Medatative Motions

    Design is a process, and the process is the best part. In many circumstances, the more repetitive and time consuming the process, the better it can serve the psyche. Meditative processes like the Zenga practices of Zen Buddhist painting require patience, perseverance, and a focused departure from analytical thought. This meditative state of motion is why I design.
     By laboring over repetitive tasks, one has the opportunity to put so much purpose and positive energy into the end product. It is rare that we are able to feel at ease when performing tasks that do not provide instant gratification. By knowing from the onset that a project will take time and require a small series of motions, repeated thousands of times over provides us with an excuse. A reason to slow down, to concentrate on a few simple tools or materials, to drown oneself in the process and learn to appreciate the significance of the current technological climate we live in. We generally do not have to do many tasks by hand anymore, and without this need, it is easy to treat items as dispensable and unremarkable.
    Think about it. Imagine creating that cotton shirt from scratch! Such a tight weave! Such thin fibers! How does one grow cotton? How in the world does one spin those short seed hairs? How long would it take to weave that fabric by hand? Once I experienced the process of creating and weaving fabric, I can no longer treat a t-shirt as mundane. By cutting out the crucial pieces of the process, we are missing out on some of the most important benefits of the creation process. Appreciation for materials, understanding of processes, opportunities to slow your mind and eschew stress, desire to cherish and value the end product.


    The repetitive motions one goes through when weaving fabric offers something for all of the senses, bringing us to a level of heightened awareness and increased tranquility simultaneously. Watching the yarns rise up and down, feeling the pedals with my toes, hearing the rhythm of the rising and falling shaft, and tasting the satisfaction.

Compare and Contrast; Why Womens Clothing is not Created Equal

Form vs. function. Appearance vs. purpose. Quantity vs. quality.

Why does the design of women’s clothing seem to always prioritize the second category? I take offense every time I put on a pair of pants with pockets in which I cannot fit four fingers, with belt loops too small to hold that rectangular strip of material that is intended to hold my pants in place. It is far more difficult than it should be to find a warm jacket with pockets or who’s buttons continue all the way up to keep the neck warm. Do women not need to carry items larger than a breath mint? Do we not need to keep our hands and necks warm? It must be assumed by designers that appearance is the top priority, and functionality can be stunted as a result.

I suppose shopping for women’s clothing does have its benefits if one desires a varied and vibrant shopping experience. Clothes are made more cheaply so that consumers can afford a taste of every style, every color. There are usually so many options. It is easier to find underwear plastered with images of lifesaver candies and configured in all these goofy shapes than it is to find a plain and durable set. Men have it simple. White, grey, or plaid. Large, medium, or small.

These marketing attempts to sell cheaper clothes of questionable and fleeting styles creates a culture of consumption in abundance, because no one item has all of the essential characteristics. One pair of pants has holes strategically placed all over the knees, and so a pair of leggings is needed to protect from cold.

Our shirts are thin and flimsy, displaying icons, pictures or phrases that seem exciting for a moment but soon become trite or embarrassing when tastes and opinions change. Look in any outdoor magazine and you will find quality, simple, durable, and functional boots for men.  Turn the page to see attractive sandals for women, too flimsy to be worn rock climbing but expensive and desirable nonetheless because they carry a brand name that advertises the functional qualities that are seen in only the men’s section.

 

Someone who is doing it right: http://www.redantspants.com/index.php

Design as a Conversation

We all know music speaks...but what does that really mean? The construction of tone, pitch, rhythm, articulation, harmony, voids, pauses, structure and chaos is so wonderfully perfect yet perplexing and complicated. Why does it all happen? To express! To communicate in ways that are unsatisfactory when just using language or images. How does it happen? Design.

Music has very powerful communicative qualities, and many different types of conversation happen simultaneously. When playing written music, the musician is faced with interpreting symbols and spaces to communicate non verbally with the unseen composer. A specific and intricate design has been created and widely accepted to allow an artist to share their inner rhythms with future strangers. And when these players play, others hear. Many listen. Everyone feels.
These tones stacked upon tones arranged into melodies are interpreted as sound...noise...music.

