Concept, play, and the space between

I went to see Sascha Lobe speak on Tuesday night at MAD, as part of AIGA design talk extravaganza. He runs L2M3 in Germany. And he's really hot. Once I got over that and started paying attention (lets be honest, I still haven't gotten over it), it reminded me of the work I did with Base Madrid. What a great opportunity that was, and the last time I was able to work on a client project with a strong graphic system.

In web design, each project begins with user experience and develops with a focus on the subtleties of interactions rather than making a bold, design-first, graphic system, especially if it would get in the way of proper navigation of the site. I must admit, I was envious of Lobe's work. It's aggressive, and risk-taking. I would like to take these graphic design lessons with me into the web world where I'm currently working. One of the questions after his presentation was, how do you get this work approved? He said he's been asked that many times but that he hasn't run into much resistance. Hm. When there is a strong reason for the design, he explained, then it is hard to argue against it. 

I think the genius of his work comes from the ability to think from a birds-eye view. Literally. Many of his design solutions for architectural space involve a graphic device imposed upon the floorplan of the site, which is then translated to the three-dimensional space.

In response to the odd fact that the building entrance is section E and they weren't able to change the coding, L2M3 created a graphic device of concentric rings to guide the application of the wayfinding system. It's as if a pebble were being dropped down at E and rippling out to other parts. The occupant is mtz Münchner Technologie Zentrum, and that is the extent of my knowledge about this company. Their website is really boring. And in German.

The translation of this system into the interior space is visually intense and slightly disorienting (I'd have to see it in person to know for sure), but a powerful graphic concept successfully applied to the space. They maintained the curvature of the circles on walls, ceilings and floors, to guide the visitor through the space. No matter how small of the fragment of circle you see, you know where the exit is depending on which direction it's curving.

Images snagged from L2M3

The lightboxes in the lobby give a directional cue for each building area as the letters float in their respective color. The direction that the letters move determines the direction to walk. They infused this boring space with so much imagination and visual interest, I wonder if its made those serious employees have more fun.

I was turned on to the Jacques Greene site by Hoverstat.es today, and found myself relating this experience with the feeling of navigating a transparent modern construction like this one. There are a group of windows at fixed sizes, all playing an individual snippet of the video for this song. But within those windows, there are other windows. So you feel like you're navigating through a fuzzy glass-walled fantasy dream with lots of trees, and a young expressionless girl.

I've never seen a music video broken into individual windows. As I was playing, I was asking myself a whole number of nerdy design questions. How does one window experience differ when it's separated from the rest? Do you need all of them together to understand the full story? You can't close or resize them so there is strictness in the playfulness, and maybe a little too limited because the fun ends there. But I was able to get a full experience of the music without altering the visual experience in any damaging way.

In fact, it was cool to move the windows off screen, stretching the common idea of screen real estate.

This made me think of the A List Apart redesign, launched earlier this year. By using off-canvas real estate to park the blog header and footer, besides frustrating people (including myself), is there a conversation that they are trying to have about the current paradigms of the web? My immediate reaction was that I couldn't scroll up to see more of the logo - the fact that it's cropped activates an existing paradigm that there is more content to see. I thought of Facebook's use of the half profile photo when you first land and you have to scroll up to see the whole thing. But maybe the designers are telling us, PLAY! Don't be so contained within this navigable space. Go out of bounds. It's the adult equivalent of coloring outside the lines with your crayons.

Also, people need to chill. Not everything can be explained. I braved a Matthew Barney presentation at the NYPL a couple weeks ago, and the interviewer seemed scattered and irrelevant at best, offensive at worst. In all honestly, it was just as awkward as one of his films, which was just perfect. I felt like he was trying to get inside Barney's brain.

Subliming Vessel, Matthew Barney at The Morgan Library and Museum

After a 25 minute preview of his upcoming film, they began to discuss Barney's current show at the Morgan Library. We saw an image of the drawing above, then viewed a video of the creation of the drawing. The interviewer asked, now what do we know about this drawing now that we've seen the process? He asked Matthew Barney this question! Barney took a beat, and said "the sun in the upper right." And waited for utter confusion to set in. Then he said, "I think it's the most transformative." It was incredible. Not everything needs to be explained, at least in the way people want it to be sometimes.

Barney is inspiring to me because of the way he abstracts concepts from the things that interest him. All of his work is based on the narratives from literature by Norman Mailer and other masculine literary figures and athletes. He has a major focus on the concept of the masculine.

A strong underlying concept provides a bounded space, which allows room for experimentation within, and the work doesn't stray too far outside of those lines.

I was trained by students of Yale modernists, who practiced design by stripping down meaning to its most basic form. I love that process of finding simplicity, but I also love how school taught me to always think of something as something else, everything is contained within its larger category and classified in a way. Like Barthes explains the Japanese theater as the antithesis of theater, as creating distance and of performing the void, where there is a lack of meaning. This is opposite of western theater where it is packed with layers of meaning.

