http://www.design-your-life.org/ Use principles of design to organize and improve your environment at home, at work, and in the world. Ellen and Julia Lupton, 2006. All rights reserved. en-us Monday 21st of July 2008 06:17:20 PM http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1192 It's a matter of personal pride that I avoid specialized kitchen gadgets. My kids, however, fell in love with the spiral apple corer at a friend's house, and we sought it out on the Internet. When you turn the handle, the pierced apple is simultaneously peeled and sliced into a spiral. (Roasting on an open fire is extra.) Children take delight in the apple slinky that this elaborate little machine creates. Its origins are in the nineteenth century, the great age of mechanical kitchen tools, when automation was still fresh, but most food processing still occurred at home. This one resembles the modern remake: This lovely variant looks more like a bicycle: And this one, from the Museum of the Ozarks, must have been designed for ice age apples: I bought mine from the Apple Source, a small business that specializes in apple products. They also sell replacement parts. The apple corer has a big footprint for a single-task item, but for now, I'm letting it live on my counter. The kids are eating a lot of apples, and maybe I'll even learn how to bake. Or ride a bike. Julia Lupton Today at 6:17pm http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1192 http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1191 Lisa Anne Auerbach bills herself as a "Los Angeles based artist and writer," though her newest project, Tract House, is an exhibition at the Contemporary Museum in my home town of Baltimore. Inspired by the Christian self-publishing industry at the Free Tract Society, she decided to commission and distribute her own free tracts, eschewing evangelist themes for such topics as "Eat Sunday Dinner!". (Well, maybe that is kind of evangelist.) The project is an exploration in vernacular print culture, DIY, and the art of the manifesto. Auerbach's own eclectic interests include knitting, cupcakes (especially vegan ones), and sweaters on the small screen (spot appearances made by yarn on TV). An earlier Millennialism, fueled by pamphlets, helped bring down the King of England in the civil wars of the 1640s: The new Millenials are knitting and baking the revolution, it seems. Yesterday, the LA Times published an essay by Lisa on the pamphlet project. At the end of the piece, she described bringing her DIY manifestos to the Free Tract Society. "We shared an interest in the elegant efficiency of the printed word, in the romance of distributing pamphlets, and it didn't seem to matter that our ideas of salvation were not on the same page." Julia Lupton Today at 7:47am http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1191 http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1190 Years ago, we traded in our fancy dining room for a music room, and became a one-table house. Everything happens in the kitchen. But when I need extra flatland, I pull out a folding table from my growing collection. The heavy wood laminate from buffets past has ceded to a light plastic, so I can move them easily myself. I use all three for Passover seders, and just one for most buffets. But folding tables aren't just for food. Ellen is here this week to work on illustrations for our book. We set up a studio for her ... in the music room! We like our folding tables so much, we're putting one on our Table of Contents page. Without the plastic top. Julia Lupton Wednesday at 10:17am http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1190 http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1189 In Putting Meat on the American Table, Roger Horowitz tells the story of chicken's transformation from one of several types of poultry into a "meat" worthy of competing with beef and pork on the American table. By the early 1960's, the chicken war was making modest gains. Thanks to hybridization, the chicken was meatier, tastier, and cheaper. And through new processing protocols, (such as removing heads, feet, and entrails), it had become more attractive and convenient in grocery stores. Yet market researchers kept encountering a certain malaise as they surveyed consumers about why chicken remained in third place. They called this new disorder "chicken fatigue." Chicken, it turned out -- even the new, better, bigger chicken -- was always ... chicken. In 1962, more than 90% of chickens were sold whole: too much for a couple, marketers learned, but not enough for a large family. Pork and beef, on the other hand, came in many cuts as well as pre-cooked forms (bologna, dogs, rinds; bacon, steak, ribs). Chicken got into first place thanks to the processing strategies of Tyson (who brought us nuggets) and the branding strategies of Perdue (who revolutionized cut up and boned birds, processed, dated, branded, and priced right in the plant). "Product differentiation" broke the monotony, and chicken became king on American menus. But is chicken fatigue back? Although its forms appear to have multiplied (sausage, tenders, burgers) and its scenes are ubiquitous (salads, pizzas, wraps), it's still ... chicken. Moreover, it's usually white meat, the darker parts shipped off to Asia, where its deeper flavors are appreciated. The best way to fight contemporary chicken fatigue is ... to eat less of it! We're trying salmon! Tofu! Chickenless caesar! Pasta primavera! And, we serve the bird up whole every once in a while, dark meat and all. But no feet. Illustration by Ellen Lupton. Julia Lupton Jul 12 at 8:31am http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1189 http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1188 Before she composed novels of crystalline devastation, Edith Wharton penned a book on design. Co-authored with the architect Ogden Codman Jr, The Decoration of Houses appeared in 1897 as a proto-minimalist riposte of sorts to the Victorian extravagances of "piling up of heterogeneous ornament, and multiplication of incongruous effects." Looking through the book in preparation for a recent trip to The Mount, the now-imperiled house in the Berkshires built by Wharton in accordance with her design principles, I was struck by the calls for proportion and scale, moderation and symmetry, and form following function. Most salient for us bibliophiles and Professor-types are Wharton's remarks on "the importance of bookbindings as an element in house-decoration": The French architect always preferred to build his book-shelves into niches formed in the thickness of the all, thus utilizing the books as part of his scheme of decoration. There is no doubt that this is not only the most practical, but the most decorative, way of housing any collection of books large enough to be so employed. To adorn the walls of a library, and then conceal their ornamentation by