kip/bot/blog

I’m becoming a big fan of criticism, at times enjoying how people write about other people’s work even more than consuming the work directly.

From today’s NY Times, a review of DJ Tiesto’s show in NYC, with some background description of what means this trance:

Virtually unchanged since the 1990s, trance is basically a gargantuan boom-chicka-boom with a steady kick-drum on every beat, and it’s supremely adaptable: euphoric, martial, perky, ominous, indefatigable. A trance D.J. set cycles through stark beats, pushy synthesizer lines, pop vocals and song remixes, and passages in which the beat drops away and synthesizer chords hover for a reverential moment, awaiting the next round of thumping propulsion.

I’m still uncomfortable at the rush to make everyone designers when we mostly understand design as styling, but Brown makes some great points and highlights things missing from many design thinking talks:

- design has been, and should be again, about big things

- design has its routes in system, systemic, or integrative thinking (it’s pulling together threads in addition to polishing the stone)

- design should start with humans.

The last I would amend on two fronts. First, design can start with technology (”what can I do with this nifty thing?”) so long as it gets grounded in human needs. I’m hoping Brown doesn’t mean it as an either/or but is overmessaging this part as a pendulum swing. Second, I might say instead that design should map back to human needs and be inspired by them. Starting with humans could force us into a habit of asking people what they want when they don’t know the possibilities.

Just posting a poem that came to mind last night . . .

Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

It’s got a look (or maybe it’s the music):

I’m in the middle of several threads with friends, co-workers, former co-workers, and the voices in my head about what to do with the on-again off-again me-che (meme + cliche, pron me-SHAY) of design thinking. Having just read Designful Company with others, I felt that the book and the me-che of design thinking makes it far too easy to say we’re all deisgners, or that a couple articles will help us do design thinking. I can’t resist quoting Dr Malcolm in Jurassic Park:

I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility… for it.

So, I’m thinking, instead of thinking about design thinking, why not learn something about design? I’m not suggesting a career change, or even a massive effort to learn some new tools or software. Rather, read some books that help people understand the DNA, rhythm, and thought patterns of a design discipline. Dig deeper into a craft and see what makes it tick.

I just love 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School. It’s quite literally a whole series of things — grand and trivial, obvious and subtle — that one would learn in architecture school. And, like all great books that dive deep into a specific area of expertise, it finds universal truths or univerally useful ideas. Examples:

“Being process-oriented, not product-driven, is the most important and difficult skill for a designer to develop” — this emphasizes the importance of understanding the problem and putting the time into it, moving between concept- and detail-levels of the work, understanding the value of dead-ends and near-misses.

If you can’t explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms that she understands, you don’t know your subject well enough — emphasis mine. The ability to communicate simply and clearly is something we all praise (and that I’ve praised here) or at least give lip service to. What I love about this is that it places the onus on the person — if you can’t do it, you’re not that good at it.

A good building reveals different things about itself when viewed from different distances — much better than a big idea, how about having a rich idea?

Less is more
Less is a bore — yeah, yeah, not a news flash, but putting them on consecutive pages forces one to recognize that they are both truths and then think deeper about how and when to exercise them. Typically, we use the first to reflexively justify cutting something.

True architectural style does not come from a conscious effort to create a particular look. It results obliquely - even accidentally - out of a holistic process. — it results obliquely!

Roll your drawings for transport or storage with the image side facing bold — from the lofty to the mundane, but useful.

On the parti:

Some will argue that an ideal parti is wholly inclusive — that it informs every aspect of a building from its overall configuration and structural system to the shape of the doorknobs. others believe that a perfect parti is neither attainable nor desirable.

Music to the ears of a person who is sick of the nattering insistence on having a ‘big idea’ when designing a large, complex, rich experience.

Finally, my personal favorite, scanned directly:

Be careful of your design accents, or be careful of trying to create meaningful spaces where there aren’t any.

Love it.

For those who don’t remember the Dick Van Dyke Show (or Mary Tyler Moore before her show) or UHF:

Tomorrow is National Punctuation Day. For the organizers of this day, it is an opportunity to ritually revisit Strunk & White, write notes in a leisurely well-punctuated fashion, and correct all those signs store owners mispunctuate and brazenly hang in their windows. (ex. Customers “ONLY” can use our dryers).

This is also a chance to take up pet punctuation peeves. I will be encouraging people to resume use of the serial comma. Others may take up the cudgels against the semi-colon, that mark despised by Kurt Vonnegut, who warned anyone against using them: “they are transvestite herm-aphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

We have the classic line from Picasso about artists being people who manage to hold on to their childhood curiosity, energy, and willingness to experiment. We sometimes connect them to toys and play (MAKE Magazine has the “Permission to Play” t-shirt). This ignite talk takes us into the ________ world of adult Lego fans or __________.

I’m leaving those words blank, cuz I’m not sure this talk demonstrates the value of re-connecting with toys. The speaker doesn’t talk about sparking lateral thinking, improving brain age, the wonders of a refreshed and open mind, or the chance to create. He just really digs it, and he’s amused about the mania that comes with playing with Legos.

Still, he has a great line at the beginning, “the dark ages are the time between you stop playing with Legos as a child and decide as an adult that it’s OK to play with a kid’s toy again.” (One other great moment is when he’s having dinner with a woman from Lego and he describes all “these marketing people who keep asking (in a whiny voice)’aren’t you afraid it will hurt your brand? how do you control your brand?”

A more interesting, or more immediately useful, look at Legos come from the editor of Nuts & Volts and a class he teaches at Harvard Medical School.

I’m starting to think I should start expressing myself in movie and TV bits from now on:

- “Too many notes”
- “A little saucy”
- “Am I here to amuse you?”
- “We’re coming with you!”
- “There is no try. only do.”
- “He’s dead Tom. Nothing you can do to bring him back.”
- “One ping, Vasily, one ping only.”
- “We must give this _______ a wide berth”

Nice Ignite talk (”enlighten us. just be quick about it” by OReilly) about the basics of data visualization. The presenter, Matthias Shapiro, gives some nice conceptual frameworks to work with: pick your metric, ask a specific question, choose the dimensions (time, location, network, color, time).