In my work I've found myself more interested in the space between. Nothingness. Emptiness. Spatial relations among architecture for example, are fascinating to me. Windows and the viewpoints they create, portals and perspective in physical space and on the screen. I just finished my freelance work at Code and Theory in preparation for my move to London, and now that I have some free time I'm going to start on a self-initiated project that I think will be a lot of fun. I need a better camera.

A few thoughts on storytelling

In my field I hear the word storytelling a lot. What is it exactly? Storytelling is a verbal journey that a companion or complete stranger is able to lead us on. It's a tool to connect us all - regardless of creed, color or background - on a human level. The deepest level. It makes us realize that we're not all so different.

In November I was working on a brand redesign and thought that the identity would be so much stronger if the founders of the business would tell their story. How did the business develop, what is their inspiration and what were the challenges they faced? Every business in the world should be this transparent if they want to reach their potential customers on the deepest level. Stories stick with us, effect us, and change our behavior.

I'm fascinated by the way my experience of places changes once I know the story behind the walls. I want to create a platform for people of Madrid to be able to share their stories, and I'm sure they have lots of them. The site will be place-based and, ideally, it will point out that our surroundings are more connected to our life stories than we may realize.

There are a few precedents that I enjoy very much for different reasons. I've written about Jonathan Harris' creation, Cowbird, here, and here is the story that I contributed to the site a few days ago. The 'saga' is the defining principle of Cowbird, which for now the only one being Occupy Wall Street. Further down in the site hierarchy there are many other defining principles; people, relationships, subject tags, loved, etc. This is a layered and complex site, but SO beautiful and easy to navigate.

The stories are gorgeous and touching. Harris has given artists, poets and journalists a safe space to express their otherwise private moments. The website is turning into a smorgasborg of love, pain, longing and curiosity. There is this great capability of adding sound to the story as well. Something that this author has done really well. I feel so comfortable contributing to the site because I know that the most important thing is that my contribution comes from my heart.

Before I moved to Madrid, over the past year or so I noticed this 'pod' outside of City Hall ('pod' being a term from one of my architecture-ish classes).

Designed by Local Projects, a design studio in NYC, Storycorps booths give people the opportunity to sit down and record their life story in forty minutes. Especially significant because of the ten year anniversary of 9/11, many of the stories were from family of the victims who used the opportunity to connect others with the memory of their loved one.

Local Projects works on a plethora of storytelling projects, including this video for Stone Barns and this platform for people to tell tales of their center of town. As long as it's called "Main Street" people can submit photos, audio and written accounts of what happens on their Main Street. Local Projects is a studio of master storytellers with the ability to create meaning from a conversation, and to turn a conversation into an event. They call these projects collaborative storytelling, and it's very interesting to me that the most important aspect of their success lies with other people's ability to listen.

New York Writes Itself is a 'production' about New York by the people of New York. As they say, you can't make this shit up. The 'script' is an running Twitter-ish feed of random contributions from people all around New York City. I like the brief format with a steady stream of updates, and love the tone of the site (I mean, just check out the chairman), but I wish there was more imagery - there would be some really good photos to complement the anecdotes of the city. This site definitely has the cool-factor, and the theme capitalizes on NYC being the film-making capital of the world. I also enjoyed seeing the recent collaboration with letterpress artists recently shown at the Art Director's Club.

So what is all this? It's not about advertising, branding or selling products. It's about finding what is most important in each of our individual lives, maybe understanding each other and our environments a little better, and possibly restoring some of our faith in humanity.

Cittaslow and Girard

I just read a fascinating article by the Italian professor Luigi Fusco Girard. One of his main points is that sustainable conservation and renewable energy usage should go hand-in-hand.

"Conservation of urban heritage can be genuinely sustainable to the extent that it revitalizes communities by creating a dynamic, growth-oriented mix of new functions that regenerate economic and social life, while at the same time reducing energy consumption and increasing the use of renewable resources."

Somehow the new "telecommunications-based" economy needs to valorize the cultural identity of the historic urban core, by connecting with traditional "old economy" activities. Also, beauty is key to quality of life, and this is one of the most important factors to attract economic activities that produce wealth.

"Beauty is linked not only to the existing order in a territory. It reflects the harmony existing among its different elements. It transmits a sense of completeness rising from the perception that some attributes are satisfied at their maximum level. Beauty is the synthesis of different dimensions: it is the perception that every element is mutually interconnected, and fosters a sense of connection between community, capital, and assets."

