Monthly Archives: November, 2006
Texture and orientation
The traditional role of design, perhaps, is to discover and express meaningful differences, which make the benefits and unique qualities of any object apparent. In this sense, design may become a conduit for establishing semantic connections between objects by expressing their essence, their identity.
From data collection to data interpretation
As Adam Richardson of Frog Design has pointed out, we are moving from an information age into a recommendation age. What does this mean? As we are faced with making choices from an ever increasing array of options, we seek trusted sources to help us make better decisions. The information itself is simply becoming too [...]
Urban constants and variables
The urban environment is a container of information. Anything can be treated as information, in as far as it is quantifiable.
As Aldo Rossi points out in The Architecture of the City, the city consists of Urban Artifacts, the constants in the changing urban fabric. As an adaptive construct, the city contains both constants and variables. [...]
Visual rhetoric and the idea
The design of information can be understood as visual rhetoric. While often used in the pejorative sense, rhetoric means the art of speech and writing. As Hugues C. Boekraad writes in his essay in Copy Proof, rhetoric lessens or erases the distance between the message and the recipient. That is what communication design, at least [...]
Punctuated moments
There are moments when a mundane street scene is interrupted in an unexpected way, and tension is created through the collision of disparate geometries. These are what I think of as punctuated moments. They happen when one intent collides with another intent or parameter, resulting in a manifestation of compromise.
Philosophically, I think of these moments [...]