Typography

An article in the age on the typefaces used for the american election.
How important type is in setting a tone of voice.

Link

Lecture 5

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Lecture 5

It is interesting to note that the colour of each of the 6 thinking hats relates psychologically to the function of each hat, black (negative) yellow (positive), red (emotion) etc. it is interesting to query where these preconceived ideas of colour come from.

I remember a speaker at the agideas conference talk about the idea of creativity in children, 'As a child we paint in rainbow'.
There are no rules or pre conceived ideas as to what we are producing visually as children, a bird can be pink and the sky can be green. As we grow up however we are told that the sky is blue, therefore it we should colour it blue. We are made to believe that in order to depict something correctly or truthfully, it must must apear exactly as it does in real life.

As someone who is red/green colour-blind, my visual interpretation of these two colours clearly differs from that of 'normal' people. So I often find myself asking what is the true colour of an object and by who's standards is that colour determined? Is what im seeing wrong or just different?

Image reference: here

Lecture 5

Fuzzy Logic
When there is no clear definition of black and white, we are left with a field of grey.
It’s this ambiguity in design that I love – I often consider the conflict between client and designer, that if we as designers can really design something without adding our own prejudices or personal attitudes. We dedicate a period of our lives (and emotion) to a design and will often argue the opinions of the client to ensure the ‘integrity’ of the design is kept, but is the integrity we are fighting for; the design and its effectiveness or our own preferential view of how the outcome should appear?

Lecture 4

I thought this image showed a contradiction of attitude. The natural beauty of the tree contrasts perfectly with that of the unemotional sign. The two suggest an unnatural co-existence, with one responsible for the demise of the other – these two object also reflect the current social issues of global warming and the ‘peak oil’ fuel crisis that we face today.

Lecture 4

Permaculture

While walking through collingwood gardens, I found this great community vege patch at the collingwood childrens farm, not unlike the one set up in StKilda (accross the road from Luna Park). What is great about this setup however is the idea of community and education. I think that it is important to educate children in relation to these issues.

There was a campaign launched around this concept (helped by french child psychologist G. Clotaire Rapaille (mentioned below)) that in order to introduce coffee into Japan (who are a huge target market, but have always been heavy tea drinkers and didn't like the bitter taste of coffee) they would have to begin their focus on children, so that when they were the right age to start spending their money - coffee was as common place as tea.

It is this line of thinking that I believe needs to be applied to things like permaculture and water saving. The problem with our aging society is that these are the people (and I am making an assumption) who are unwilling to change, that just assume they won't make the difference and therefore don't try. It is the children we need to be targeting. - Think of the children.

Lecture 4

Melbourne skyline

Every city in the world has an identity and that identity is often represented by its skyline.

While working on a tender for urban planning in Dubai - I was discussing the concept of melbourne's skyline with a city planner.
It arose that one of the major issues with dubai as a city, was its lack of identity. That all the buildings being produced, no matter how amazing, where not set up in a structured way and this was distorting to the cities skyline. I was told that a skyline needs to appear highest in the city centre, and as you move out to the suburbs that the buildings need to become smaller. There are even building height regulations currently in place to protect the visual appearance of the Melbourne's skyline.

I think it is these aesthetics that become trivial when looking at a country like Cuba. They no longer worry about 'branding' their city but instead worrying about the people that live within it. As our population grows, we may need to consider the idea of multiple CBD's in order to minimise population issues.

Lecture 3

Phobia

Eating or swallowing or of being eaten- Phagophobia.

A whole list dedicated to different phobias- link

Lecture 3

It was discussed that the idea of oneself is fluid - it changes as we age.

"And remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
– Confucius

Lecture 3

r-evolution

While it should be the other way around, technology tends to dictate the way in which we live our lives. Will it be humans that evolve and adapt to technology (ie. the sedentary person as suggested in these pictures) with stronger bums and short eye sight or will the technology evolve to suit our needs?
Im also curious as to how many years it will take before women will be born with no hair on their legs - keep helping the evolutionary process.

Link – evolution
Link – TDK

Lecture 3

Critical Characteristics and the Irreducible Knee Joint

This is a good article on the theory of evolution over the knee joint. Written by Stuart Burgess.

It questions the theory of evolution to an extent. As the knee 'seperates' us from other animals, there is no sign in history
to show the evolution of the knee. One day we didn't have it, the next we did. And given the complexity of its design - there should be some evolutionary steps to reach this point.

Link

Lecture 3

I thought i would plug a book here – "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps" by Barbara and Allan Pease. It is all about these innate thoughts, but it puts them into terms of everyday life and the reasons why we do certain things. link

Lecture 3

Reptilian Desires

Another link to a famous french child psychologist G. Clotaire Rapaille who has worked with the concept of innate thinking.

Really interesting stuff.

Lecture 2

The Persuaders

A link about cultural marketing in the US - related to the topics discussed by Allan Whitfield on monday.

Lecture 2

An A5 105page book for Jellis Craig that comes out every week to advertise new houses on the market.
Due to the frequency with which this type of informatioin needs to be changed, I would have assumed that online would be a far better medium with which to express the content – its advantages of walkthroughs, ability to have more images including floor plans and larger written content would seem like a positive solution.

Do not throw out reusable paper products

Europe, Japan and North America, home to just 20% of the world's population between them, swallow up 63% of all paper and cardboard produced. Consumption of these products is growing relentlessly: the richest countries use 3 times more of it today that in the 1960s. Over the next decade, the volume of paper used worldwide could grow by 40%.

