a full week at falvey

thought i'd share some of my notes & thoughts from lectures and films this week at falvey hall. (it's unusual that i go to so many, i kind of felt like i was moving in...)

monday:

byron kim
-monochrome painter. (i loved his skin color studies.)
-interested in the relationship of small to vast. infinitismal to infinite.
-cloud paintings - once a week for seven years. but it's ok to miss a week. and they don't always get done on sunday. sometimes it doesn't happen until thursday.
-sometimes criticism and theory ruins what we have an appreciation for.
-all about elevating detail to status of whole. (privileging.)

brian collins (this guy is brilliant)
-60's. kennedy. "we choose to go to the moon." a story of hope. collective destiny.
-today. bush. "you're either for us or against us." a story of fate. revenge.
-change problem solving to problem making. (seek the issues instead of waiting for some client to come to you.)
-dove campaign for real beauty - about designing a social experience that changed perceptions. allowed dove to become an agent of change in how the media defines beauty. (dove self-esteem fund.)
-bp - beyond petroleum
-everything is about making money. so you might as well be socially concious, too.
-design is hope made visible.
-sva students come to class with two stories - a time you were incredibly happy, and incredibly sad. (emotional charge - grandma heller, target pharmacy prescriptions re-design.)
-what is most personal tends to be most universal.
-aspendesignchallenge.org
-in ghana, children walk 3-5 miles (women) to get water.
-world economic forum, "designing waters future."
-learn who is doing intersting work and why they are doing it.
-read art criticism a lot.
-companies that recognize that they play a larger role in society will be respected by consumers -and in turn make more money.
-get a job. go where you have more energy after the interview than before.
-don't go to a place with a clean desk policy. if they have one, run. you're a fucking designer, you're allowed to make a mess.
-study now, when your brain is flexible. become an encyclopedia of design. it gets harder to memorize when you are older.
-there are very few designers who jump fully formed into talent. (chip kidd is one.)
-if you really want to be extraordinary, you have to spend 10,000 hours on your craft. work you ass off. 9-5 should be 9-12.

tuesday:

trouble the water (fall film series.)
go see it. seriously. (if you live in baltimore, it's showing at the charles for the next week.) the story of hurricaine katrina from the hopeful perspective of people that actually lived through it, and had the premonition to document it through video. it touches on so many huge issues. (and oddly enough, as my brain was attacking each one i kept coming back to education/teaching.)

wednesday:

brilliant simplicity (metropolis magazine.)
-when you are involved in a big thought it brings you out of the mundane. transcendance.
-not just making connections, but unexpected ones.
-the econcomic situation has shifted. maybe people will spot spending time on that stuff (branding/advertising) and will start to research bigger issues with small budgets.
-our nation needs to do more for the funding of ideas. let's go back to privileging invention.
-rise of the citizen journalist/architect. citizen means different things to different people. (what's wrong with powering those other than the elite?)
-starting is a very good word.

friday:

andrew blauvelt (not in falvey, but nonetheless....)
-towards relational design (v.2.0)
-stabilizing shanty towns in tijuana. (adding an element to existing structure.)
-closed/open, ideal/real, reflexive/relational, one/many, observer/participant, use/behavior, prescribe/enable, interative/generative
-creating identity systems allows for it to add and expand over time.
-experimental jetset shirts. appropriated system to use to different ends.
-boy meets girl business cards. answers to questions become system of text.
-designer to author to editor.
-producer to consumer to user (prosumer).
-structuralism to post structuralism to pragmatism.
-popular to vernacular to quotidian.
-iconic to idiomatic to prosaic.
-aesthetic to cultural to social.
-formal to symbolic to programmatic.
-linear to cybernetic to network.
-iterative to variable to generative.
-infinite forms to multiple interpretations to contingent solutions.
-(each one building upon the other, and all still operating at the same time.)
-things today have a diverse range of practices - requires looking philosophically at what might connecting them in processes.
-walker art center inherited custom made matthew carter font system. huge book, not useable. (especially when those people left...)
-guiding process without controlling it.
-"where ____ meets ____" leaving it open and putting it out in the community. "where my foot meets your ass" on bus stop poster.
-60's: control, today: release.