Perpenduum » Books

ALEX WIPPERFÜRTH, Thursday, May 21st at Stanford University

David Goligorsky — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:16:17 +0000

The next speaker in the David H. Liu Lecture Series in Design at Stanford is Alex Wipperfürth.

The talk will be at 8:00pm on Thursday, May 21st, 2009. It will be in (Braun Hall, Building 320) in Room 105 at Stanford University. Hope to see you there!

Wipperfürth is a partner at Dial House in San Francisco. He is the author of Brand Hijack, and upcoming books, The Co-Creation Myth and The Fringe Manifesto. Dial House is part think-tank and part creative hot shop. The client list is diverse: from fringe (Napster, Doc Martens, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Jones Soda, Red Stripe, Altoids) to cutting edge (Current TV, New Yorker Magazine) to blue chip (Diageo, IBM, P&G/Clorox, Toyota, Coca-Cola). Projects range from innovative strategy, innovative research, meaningful creative expressions with DIY production to brand innovation. In earlier work, Wipperfürth had interviewed actual cult members and people in "consumer cults" (like Apple or Harley-Davidson fanatics) and made fascinating insights about their similarities.

Dev Patnaik book launch at Stanford University’s d.school

David Goligorsky — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:47:57 +0000

On May 6th, Stanford’s d.school is hosting a book launch lecture and reception for Dev Patnaik’s Wired to Care. The book explores the role of empathy and human-centric design principles for driving successful business practice and strategy. Dev Patnaik is an alum of the Stanford Product Design program, founder/principal at Jump Associates, and adjunct professor at Stanford University. I had the pleasure of being in his Needfinding class… one of the results of this class included a drum machine for dogs using the Arduino platform, some piezoelectric sensors, Ardrumo, Garage Band, a MIDI library, and a speaker output. All controlled by a border collie.

RSVP for the launch by May 4th. Lecture and reception at the d.school from 7:00-9:00pm on May 6th.

DR. JON CAGAN, This Monday at Stanford University!

David Goligorsky — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:19:10 +0000

The next speaker in the David H. Liu Lecture Series in Design at Stanford is Dr. Jon Cagan.

Dr. Cagan is the director of Carnegie Mellon University’s graduate program in Product Development and a distinguished professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering. Cagan has written two fantastic books on the topic of product development: Creating Breakthrough Products and The Design of Things to Come. Both books skillfully navigate the arc from the fuzzy front end of product development all the way up to program approval. The texts also bridge the chasm between qualitative and quantitative values in a way that is actually understandable. His Liu Lecture will be about the emerging research in the creative Design process and the role of emotion in product usage.

The talk will be at 8:00pm on Monday, May 4th, 2009. It will be in Braun Hall (Building 320) in Room 105. Hope to see you there!

Here’s the abstract:

Emerging research is uncovering the cognitive basis of creative design and the emotional basis of product usage. This talk will present studies in both of these areas. From the perspective of how designers create innovative solutions, we will look at a series of cognitive studies that uncover how designers utilize both useful and misleading information while carrying open goals of unsolved design problems. From the perspective of the person using the product, emotion plays a critical role. We will examine new methods to capture aesthetic preferences and agent-based computational tools that use those preferences to guide generation of preferred design forms.

Happy Birthday (yesterday) Hemingway!

David Goligorsky — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:25:09 +0000

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois on July 21st, 1899. The epitome of a Gentleman with few (albeit glaring) exceptions.

“Here’s a taxidermist’s,” Bill said. “Want to buy anything? Nice stuffed dog?”

“Come on,” I said. “You’re pie-eyed.”

“Pretty nice stuffed dogs,” Bill said. “Certainly brighten up your flat.”

“Come on.”

“Just one stuffed dog. I can take ‘em or leave ‘em alone. But listen, Jake. Just one stuffed dog.”

“Come on.”

“Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.”

“We’ll get one on the way back.”

“All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.”

We went on.

The Sun Also Rises

If you were in Key West, Florida, I hope you had a chance to stop by the Sloppy Joe’s Hemingway Look-Alike Contest, now in it’s 28th year.

bauhaus abolished capital letters

David Goligorsky — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:05:02 +0000

at the end of 1925, the bauhaus abolished capital letters in all their printed materials. the bottom of each piece of bauhaus paper read:

“we only use small characters because it saves time. moreover, why have 2 alphabets when one will do? why write capitals if we cannot speak capitals?”

Li Edelkoort on the future of design

David Goligorsky — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:00:29 +0000

In an introduction to Kenya Hara’s Designing Design, the chairwoman of the Design Academy Eindhoven, Li Edelkoort, writes a monumental declaration of the future of design, which I find extremely relevant and valid:

[…] the major movement of the future will merge everything that stands in stark contrast today: young and old, minimal and decorative, healthy and naughty, ecology and technology, craft and industry, natural and synthetic, abstraction and narrative.

Raymond Loewy “Never Leave Well Enough Alone”

David Goligorsky — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:10:05 +0000

Raymond Loewy was one of the founding fathers of industrial design (along with Walter Dorwin Teague and Henry Dreyfuss) and his work has doubtlessly had a place in the lives of nearly every American. In the heyday of Raymond Loewy Associates, the company was working on products, brand identities, transportation, and other fields. His graphic design has become familiar in the logos for Shell, US Postal Service, International Harvester, the packaging for Lucky Strike cigarettes, and others. Designs were made for the interior of the Concorde supersonic passenger aircraft as well as Air Force One. His offices even designed cars for Studebaker and locomotives for Pennsylvania Rail Road. Suffice it to say that the list of high profile contracts with Raymond Loewy Associates is intimidating. Furthermore, the precedents set by Loewy’s work have defined an era of product design and his indirect influence is apparent in today’s best products.

Loewy was anything but modest. He was something of a dandy and terribly egocentric, so it is no wonder that he wrote an autobiography. The book is entitled Never Leave Well Enough Alone. In it, he describes his youth in France and his engagement in World War I, where he was a captain and earned seven medals and four citations for action in combat. At a point, he had dug a trench where he was stationed for some time. He had elaborately furnished the dugout with things from wrecked houses including chairs, red carped, a mirror, flowered wallpaper, drapes, and tufted pillows. He and a friend even planted geraniums. Loewy notes that he was displeased with the government issue military trousers, so he made his own.

I enjoyed going into action as a well-dressed combatant

Raymond Loewy’s storytelling is quite amusing and I most enjoyed his reminiscing on childhood days. His recollections are vivid and engaging and offer the reader a humanizing view of the design legend. I must say that the book is sparse in actually discussing design, although I enjoyed his statement that

Industrial design as far as I am concerned is 25 per cent inspiration and 75 per cent transportation.

The book is certainly worth a look. It’s light and pleasant reading and by the end you will feel like Raymond’s chum.