There are many examples of European cities that are investing in green technologies to reduce their carbon footprint. Local Agenda 21 are urban movements to implement solar cities and sustainable initiatives throughout Europe. This decreases the dangers to human health that naturally arise from living in a city, and contribute to the attractiveness of a place. Our surroundings have a significant effect on our health and well-being, and more integrated surroundings inspire us to feel a greater sense of community and social integration. Girard does a really good job of capturing in words what is important about cultural preservation: 

"Intrinsic value reflects this sense of cultural belonging, resulting from the unified integration of many diverse components that all combine together to express the 'spirit' of the place...The roots of these intrinsic values are in cultural traditions, in the history of a community that reflects itself in the whole of the physical signs, symbols, and spiritual values that inspire it...places represent living embodiments of the collective memory of vital historic events that help determines a sense of co-belonging, of deep unity between people and nature and between individuals, families, and larger communities; of mutual interdependence that connects all of us together as a fundamental characteristic of humanity."

Specifically for me, community is important because I've never had a strong one, and I'd like to be a part of a group of interacting, supportive citizens. People help one another in an ideal community, with practical things (like sharing tools and babysitting) but also for companionship (especially in old age).

Also, preservation of culture is key because if the world all of a sudden became completely homogenized then there are fewer ideas and perspectives, Coming from a different perspective (and learning from others) in one of the most valuable learning experiences in life, and can lead to better problem solving. A different cultural perspective can solve a problem such as how to live a better life, or how to lose weight, how to make your baby sleep better, how to cook chicken curry, etc.

My grandparents and great-grandparents took great pains to Americanize themselves once they arrived in New York, at the loss of language and customs. They tried so hard to fit in that they lost their original voice. Luckily my grandma passed down her many great recipes for traditional Italian meals that her mother taught her, and I will always have their stories. In the interest of retaining the original voice of a community, one must learn their different inherent wisdoms and stories. Story-telling is a vital form of cultural preservation.

Cittaslow is a movement growing from Italy throughout the globe. It takes the main principles of the Slow Food movement and applies them to the city infrastructure.

"We are looking for towns where people are still curious about times past, towns rich in theatres, squares, cafes, workshops, restaurants and spiritual places, towns with untouched landscapes and fascinating craftsmen, where people are still aware of the slow passing of the seasons, marked by genuine products, respecting tastes, health and spontaneous customs...." Original Cittaslow Manifesto

There are 50 goals and principles that each Cittaslow town works to achieve, and a rigorous application process to become designated as a Cittaslow town. The only town in the United States so far is Sonoma Valley, California (according to Wikipedia). The main aims of the movement are to improve quality of life, resist homogenization, and protect the environment. Gosh, I would love to live in one of these towns.

Presentation from our last Directed Research class

For some reason, I felt it was important to narrow down my thesis topic to focus on tourism for my last DR class. I've since completely changed my interests, but it is still fascinating how dependent we are on maps to guide us in a new place. If one point on a map is omitted, then we don't have the knowledge and have a very small chance of experiencing that place. With different approaches to mapping, designers can completely transform the experience of a place for visitors and residents. Christian Nold created a fascinating internet-based project where people wore sensors that recorded their response to different surroundings on a map, and they were able to write in their personal annotation for that place. He created one for many different cities, but here is the East Paris Emotion Map. Based on the feedback I received from the presentation, a potential thesis topic would focus on how we as designers can change the perception of a neighborhood. Also, what is the difference between the expectations of a place and the actual experience once you arrive?

A snippet from the presentation:

Traditional notions of tourism promote the idea of human circulation as a commodity, guiding tourists from one place of consumption to the next. This leads to the trivialization of place and the dilution of culture, because the culture itself becomes the commodity to be consumed. The true discovery of a city is found in-between the typical tourist attractions; for example, one doesn't experience Paris at the Eiffel tower but among the myriad streets and neighborhoods along the way.

Homogenization of our cities is a significant problem that decreases value of all new cultural artifacts and degrades the historical value of a place. Designers have the ability to tell the story of a place, and to create enjoyment in the casual encounter of a city for tourists and residents alike. Our surroundings provide valuable references to natural organization, pattern and form, and sensitivity to these visual cues can provide a valuable connection to place in design solutions.

Traditional approaches to tourism and place branding cause a lack of connection to the communities we visit because of the belief in culture as a commodity to consume. The speed and acculturation of globalization leads to dilution of culture and the trivialization of place.

This is the skeleton outline for the written paper that I presented in class (mostly topics for further research):

1. Globalization
  A. Tourism
  B. Place Branding
  C. Online communities
2. Mapping
  A. Psychogeography
  B. Crowd-sourced mapping
3. Forms in our surroundings
  A. Perception and visual intelligence
  B. Application to design
4. Embodied Communication
  A. Ethnography
  B. Survey Research
  C. Conversation
5. Use Communities
  A. For tourists (car/bike sharing)
  B. For residents (office space, tools)
6. Localization
  A. Art Centers/Residencies
  B. Craft Fairs and other Events
  C. Branding of local businesses
  D. Slow Cities