the language of things

"Os objetos são nossa maneira de medir a passagem de nossas vidas. São o que usamos para nos definir, para sinalizar quem somos, e o que não somos. Ora são joias que assumem esse papel, ora são móveis que usamos em nossas casas, ou os objetos pessoais que carregamos conosco, ou as roupas que usamos. E o design passou a ser a linguagem com que se molda esses objetos e confecciona a mensagem que eles carregam. O papel dos desginers mais sofisticados, hoje, tanto é ser contadores de histórias, fazer um design que fale de uma forma que transmita essas mensagens, quanto resolver problemas formais e funcionais."

Here's a nice review of the book.

"I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane."

- Looking for Alaska, by John Green

the year my mom was born

Simone de Beauvoir, Chicago 1952. [link]

a piece of advice

You will remember from school other students preventing you from seeing their answers by placing their arm around their exercise book or exam paper. It is the same at work, people are secretive with ideas. "Don’t tell them that, they’ll take credit for it." The problem with hoarding is that you end up living off your reserves. Eventually you’ll become stale. If you give away everything you have, you’re left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish. Somehow, the more you give away, the more comes back to you. Ideas are open knowledge. Don’t claim ownership. They’re not your ideas anyway, they’re someone else’s. They are out there floating by on the ether. You just have to put yourself in a frame of mind to pick them up.

from "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be", by Paul Arden, Saatchi & Saatchi Creative Director

good design

What is good design?

This is the question that has haunted the design community for decades. Whenever the conversation comes up, the “eye of the beholder” argument shuts it down. Someone says that good design is design that “works,” and someone else adds that the arbiter of “what works” is the individual user. At this point everyone nods and the conversation ends. But the question is never fully put to rest.

I believe there’s a more universal answer. It’s this: Good design does not depend so much on the eye of the beholder, but on a combination of aesthetics and ethics. Good design is design that exhibits virtues. What virtues? You know, good old human virtues like generosity, courage, diligence, honesty, substance, clarity, curiosity, thriftiness, helpfulness, and wit. By contrast, bad design exhibits human vices like selfishness, fear, laziness, deceit, pettiness, confusion, apathy, wastefulness, harmfulness, and stupidity.

In other words, we want the same things from design that we want from our fellow humans. When we combine ethical virtues with aesthetic virtues, we get good design. The ancient Greeks framed this ideal in the context of knowing, making, and doing: “To know truth. To make beauty. To do good.” Apple’s Steve Jobs framed it this way: “Design is the soul of a man-made creation.”

Soul, like beauty, is one of those evanescent qualities that disappears under the microscope, but it’s clearly visible when you meet it on the street. It’s a quality that’s been missing in a 20th-century business tradition that overvalues narrow, short-term success, and undervalues broad, long-term success. Sumantra Ghoshal, a global business leader and author, called corporate business “under- socialized and one-dimensional.” He said that spreadsheet management has only led to resentful customers, dispirited employees, and a divided society.

Why would this change? Because it has to. In an era when customers are not only omnipotent but omniscient, when over-production leads to an ecological box canyon, a selfish focus on the bottom line is bad design. Good design, in contrast, is a new management model that deliberately includes a moral dimension. It’s a model that not only serves shareholders but employees, customers, partners, and communities. For the first time since the Industrial Age, successful businesses will be designful businesses. They’ll combine knowing, making, and doing to strive for truth, beauty, and the public good. At last, the bottom line will begin to trace the shape of who we want to be.

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From Marty Neumeier's The Designful Company.
You can download Part 2 of the book here.

if a man ever gave me a book like that, i would ask him to marry me

The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility.