expensive bookcases, is a waste, or rather a misapplication, of effects - always a sin against aesthetic principles. The perfect effect of shelves flush with the walls may be out of reach in your current configuration, but try displaying spines flush with the shelf-edge, and the resulting wallpaper will surely delight. Photo postcard of Wharton's library at The Mount, by Kevin Sprague. Anna Kornbluh Jul 10 at 6:38am http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1188 http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1187 We're all familiar with the way that architecture can play an important role in corporate branding, particularly through the skyscraper, that symbol of modern progress. The Chrysler Building is iconic, and the Woolworth Building has actually outlived its now-defunct brand. Today, companies often see sports stadiums as their best branding opportunities, while developers lease naming rights for hundreds of millions of dollars to finance their ventures. When we think of the Ivy League, we probably elegant brick or stone structures lining hushed quads as much as we think of the ivy that creeps across their facades. And though skylines are often cities' public silhouettes and anchors for tourism campaigns (as well as sources of fascination for artists such as Matteo Pericoli), buildings can construct brand identities for small businesses, rural communities, and non-profit organizations. This kind of branding would fall in between the massive corporate behemoths and an individual house brand such as Studio 28. Case study: the Great Valley Center. Headquartered in Modesto, CA, and working in partnership with the University of California, Merced, the Center's mission is to support "the economic, social, and environmental well-being of California's Great Central Valley." The staff works out of a renovated church that features exquisite interior details like stained glass windows, murals, and a bas-relief art deco design on the risers between stair-steps. People who live or work in Modesto often know of the building, even if they're not familiar with the GVC. But by incorporating photos and information about the renovation into its publicity materials, the GVC is working to tie its corporate image to its physical headquarters. Permanence, heritage, resource-tending, and beauty are some of the values that this branding strategy communicates. Mia McIver Jul 7 at 5:59pm http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1187 http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1186 In The Social Life of Information (2000), John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid diagnosed “tunnel design” as the blinkered focus on a single user outcome, pursued at the cost of a broad analysis of the contexts and communities in which designed things live. They wrote, “We are all, to some extent, designers now.” Their analysis reminded me of our discussions of The User. Although we're unhappy with the behaviorist, instrumentalized bias behind the reigning figure of the human factor in design research, we haven't hit on a good alternative to it, either. Prosumer combines producer and consumer in order to describe markets in which consumers buy goods in order to make their own stuff. (This includes many aspects of D.I.Y.) On the same model: how about usigner, the user as designer? After all, Thomas and John Knoll designed Photoshop for users like me, but I use it to design stuff myself. My practices are too informal, my training too casual, and my profession too distinctive, to count me as a designer. Yet, at least in some contexts and scenarios, I am more than an "end user" of prescribed technologies. I use in order to design. And I design stuff for further use. REFERENCES:John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000). And see also, Ellen on the Designer as Producer and The Birth of the User. Julia Lupton Jul 6 at 9:52am http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1186 http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1185 Here is a cute little pair of slippers that you can make. I was inspired by one of my favorite movie stars -Doris Day and designed these slippers to wear on those lazy days of summer afternoons sipping your chilled ice tea. Enjoy! Link Lisa Ancarrow-Maltby Jul 5 at 8:10pm http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1185 http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1184 This year the kids decided to draw a huge flag in the great loop of our cul de sac. My four gathered chalk and then called out their buddies from the block. For over four hours, a rotating team of young people patiently filled in stars and stripes, taking breaks for water and watermelon. As the sun was setting, their work was complete, and they danced in the street. A nice self-organized festival to celebrate the possibilities of collective action and sidewalk life on this July 4th -- even on a cul de sac! Julia Lupton Jul 5 at 7:02am http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1184 http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1183 At summer's start, I've been spending some time reading up on productivity literature. David Allen's Getting Things Done seems to be the current classic for the business and management crowd; Gina Trapani, queen of Lifehacking, takes a younger, techier approach in Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Life. Both Allen and Trapani talk about the importance of using external storage devices (whether it's a Blackberry or in-boxes) to keep projects organized and off your mind. "Open loops" are anything that still has to be done -- and that frays the edges of your attention with a nagging sense of worry. Although I'm relying increasingly on an electronic calendar to coordinate schedules with my husband, my real organizing work occurs in a series of notebooks, one per project -- an old-fashioned technique borrowed from guys like Leonardo da Vinci and Erasmus of Rotterdam. Featured above is the notebook for the pieces I'm finishing for Design Your Life (the book, not the blog). I usually have about three large notebooks active at any one moment, plus a tiny Moleskin that travels in my purse for random notes and shopping lists -- like this little one that I helped my friend Vivian design using an image from Charley Harper: I've also been using my website, Thinking with Shakespeare, as an organizational tool. Since it's built with Textpattern, a content management system, it's really just a database. Into its simple forms, I dump everything from partly-developed blog entries to interesting links I might need someday. Allen and Trapani's point: storing the loose ends somewhere keeps the current focus cleaner and clearer -- allowing for the elusive miracle of flow. Having beautiful storage is an added plus for me. Julia Lupton Jul 2 at 7:41am http://www.design-your-life.org/blog.php?id=1183