editorial Update on Contributors Tuesday, October 11 Final Review, Illustrated Essays (1:30 - 3:00) Introduce Writing Assignment 2 Team Meetings: Editorial Update on confirmed Contributors Editorial Team meets with Dean Hoeverston at 3:00pm Tuesday, October 18  ...
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Writing Prompt #1: Personal Essay

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Prompt: Looking at the familiar experiences of our own life and work can provide important opportunities to unpack the complex ideas and arguments embedded in critical writing. We will use Debbie Millman’s “Look Both Ways” as inspiration for developing personal, illustrated essay that describes the intersection of your personal interest area and the topic of Volume 38: Flux: Design in Transition Process: Step 1: Start with the presentation that you made at the beginning of the semester (or choose another topic that you are currently interested in) and identify how that might relate or intersect with the current topic of Volume 38 of The Publication. Step 2: Freewrite your initial ideas about how this intersection might be formed. What are you initial inclinations? What do you intuit about the topic as it relates to your own work and experience Step 3: Spend 2-3 days taking notes and observing instances and evidence of your ideas in the world and in your everyday experience. Try to find patterns,...
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Against Search by Lev Manovich

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How to work with massive media data sets? Early 21st century media researchers have access to unprecedented amounts of media--more than they can possibly study, let alone simply watch or even search. A number of interconnected developments which took place between 1990 and 2010--the digitization of analog media collections, a decrease in prices and expanding capacities of portable computer-based media devices (laptops, tablets, phones, cameras, etc.), the rise of user-generated content and social media, and globalization (which increased the number of agents and institutions producing media around the world)--led to an exponential increase in the quantity of media while simultaneously making it much easier to find, share, teach with, and research. Waiting to be “digged” into are hundreds of billions of videos on YouTube and photographs on Facebook (according to the stats provided by Facebook in the beginning of 2012, its users upload 7 billion images per month), millions of hours of television programs digitized by various national libraries and media...
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Phase I Schedule: Volume 38 Theme Development

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Phase 01: Theme development During this phase, students will each develop an abstract for the theme of Volume 38 of The Student Publication. Additionally, students will develop a personal essay to facilitate thinking and conversation about relevant and current topics in design. August 23 - September 13 (4 weeks) At the end of this phase we will have: Abstract List of potential contributors Calls out for participation Week 01: August 23 | Theme brainstorming In Class: Lecture on History of the Student Publication Class Structure and Expectations Overview of Publication "teams / roles": Editorial, Marketing, Design, Project Manager(s) Student Presentations on Individual Topics. 5-10 minute presentation followed by questions and discussion Writing an Abstract For Tuesday, August 23, Read and Prepare: Read: Norman, Don. "Writing as Design. Design as Writing" in Design for People.  Write a 250 word abstract on the subject that most resonated with you as a theme for Volume 38 of The Student Publication. In addition to the explanation of the theme, this abstract should include...
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Volume 31: Relevance (2005)

Volume 31: Relevance (2005)

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Relevance (Download PDF) Volume 31: Relevance, The Student Publication of the College of Design presents the work of a group of designers who, on the surface, fall into a number of disparate categories, negotiating issues spanning technology and manufacturing processes, economic class and culture, and environmental design considerations. Yet, all of the contributions to this volume are attempts to determine relevance by establishing new voices and identifying new audiences able to benefit from the exceptional potentialities of design. Relevance has never been more difficult to achieve than it is today in our increasingly fragmented and complex society; however, we must continue to pursue the question of relevance for the sake of those whose lives our work impacts directly. Relevance is a topic impossible to define but one which will not stand to be overlooked. Contributors: Adam Brakenbury, Jason Miller, Thomas Ryan, Jeremy Ficca, Franklin Bost, Billie Tsien, Adam Brakenbury, Thomas Ryan, Brigitte Shim, Gail Peter Borden, Eric Naslund, Frank Harmon, Paul Tesar, Jason Toth....
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Volume 29: Urban Design in Action (1985)

Volume 29: Urban Design in Action (1985)

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Urban Design in Action (Download PDF) Urban Design in Action is the documentation of a record of achievement by professional assistance teams who answer to appeals for help from our cities. Called Regional/Urban Design Assistance Teams, or RIUDATs, they began in 1967 in response to a citizen's chance perception that the American Institute of Architects could help resolve the problems of his community. The first team discovered that the city is a living organism, embodying within prototypical problems the local culture, history and aspirations of its citizens. They sensed its continual evolution, from past to future forms. Most of all, they realized that the citizens wanted to help shape their own destinies, to participate in the formulation of policies whose implementation would result in a new sense of community. Contributors: Charles Brewer, John Clarke, Ben Cunningham, John Gaillard, Jules Gregory, John Kriken, Charles Redmon, Ronald Straka...
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Volume 28: Analysis of Precedent (1979)

Volume 28: Analysis of Precedent (1979)

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Analysis Of Precedent (Download PDF) Analysis Of Precedent is a collection of diagrams which systematically analyze the works of eight architects. For each architect four representative buildings have been documented . The architects were purposefully selected from various periods of time to represent seemingly different approaches to architecture. Diagrams have been utilized to capture the essence of particular issues for each building. The issues stud ied are divided into three categories: elements, relationships, and ordering ideas. Physical attributes which can be compared independent of building type or function have been addressed in the diagrams. The analysis is not all inclusive in that it is limited to characteristics which can be diagrammed; thus, material palette is one obvious omission. Our analysis and interpretation has been of built form and therefore may not necessarily coincide with the architects intentions or the interpretation of others. In order to make the diagrams memorable, they ha ve been intentionally simplified . Likewise the accompanying text has been abbreviated...
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Volume 27: Great Models (1978)

Volume 27: Great Models (1978)

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Great Models: Digressions On The Architectural Model (Download PDF) Architectural models offer a record of architecture older than the profession itself; a record which expresses all the varying spirit and meanings which both architects and their public give to buildings. It is an enchanting journey through entombments and religious devotions, through records left in fresco and mosaic, through the hands of workmen, architects and clients, and the eyes of the perpetually fascinated public. The earliest existing models were funerary objects placed in the tomb of the architect or donor of the edifice to surround him with the familiar, and as attributes of his work or generosity; such are the tiny Roman temple from Vulci (cover), and the Egyptian house replete with miniature leafy garden. Although the Romans occasionally accorded the architect such recognitions, the association of the model with the donor (the early client was frequently a wealthy patron building a church or temple, thus a "donor") rather than the architect is prevalent until...
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