-- from The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean OR from Susan Orlean (Meryl Street), in Adaptation

anxiety

Anxiety is secretive. He does not trust anyone, not even his friends. Worry, Terror, Doubt, and Panic. He has a way of glombing onto your skin like smog, and then you feel unclean. He likes to visit me late at night when I am alone and exhausted. I have never slept with him, but he kissed me on the forehead once, and I had a headache for two years. He is sure a nuisance to get out of the house. He has no respect for locks or curtains or doors. I speak from experience. It takes cunning to get rid of him, a combination of anger, humor, and self-respect. A bath helps too. He does not like to get wet. As a last resort, if you are not near a bathtub, wet your face with tears.

-- from the Book of Qualities, J. Ruth Glender.

true

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By the way, Jessica Hagy's book Indexed will be released on 2/28/08. Pre-order available on Amazon ($8.80)

my latest book purchase

This is the next one on the line for me: "The Warhol Economy". It seems fascinating and could not be more relevant specially to professionals in the creative industry. If you are in any way, shape or form related to the field, or if you are at all interested in public policy, it's a must-read.

Check out a great interview with the author, Elizabeth Currid, following below. Currid is Gawker's "Celebrity Theory 101" author. By the way, this is her first book. Not too shabby.

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Here's from a review from the New Yorker:

"Any discussion about New York City's economic well-being tends to start and end with one phrase: Wall Street. As the Street goes, we assume, so goes the city, which is why politicians will do almost anything to keep the brokerages and investment banks happy.... [In] The Warhol Economy the social scientist Elizabeth Currid argues that this fixation is misdirected, and that it has led us to neglect the city's most vital and distinctive economic sector: the culture industry, which, in Currid's definition, includes everything from fashion, art, and music to night clubs. In other words, it's SoHo and Chelsea, not Wall Street, that the politicians should really be thinking about. Of course, everyone knows that art and culture help make New York a great place to live. But Currid goes much further, showing that the culture industry creates tremendous economic value in its own right."
-- James Surowiecki, The New Yorker

Here's from a review from The Economist:

"New York's cultural economy has reached a critical juncture threatened by, of all things, prosperity. The bleak economic conditions of the 1970s allowed artists to flock into dirt-cheap apartments and ushered in the East Village scene of the early 1980s. The boom of the past decade, by contrast, has priced budding Basquiats out of Manhattan, pushing them across the water to Brooklyn and New Jersey. Studio flats meant for artists-in-residence get snapped up by bankers. The closure last year of CBGB, a bar that became a punk and art-rock laboratory in the 1970s (and whose founder, Hilly Kristal, died last month) came to symbolise this squeeze. Ms Currid sees this expulsion of talent as a serious problem. The solution, she argues, lies in a series of well-aimed public-policy measures: tax incentives, zoning that helps nightlife districts, more subsidised housing and studio space for up-and-coming artists, and more."

Here's an excerpt from the official description:

"The implications of Currid's argument are far-reaching, and not just for New York. Urban policymakers, she suggests, have not only seriously underestimated the importance of the cultural economy, but they have failed to recognize that it depends on a vibrant creative social scene. They haven't understood, in other words, the social, cultural, and economic mix that Currid calls the Warhol economy."

And here is my favorite, an excerpt from Annie Fischer's Villace Voice article: "there's now documented proof that New York's taste makers need to drink together for the sake of the city's financial health. Cheers to that."

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You can click here to check out the entire video - you can't control the timer, but it's all in there - or you can watch it below in three parts.

A weekend with Simone de Beauvoir

I spend most of my weekend with my books. I read ZAG, by Marty Neumeier, which I highly recommend if you're in the design industry. I also bought "The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir, and I am absolutely in love with her. The book is huge and fantastic.

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In the spirit of a very "gender-aware" weekend, I also watched the Visible Vote 08, sponsored by HRC and Logo. The best part is the conversation with Congressman Dennis Kunicich, who is more lucid than any other candidate I have seen in the past few years. Just compare how comfortable he is in that room compared to Bill Richardson, who just couldn't relate. The poor man couldn't hide. I love how he says "GAY AND LESBIAN" like he's saying "HIPPOPOTAMUS".

You can watch the forum here.

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Here's some Simone de Beauvoir:

“In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.”


"Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen."