Final Reflections

This blog has become a compendium of thinking, specifically, how I filter incoming information and process it, creating snippets of imagery and words to use in my work. I tend to remember quotes, or parts of them, and they rattle around in my head while I go about the day until I see something that will bring one of them jumping up to attention, going, “See, that’s what I’m talking about!” I do tend to anthropomorphize words, or the visualization of them in letters at least. Letters have such presence and personality and I tend to wrap my design around them. For me, without letters, there would be no design. The book that has resulted is a collection of words that like, and how I happened to interpret and re-present them. Because everything we create is a re-presentation of something else.

Found Paper

Random pieces of paper collected on a walk in the neighborhood. Discarded paper always seems to me like precious artifacts of an unknown life. It's fun to imagine what importance these pieces of paper held to their previous owners and what misadventures occurred for them to get lost.

“Do not be surprised if the poetic emerges from deep within the bowels of the ordinary.” Nice typography (at least in the title) and elegant graphic elements on a mundane scheduling document.

“Travel to the edge of anything and the path becomes much more seductive than the noted destination.” Collecting and collaging is the fun part. Finding the connections among the pieces (they are there, or at least can be imagined) is the breaking away from process.

“Nurture an appreciation of the mundane.” Again, the unnoticed elements make life beautiful, like this piece of paper that has been textured by being dragged over the pavement again and again.

Context and added value

I'm focusing on the ideas of context as well as details that enhance the context. When I wrote down a conversation a few weeks back, I wasn't able to transcribe every word, so the statements don't make any sense when read out of context. When you're listening to a conversation and you miss a few words, you understand that there was information that would validate what you did hear, as well as nonverbal communication. When viewed as purely written statements, there is something missing that would help validate it further. The context and the supporting details go hand-in-hand. There is an added element in an interaction that is lacking in a transcription, that is why a screenplay is so much different than watching the actual drama being enacted. There is "added value" in the enacted version.

#9 Case of Curiosities (Modified)

Original instructions for this exploration are to collect objects that I do not understand or have no meaning for. I modified this to fit better with the overall theme of my project, which seems to be focusing on the things that seem to pull everything together. So I documented items that, if they were not available, would create problems for us and whose absences would be most noticeable. I've also linked those items to this weeks reading from Debating Good.


“The most remarkable feature of the modern workplace has nothing to do with computers, automation and gloabalisation. It lies in the widely-held belief that work should make us happy.” ...Aristotle crucially identified happiness as an end in iteslef, and the ultimate goal of human pursuits. He held that it is natural to humans to seek happiness and fundamental to how they make choices in life. This is why happiness is crucial to ethics. Is work the key to happiness? Or is happiness the key to ethics?


“How might designers stay true to their core beliefs and concerns while being tolerant and open to the views of others?” We should shed light on all ideas.


“Modernism advocates aesthetic neutrality.” Should we set ourselves to Medium?


"Design should be a facilitator in conveying messages, but should not be part of the message itself." The tea is the message, the mug is the design.

The Virtues of Failure

This is written by Donald M. Murray, Pulitzer Prize winner, and is excerpted from The Boston Globe, date unknown:

The virtues of failure are many, but the most important are:
• Failure allows escape. I spent a night trying to figure out how to escape a hated job on Time magazine. The next morning I was fired. Problem solved.

• Failure stimulates creativity. We are problem solving animals, and each failure teaches us what doesn't work so we can move toward what does. A failed glue led to Post-it notes.

• Failure encourages risk taking. After you have failed a few times, you learn the world doesn't care, that, in fact, the world was not even watching. It becomes natural—and exciting—to take risks.

• Failure helps you discover that what you have lost may not have been what you wanted to keep.

• Failure erases the scorn you once felt for others who failed. In its place comes empathy, compassion, even respect.

• Failure motivates.

When Murray was asked what he taught as a professor, he usually answered, “Failure. What we cannot do reveals what we can do.”

Fair(ey's) Use

After reading about the controversy surrounding the use of a copyrighted photograph as the basis of Shephard Fairey's Obama illustration, I think that in this case he was within the fair use. The AP has implied that he used the entire photograph, when we can see that he obviously didn't. The photograph was not reproduced pixel for pixel. Also, the photo just happened to capture one moment of Obama's posture, which we've seen in countless other depictions of him, including photo and video. Obama always has that chin-lifted, I'm-your-saviour look on his face. So if someone who recorded a video of Obama pulled a still of him in the same posture, would the videographer have the same claim as the photographer in question? I understand that Fairey has acknowledged the use of a particular image as reference, but there is really nothing unique about that image when viewed in the rather overwhelming amount of Obama images that we are drowing in every day. I think Fairey's goal was to capture the essence of Obama's attitude, which he did while using a particular photograph as a reference.

One point regarding the use of the advertisement on the Esquire cover: If it was Bush's face which the ad was cut out of, people would either be thrilled at the "desecration" or wouldn't care. There seems to be a one-sidedness to the majority of the design community's thinking.

"If we believe in freedom of speech, then shouldn't we encourage the representation of a diversity of views—even if we don't always agree with them?" (Debating Good)

Along with the media, graphic designers have massive influence over what the populace sees and thinks, so it's interesting to think about the effect this has on shaping popular opinion, including our own.

The following quote was on Mina Gomez's blog, I'm not sure if she wrote it or if it came from somewhere, but I think it is inspiring.

Any activity becomes creative—it is the by-product of good expectations.

