Yesterday was the culmination of ME200 – a class at Stanford concerned with the historical significance of things. With about 30 students last term Reilly (Brennan), Jon (Feiber) David (Kelley), and I explored how cars connect with history. The objective – to judge which of the cars entered for the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance was…
design matters
Tim Brown on LEGO and Vermeer | Design Thinking
I was quite impressed with the Lego movie and its celebration of creative play. Tim Brown thinks the same [Link] and makes some great connections with Tim’s Vermeer – the documentary that challenges our assumptions about the relationship between art and technology. (And following on David Hockney’s insistence that artists regularly used technical instruments –…
in design there’s never a clean slate
A thoughtful piece recently from Vlad Savov in The Verge – Retrovolution: mining the past to make the future. Anders Warming doesn’t like the word “retro.” Ever since taking over as Mini’s chief of design in 2010, Warming has had to wrestle with the term’s meaning and its application to his company’s cars. Because it…
ruins – thoughts on the aesthetic
An exhibition currently at the Tate in London is exploring British images of ruin since the 18th century. Ruin Lust, an exhibition at Tate Britain from 4 March 2014, offers a guide to the mournful, thrilling, comic and perverse uses of ruins in art from the seventeenth century to the present day. The exhibition is…
Lego movie and the maker movement
The Lego movie – just another merchandizing effort? A bit more than this, I think. Emmet, an ordinary construction worker, meets up with the Master Builders to combat big business who want everything locked down and controlled in their Lego world. Emmet discovers the maker in all of us. I liked the message – a…
Stanford Daily | Top 10: Classes
The Stanford Daily, the venerable student-run newspaper, has included my design class (An archaeology of design – ten things [Link]) among Stanford’s top 10 [Link] – “the courses you have to take before you graduate”. It’s great to get this recognition, and from the students (nearly a third of Stanford undergrads sign up). What is…
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