Anne Jankéliowitch, Ariel Dekovic & Paula Tevis –
365 ways to save the earth

Lecture 2

Design By Nature

Client: British Telecom Phonebooks, UK

'British Telecom manufacture 24 million telephone directories each year, consuming around 80,000 trees'. Colin Banks and John Miles were given the challenge to redesign the British Telecom phonebooks to reduce resource usage and enhance legibility and functionality. By reducing the typeface, including reducing the space of each letter and the spaces beteeen words a saving of 8% space was achieved, whilst further savings were achieved by increasing the columns from 3 to 4 per page. This inspired British Telecom's marketing campaign promoting the phonebooks as 10% thinner and the forests as 10% thicker.

All images and text sourced: DbN. For their website see link here

This is a great example of innovative design that fulfills a problem. While today - I don't believe that phone books should be printed at all - and that information can appear on the internet, i still think it is these types of design solutions that need to be exposed to show people how such a simple change can help.

Lecture 2

Night Lights

It seems to be a trend in Australia to leave all the lights on in the shop window, just in case someone walks past at 2 in the morning and decides that they will buy what is in the shop window. I sat here for about 5 minutes and not one person bothered to look in as they walked past. Is this type of thing necessary - should we leave the lights on just because we can afford the bill?

Lecture 2

Guiyu

1. A worker piles discarded aluminum computer casings on the back of a motorized transport at the town of Guiyu in southern China.
2. Workers extract plastics from discarded electronics in Guiyu, a few hours' drive northeast of Hong Kong. The city has 5,500 family workshops handling e-waste.
3. Child amongst the rubble.

E-waste dump of the world, By Tim Johnson
Knight Ridder Newspapers

GUIYU, China — When discarded computers vanish from desktops around the world, they often end up in Guiyu, which may be the electronic-waste capital of the globe.

The city is a sprawling computer slaughterhouse. Some 60,000 laborers toil here at primitive e-waste recycling — if it can be called that — even as the work imperils their health amid a runoff of toxic metals and acids.

Sourced - New York Times online.

I put this in because its not something we tend to think about when we look at technology - were is all this waste actually going when we throw away a 3 year old computer.

Lecture 1

Sustainable strip

A good example of a sustainable garden, the house across the road that has just been built has a fake nature strip - pretty hard to tell from a distance, but up close its obvious and feels like plastic

lecture 1

Getty Images

This is a promo piece for getty images - at first i thought i was pretty cool....I was like wow its user orientated with 4 perforated panels that each open up to reveal 4 panels with a hardcore UV varnish over the top. Its really minimal and the whole back side is just a solid green... I wish our clients had fuckloads of money and would let me make this shit....Then i realised that this thing uses non recyclable stock due to the varnish, has been stuck together with a glue and only shows 3 average shots from their 16 million odd photos - and I concluded that they could have just sent me an email. Oh, and since everyone at the studio is on their mailing list, we got 5 copies.

Lecture 1

Positive environmental signs.

Lecture 1

Traffic Pollution

It occurred to me that if everyone going into the city, work etc. has to move their car at either a 1, 2 or 3 hour interval every day from 9am until 6pm, and that this kind of thing happens in every suburb and state in Australia and all over the world, that simply by moving our cars from one parking space to another in order to avoid a fine is worse for our environment than if parking fines were abolished to save people from having to move their cars.

But then no one would ever get a park and if we all road a bike or caught public transport, then i guess this wouldn't be an issue.

Choose your materials wisely

"A recent study showed that if 10 million office workers were to use one less staple a day, replacing it with a paper clip, 120 tonnes of steel would be saved in one year. Every tonne of recycled steel packaging saves 1.5 tonnes of iron ore, 0.5 tonnes of coal, 40 percent of the water required in production, and 75 percent of the energy needed to produce steel from virgin material."

Anne Jankéliowitch, Ariel Dekovic & Paula Tevis –

365 ways to save the earth

Lecture 1

Metcard

Metcard ticketing system wastage.

My collection of metcards from the last two years.

+ a recent article about the proposed systems possible 

failure to be implemented on time (sunday age 2/3/08).

Melbourne transport is shit.

I started collecting these when i realised that they had no other function and couldn't actually be recycled - For a project during my industry placement year - our group designed a new ticketing system based on the current system used Honk Kong. The new system proposed in Australia is similar although not nearly along the same scope and will probably be outdated in the next 5 years.

Lecture 1

Paper Lover

This is a great little PDF a friend found a few years ago with facts and figures in it about paper. It was one of the initial pieces I ever read that made me consider design with the environment in mind.

This formed the basis for the second project I produced in my Industy Placement year - a website dedicated to environmentally friendly design, including tips for students, good practice approaches, influential examples of practicing designers and a forum for discussion on the issues.

If anyone is interested, here is the link

Lecture 1

lovely as a tree
Paper and print issues - another good link that i found in my searches for concepts on sustainable/green design.

website link

Recycle paper

"For many of us, the idea of recycled paper is associated with that of saving trees. However, this process allows us also to save water and energy, which are equally precious resources, and to reduce pollution. Every tonne of recycled paper saves 17 trees, 20,000 litres of water, and the energy equivalent of 1,000 litres of oil.

Today, less than 15% of the paper used in offices is recycled."

Anne Jankéliowitch, Ariel Dekovic & Paula Tevis – 

365 ways to save the earth

Sustainable

Able to be maintained at a certian rate or level

•Ecology (esp. of development, exploitation, or agriculture) 

conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources.

Derivatives

Sustainability – noun