#8, #46 and #47 Cracks, Textures, Stains and the Spaces Between

Today Polly handed us a description of the final product of our experience-making. It was titled: making sense of the space between things. This is such a coincidence (a connection??) because, while I was completing my most recent experience, I said to my companion: “It’s not the big things that are interesting to look at, it’s the cracks and the spaces between things that are visually interesting and that make you want to come back to them again and again.” I said this while taking photos of cracks and crevices, stains, rusty metal, graffiti, puddles and odd shapes and objects. I truly believe that it’s the spaces in between (in both objects and ideas) and the elements that you don't usually notice that provide the spark that brings something to life. 

“...transitions from simple to complex are a key consideration in the rhythm of feeling. In this sixth Law [of simplicity], we ask what happens between the beats, and question where you might be in the progress of the song. Once you have properly situated yourself, you're completely free to get lost in the rhythm.”—John Maeda states in The Laws of Simplicity

#49 Postscript

Upon re-reading the Postscript to #36, I’ve discovered a connection between that experience (metaphor-based) and this one (#49, context based): that stories create context and context creates meaning:

“What these efforts reveal is a hunger for what stories can provide—a context enriched by emotion, a deeper understanding of how we fit in and why that truly matters.”

#49(b) Found Words (books)

As a parallel to my documented conversation, I went to the library and randomly pulled books off the shelf. Without reading the synopsis, I photographed the book, then opened randomly to a page and found an excerpt that seemed to resonate with me. From that one excerpt I tried to deduce what the book was about. I found that in most cases, I did get a general idea of the overall story and/or tone of the book, as I discovered from subsequently reading the synopsis. I then wrote down an excerpt from the synopsis on the reverse side of the card. I pulled out story excerpts and synopses randomly from different books and matched them up. For every random excerpt, I was able to find a plausible match to a synopsis from a completely different book. Similarities also exist in the cover designs, particularly in use of brilliant color, especially yellows. Does brilliant yellow capture the essence of both of these stories? This experiment further exemplifies the importance of context for both visual and verbal meaning. We accept what we see or are told in the context in which it is presented. 

Excerpt from The Good Works of Ayela Linde, by Charlotte Forbes:

“She was a night clerk at the Lemon Tree Inn before she met me, and used to bring him coffee from Cafe du Monde. That gave father something to go on about, thinking that it was some common ground they shared, the coffee, the beignets, the French Quarter.”

finds a connection with Gabriel’s Gift, by Hanif Kureishi, both stories center around making personal connections with other people as well as the father figure:

“Gabriel’s father, a washed-up rock musician, has been chucked out of the house. . .Gabriel dreams of being an artist. He finds solace and guidance through a mysterious connection to his deceased twin brother Archie, and his own knack for producing real objects simply by drawing them.”

#49(a) Found Words (conversation)

Instructions for this experience are to document an overheard conversation, or, alternately, to collect words that you find interesting. I did both. I sat in a cafe and wrote down all the snippets of conversation that I overheard. I was sitting next to three women, all blond socialite-types, who were having a rather insubstantial conversation, which to them took on the importance of world diplomacy. I wrote for about an hour, documenting their charitable tendencies and concern for feral cats. I wasn’t able to write everything, since a lot of what they said was muffled or drowned-out by ambient noise. So I ended up getting about every other statement. In addition, What I realized upon reading the transcript was that taken out of context, the statements became meaningless collections of words; in order to give them meaning, I paired them with ambiguous imagery that once taken out of their context would also lose their inherent meaning. In this way, new meanings and connections were made.

Some additional statements, or snippets of such:

•  ...you, what do you do? Who are you? Who do you represent?

•  Yeah, No. But, umm.

•  He blew up, he galloped, he was off the track.

•  We are exactly where we are.

•  I'm so attached to this it kind of scares me.

•  Do I need a knife and fork or do I need...

•  It was so real, it was like I was on a TV show. [My personal favorite]

Postscript to #36

The following quotes seem to sum up my storytelling experience with Stringman. I observed that he has qualities that I would like to develop further in myself, so these excerpts lead me to believe that Stringman is a metaphor for me:

“Story represents a pathway to understanding that doesn’t run through the left side of the brain. We can see this yearning for self-knowledge through stories in many places—in the astonishingly popular “scrap booking” movement, where people assemble the artifacts of their daily lives into narratives to tell the world and maybe themselves, who they are and what they’re about, and in the surging popularity of genealogy as millions search the Web to piece together their family histories.

What these efforts reveal is a hunger for what stories can provide—a context enriched by emotion, a deeper understanding of how we fit in and why that truly matters.”

“The Western tradition . . . has excluded metaphor from the domain of reason,” writes prominent linguist George Lakoff. Metaphor is often considered ornamentation—the stuff of poets and frilly sorts, flowery words designed to perfume the ordinary or unpleasant. In fact, metaphor is central to reason—because as Lakoff writes, “Human thought processes are largely metaphorical.”
—A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink

“Everything you create is a representation of something else; in this sense, everything you create is enriched by metaphor.”
—Twyla Tharp

Exploration #36: The Truth About Inanimate Objects

I completed exploration #1 on Monday, Jan. 16. Instructions are to capture the hidden life of inanimate objects found in the world. What do they do when no one’s around? Track their social interactions. I also combined this exploration with “Found Paper.” I'll keep this as an ongoing exploration and combine it with others that I undertake.

I went out into my neighborhood to look for items of interest. There is a vacant lot, or more like a vacant street full of lots behind my house, so I thought that would be ripe for harvesting. 

Among other random bits of trash, I found a piece of plastic twine knotted into what resembled a figure. This “Stringman” seemed to have a life of his own. I imagined him to be a very carefree kind of guy, just grooving along, tying and untying himself as the moment requires. He is free from worry and delights in creating happiness in others.