Conversation then extends beyond composer, player, and listener. Arguably the most powerful conversation occurs between players, between musicians. It happens as vibrant, nonverbal communication that requires the perfect alignment of tones, notes, timing, rhythm. The synchronicity of these specifics is crucial, usually coming from a place lacking forethought, or planning. Decisions are made in a split second. Players maintain a series of patterns while simultaneously processing the patterns created by the others and attempting to feel where the other may head next so that they can react.

How fascinating! This surely emphasizes the difference between planning and design that Terzidis brings up in the Etymology of Design. ‘Design’ is “a conceptual activity...intended to be carried into action.” Planning is “the act of devising a scheme...for the accomplishment of an objective.” Jamming with others is certainly carrying out an action...giving emotions and hidden talents a perceivable form.

And the conversation continues! Faced with the right arrangement of sounds and tempos, the rhythm creeps into the bodies of those who are present but not playing. Suddenly they cannot help but bend a knee, nod a head, tap a foot, wiggle and bounce and jive. The reactors, the dancers, the movers, the wigglers could not help but join the conversation. Suddenly it all connects. The drummer starts a pattern, the pianist strikes a chord and the flautist whistles a ditty,   and the dancers move. The musicians see the dancers and egg them on. The dancers hear the tunes and continue moving. The music ends, everyone goes their separate ways, drumming their fingers, adding a skip in their step, keeping the beat alive.

Living With Intent; Functional Spaces

When living with fourteen people in one modest, 5 bedroom house, we all cannot help but think about design. We must be creative with our space. It is tricky to give each individual a space of their own and also find storage for extraneous personal items. Through this experience I am learning one of the most important lessons: we don’t need that much space to live comfortably.

It seems as if the living space dictates the lifestyle of the occupier. Its very simple really. The more rooms, cupboards, closets, attics, basements, and sheds...the more we will find things to fill them with. My parents house has multiple rooms stuffed to the brim with strange decorations, trinkets, and extra things we never use because 1) we cant access them and 2) we eventually forget they are there. After all....there are plenty more things in the other rooms.

Living in luxury does not mean burying oneself in stuff. The PBS special “Living Large: A Look Inside the Tiny House Movement” on the program Need to Know is a perfect example of this. A woman from Olympia Washington built herself an 84 square foot home...on wheels. The video takes you into her home and shows the elegant beauty she has found in practical simplicity.

VS.

 

By designing a living space with intent a deeper connection can establish between the person, the place, and the items in it. One suddenly knows what they have and why they have it. If the why is unsure, it probably didn't make the cut.





The Tiny House Movement is growing. I highly suggest getting inspired:
http://turnbulltinyhouse.blogspot.com/
http://tinyhouseblog.com/
http://www.littlehouseonasmallplanet.com/index2.html

Design From Without

Our world is vast, diverse, complicated, colorful, intricate, fascinating, brilliant, and full. When a designer/artist/creator ponders what to manifest and how to do it, those decisions are usually based on something outside oneself, something that exists separate from the designer in this abundant universe.

Think about how seemingly impossible it is to be original in this world.  In Terzidis’s critical article The Etymology of Design; Pre Socratic Perspective, he mentions a common assumption of pre socratic philosophers who believe “nothing comes out of nothing and nothing disappears into nothing.” Whether or not this statement is absolute truth or all inclusive,there are positive and negative influences everywhere, and there is no shame in drawing inspiration from those influences...from without.

I find that my best projects are such because they are inspired by others. Many times it is much easier for me to design and create for someone else than for myself. To decide what to create, I must let that persons aura consume me, I must pay attention to obvious things like the colors that remind me of their personalities and then progress towards more abstract thought. What do they need that they don’t already have? How can I improve something of theirs that is broken or mundane? Does their persona generally feel practical or whimsical? How can I surprise them?

Making or fixing things for others really knocks you into another world, analyzing that person and using those thoughts to inspire the design. 

