March 2012
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Class tomorrow
Hello everyone!
Make sure you’re at Wieden+Kennedy at 9am for our tour! 224 NW 13th. Be early! Bring your questions.
Depending on how much time is left after our tour, we’ll either meet somewhere down in the Pearl or head back to school.
Some of you have asked what your groups need to have done by tomorrow. I hope that you’ve been thinking about your projects since your...
February 2012
116 posts
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Kickstarting Urban Renewal with an Underground... →
What do you guys think of this? It’s like the High Line, but it’s UNDERGROUND!
I like the idea of using Kickstarter not only as a way to raise funds, but as a way to gauge and prove public interest. People talk with their money, right?
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Box Vox: A blog about packaging as content →
Woah, there is enough stuff to make an entire blog about this? Check it out. This blog featured projects, products and other visual treats that deal with commercial packaging and the forms it takes.
They get super in-depth on the stuff that stuff comes in.
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Does "Foreclosed" address the actual issue?
Or does it “set design back 10 years?”
Writing in Metropolis Magazine, Bryan Bell (Design Corps) pens an evocative piece critiquing the methods and approaches of the designers and architects involved in MOMA’s Foreclosed: Housing the American Dream. The main thesis of the article is that Foreclosed sways too far into the “starchitect” and...
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Reassembling the American Dream by Alexandra Lange... →
CHECK THIS OUT. Though it’s an exhibition series, the concepts and formats are very aligned with what we’re doing for projects: considering the messy realities of design in a public forum, with participation and input from audiences and public officials. Woah!
“Last week, the Museum of Modern Art opened “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream,” the second in an ongoing series...
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“Where should signage, indeed information overload, be allowed and where should...”
– From A Babylon of Signs on Design Observer, an interesting look at Los Angeles’ controversial battle over billboards, digital billboards, and where commercial messages should be allowed to permeate the built environment.
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“I am once again reminded that the real value in design exists in the process. It...”
– Megan Deal, We Were Walking When…
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Week 8: Design and Commerce
Okay. Over the last seven weeks, we’ve been talking about social design, humanitarian design, design-as-art, and design for community. Hopefully these discussions have broadened your understanding of the power and permeating nature of design, and more specifically, graphic design.
Now we come around to the commercial stuff. The flashy stuff. The familiar stuff, the things we typically...
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Paper, Plastic, or Canvas? →
Andy, Doug and Devin: this might help in your research on Project #2!
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Can a Font Help a City Make a Comeback? →
Typeface designers in Chattanooga, Tennessee are playing to their strengths and using design to bring new life to their city. How will you guys use what you know as graphic designers to address your urban challenges?
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GOOD ideas: Doug, Andy, & Devin
Sup gang,
Here’s a few ideas us three dudes have been tossing around:
☞ OLD TOWN CHINA TOWN
The old town/Chinatown disctrict of Portland is in serious danger of losing all of its culture and charm and rapidly becoming just another Portland neighborhood (in this case, more stale Pearl District flash-in-the-pan yuppy elitist rich white liberal yadda yadda). What can we do to save this...
GOOD: PDX Alert | Paige, Jesse, Yoshimi
Hi Friends,
We actually decided on a field to tackle right away: Emergency Awareness in Portland. This had to do with the Public Alert System in PDX that almost completely failed two weeks ago. So… with that in mind, we’ve come up with these ideas. We’ve done some brainstorming to flush them out, but I’ll just list the components here, sans additional info.
The problem...
GOOD ideas: Alie, Ruben, and Gavin
I. Portland has a lot of great things happening with public transportation, but there is always room for improvement. What can be done to encourage greater public transport ridership, so that we can decrease the overall number of cars in the downtown area? Are there ways to increase the “cool” factor in public transport?
II. The Trimet free rail zone might be ending as soon as...
Good Design Advice →
lyndsaylmt:
Just found this amazing web site, just had to share it. If you are offended by swear words, don’t click on this link.
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Nathan, Lyndsay, and Joel: GOOD Ideas/Challenges
I. Food & Kids - How do you get kids to eat healthier by their own accord?
II. Waste - How can we reduce food waste in Portland?
III. Willamette River - The Willamette River is now safe to swim in, but it has not been able to shed the “yuck” factor. How do you change Portlanders relationship to the Willamette so that it becomes an integral component of the the civic culture, and...
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Making Over the Mall With Parks and Sermons →
Check out this article in the New York Times about creative re-uses for abandoned shopping malls.
Schools, medical clinics, call centers, government offices and even churches are now standard tenants in malls. By hanging a curtain to hide the food court, the Galleria in Cleveland, which opened in 1987 with about 70 retailers and restaurants, rents space for weddings and other events.
Other...
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Gregor, Collin & Corbin GOOD Ideas
COMMUNITY & PUBLIC SPACE: Inclusive Nightlife
Portland doesn’t offer nightlife for a board of people, what can we do to bring the community together in a safe and fun way?
TRANSPORTATION: Make Public Transportation sexier
Public transportation is an still unattractive option to a lot of commuters, what can we do to increase it’s appeal?
ENVIRONMENT & PUBLIC SPACE: People...
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Towards Relational Design by Andrew Blauvelt →
Here is your reading assignment for Thursday! This one’s a bit heady. Print it out and underline! Highlight! We’ll discuss it in class on Thursday to break it down. Think about participation as you read this.
What design projects have you encountered over the last term that fit into this participatory model? How will you use this reading to inform your projects?
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It's Not About The Bikes →
READ THIS ARTICLE.
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Read the news.
As we’re working toward defining our Portland-based challenges for Project #2, make sure you’re checking in on local current events.
Read the Portland Mercury, the Willamette Week, or the Oregonian. Listen to OPB on the radio or online.
As always, be literate media consumers and consider the points of view and biases held by content creators.
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What is good participation?
We can say participation is good when participants…
Are interested
Do… Do something they would not have normally done Know what they are doing Do what you want them to
Change… Have agency, a power to change Get creative with what you offer Build on what you are doing
Own… Feel like they own a piece of the piece Feel they are making a significant contribution Feel like co-authors Respect what...
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Week 7: Design and Participation
OKAY!
We are going to DIVE IN to Project #2. We’ve been doing a lot of preparatory thinking, research, and getting ourselves in the right mindset to think about what urban issues are present in Portland. This week it’s time to buckle down and get to work on Project #2.
Here’s what our week will look like.
Tuesday
Your reflections on the GOOD Ideas for Cities event are due....
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Design and Cities, Design and Good...Weeks 5+6...
WHEW!
I hope you all enjoyed the GOOD Ideas for Cities event last week. Ideally it gave you lots of good fodder for jumping into your own Portland-based projects.
I wanted to re-cap a few things from the last two weeks.
We watched the documentary Urbanized in class, which was intended to give you a global overview of some of the essential systems present in urban centers.
We watched a few...
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Turning Military Bases into Public Civic Centers
As host of the Open Architecture Challenge, AFH is asking designers around the world to re-envision the future of decommissioned military space through its “[un]restricted access” competition. The six-month competition (PDF brief) with $5,000 in prizes wants architects and design teams to transform former places of conflict into “civic spaces built for the public...
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EPICENTER: Community by Design →
Read this!
epicenter:
Epicenter’s response to the blog post “Community by Design” from More/Than/This (Blog)™, re-blogged at the bottom of this post.
In regards to the question of, “Where does the community enter the design process?” This is our perception: The point at which the community engages is in…
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