This quilt was inspired by and given to a very close friend. The project happened because this persons character inspired me daily, and deserved something special. Then the question is, what to make? I chose a quilt after observing and experiencing a bedroom in dire need of color and excitement. At this step, other factors had influence as well. Sacramento’s climate is hot and miserable in the summer, but very cold in the winter. With this, I chose to use a thin and lightweight wool batting, perfect for both seasons.

Going to a fabric store to choose prints could turn into one of the most overwhelming tasks. The options seem endless. Inspired from without, I narrowed it down quick, instantly drawn to fabrics that had the right colors but also showed patterns that represented more. The triangles look like mountains, where he loves to climb. The little specks resemble leaves, he is a plant fanatic. The colorful streaks instantly make me think of a painting of his grandmothers.

The receiver inspires ideas, patterns, form, color, and purpose. Most importantly for me, the source of inspiration (in this case Eric) gives the production process meaning and importance. Some projects take days, hours which are spent sometimes with tedious, intricate detailing. Every stitch remindes me of the person, of how much they deserve the gift and how perfectly they will jive with a design unknowingly inspired by themselves.

Stone Soup

Stone Soup is so valuable as a story, an activity, and experience, a moral. What a concept! Pooling resources for the common good. A very simple idea yet I feel like the brilliance of this concept is no longer obvious. For many, life seems to be spent in a subtle and perhaps unconscious competition and more often than not we are concerned with succeeding as individuals rather than as a community.

Perhaps it is just because many lack the experience of strong community, group work, common vision/goals. Without this, it is hard to see the benefit of dealing with more opinions, ideas, concerns than just your own.

Because of this loss of connection with positive experience in cooperation, we NEED stone soup... in any shape or form we can have it.

The University can be an extremely competitive environment because ultimately, each individual graduates alone, and is permitted to do so after judgement is passed solely on the work they completed and the grades they received. However, no on truly reaches that point alone. We thrive off of ad grow from observation and interaction with others.

The stone soup activity in our Design class certainly planted a seed, or at least reawakened  something out of dormancy. The tinkering, creative, curious and experimental child within each one of us was finally encouraged and actually instructed to come forth.

In a large lecture hall with hundreds of students so focused on capturing every word and date in our notebooks, we hardly allow time to look at those around us and get to understand their best qualities.
By going outside, sharing odd found items, and attempting to use those to create something worthwhile, we were able to learn a little about each other as designers and benefit from each others examples.  

Working with a group assures you will have most everything you could need. I brought many wild items (bodysuit, cape, shield) but didn’t even think to grab glue, tape, pipe cleaners, scissors....all very necessary items.
Our group worked together seamlessly. Building off of one item, a large painted bodysuit, we began to just create in smaller groups without worrying too much what the ultimate goal was, creating a story as we went. Some people began tying sticks together for hair, others adhering the body to the tree, others creating faces and inventing personalities for the characters.

Seconds before the time was up, the story came together.

The little blue paper/plastic boy had close family members who recently passed away. (They are the gnomes in the picture he’s holding). The sheer grief caused him to lose his mind and create an alternate reality where he lost control of his own body some wild flying man (the creature in the tree) was puppeteering him from the sky.

I love the story, and the calm playtime. Hopefully this experience set off a spark of creativity inside everyone and reminded us to find community and share resources to make this huge and unfamiliar place feel richer and more intimate from cooperation.

Words, Words, Words

I believe that Kostas Terzidis's critical analysis of language and its origins in the article "Etymology of Design" helps to put the paradox of design into perspective. According to Terzidis, design is the "...process of genesis, emergence, or formation of something to be executed."

The word design traced back to Greek origins come from the past tense of a word pronounced 'eho' which means to have, hold, or possess. From this, Terzidis reasons that design is about "something we once had, but have no longer."

If this is so, why do we still design? Are we trying to recover, recreate, and rework ideas from the past or are we capable to giving rise to completely new or "innovative" ideas?

Thoughts popped up when diving into the definition of innovative; "The act of beginning or introducing something for, or as if for, the first time."

Perhaps perceiving ones ideas as "new" is healthy for the inspiration and creative soul, but there is also no shame in reuniting with ideas from the past and incorporating them into present circumstances.

I believe, as a consumer, it is interesting to take the time to analyze advertised items, keeping in mind the power of loaded words such as "new" "innovative". One can ask if these advertisements speak truth, if similar designs have existed under different names in the past, if the "new" is always a desirable trait. These type of feel good blanket statements may distract from analyzing the quality of the product itself, innovative or not, and erase acknowledgment for those whose ideas from the past inspired the current twist.

Thus, it is very important to keep the syllogism "If something is percieved as such, then it must be such" in mind when playing the part of consumer. That people may be "conditioned" to perceive something untrue is a frightening prospect but can be avoided by maintaining a critical eye. What do the words in advertisements really mean? Do they speak truth? Does it even matter?

Digging Curves

 Straight lines seem to dominate structures and landscapes shaped and formed by human hands. It is difficult to notice these things without experiencing an alternative. Right angles form doorways, shelving, windowpanes, books, speakers, chairs, dressers, counters, cupboards, piano keys, spacebars, the list is endless. Walking into the garden, I step down stairs, each forming a perfect right angle with the stair below. Finally, into the garden I enter a world of shapes and patterns created with purpose, inherently brilliant and full of life. However, this orchestra of natural form is interrupted by the straight lines, rows, that gardeners create to form neat and tidy microclimates where these natural forms can grow. 

 

In the community where I live, this straight landscape design has become tradition.

Yesterday, some friends and I opted to try something new. I have been very drawn to the guiding principals and strategies of the every growing ‘Permaculture Design’ movement which seeks to establish and regenerate human settlements in such a way that has a positive impact on the natural environment. Using this design methodology, I decided to experiment and change the row structure in our garden. I chose to bend the lines, forming a circular planting bed to increase planting area and decrease path area. Paths pound our carefully worked, fluffy loam soils into hardpan which is not suitable for plant growth. By creating a circular bed with only one radius like path, maximizes the plant friendly area.

Heres how it happens. If we take a typical 4 ft by 15 ft raised bed garden and bent it into a U shape with a small opening for a path leading to the center, the path shrinks from roughly 22 square feet to 6.

Here are the beginnings of a keyhole bed started on October 2nd. 

The circular shape of the garden is equal to if not more important than the path square foot specifics. Curves more closely resemble natures tendency to form meandering, graceful, and undulating shapes. Somehow curves are able to put me at ease, draw me in and make me want to stay.

I will keep updates when our little seeds begin to grow...

Early Memories of Design: The Mirror Toy/Portal

For as long as my memory allows, I have connected with objects in an intimate way. Luckily, I am still filled with that childhood wonder that convinces me everything is alive, each nook, blotch, bump, and smell knows its purpose and humbly flaunts it. As a child, I never thought about the designer. My appreciation for an object's intricacies and quirks was directed at it's physical properties, not the unseen mind who dreamed it nor the hands who created it. Young children frequently have the ability to live in the present, appreciating an object for the sensations it brings rather than analyzing its history.  

I can vividly remember such an vibrant appreciation for a seemingly simple object from my early childhood. A simple square hand mirror with a notch sliced out of the bottom. I found this notch confusing and intriguing. Sure, it was just a little mirror, but the simple alteration in its design caught my attention and held it tightly. I noticed the shape of the missing piece fit the bridge of my nose perfectly. Holding the mirror reflective side up, I was suddenly afforded access to the world above me without straining my neck. With this new power, I became acquainted with the intricate architecture of my ceilings like never before. Wandering around for hours, stepping over doorway over hangs, in and out of the strange yet beautiful hardwood grid that formed my fancy ceilings. 

So many new questions!

Why on earth do our ceilings have such complex patterns? 

What function do they serve? No one ever even looks at them normally. Its a good thing our floors aren’t constructed like this...
If that silly little notch in that small simple mirror were filled, I wouldn’t have given that mirror a second glance. If my learned analytical thought process dominated my imaginative curiosity, I would have reasoned the notch was fit for a thumb without ever considering holding it up to my nose and under my eyes. How silly, that a little missing piece was able to complete the picture.