“Academia teaches us to ask questions like Shay’s — and generally, to answer them ourselves. So we find parallels and influences that make sense on paper without worrying too much about whether they’re actually true.”
John August, on what has definitely, most definitely, been for me the hardest part of my transition from graduate school to professional life.
It’s when I stopped making up truths out of thin air, or really, when I stopped fundamentally valuing those truths, that I kind of ran out of things to say.
If you ever need proof that the boundary between the 80s and 90s was long, blurry, confused and ultimately regrettable, look no further than Faith No More’s Epic.
Rock, metal, hair, hip-hop, neon, jean shorts, grunge, psychedelia, and Pauly Shore dance moves. Together in harmony.
Or not.
"Design is the activity we humans engage in when we are not satisfied with our reality and we decide to intentionally change it. It is an approach that deals with overwhelmingly complexity, that rely on judgment as its logic, and that is focused on the creation of the ultimate particular."
— Erik Stolterman in The Death of Design Thinking…
"The intellectual development around design as a special human approach to inquiry and action has been around much longer than the “last decade” and is a deep and profound attempt to understand a particular kind of human activity that for a long time was not appropriately understood."
— Erik Stolterman in The Death of Design Thinking…
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
I had to use my phone to shoot the video so you’re not getting the full effect.
But this is how I’ve been blowing my mind for the last ten minutes.
The next step being to raid this space and take it to 11.
We live in a truly, wonderfully, magical era.
I’m embarrassed to admit how long I watched this.
Playing on four screens.
At the same time.
The next source of wealth creation? You.
Michael Barone of The Examiner:
Finding an answer, it seems to me, must start with recognition of a change that has been occurring for decades and that has accelerated with the financial crisis and recession: The fact that Americans are less likely to work their whole careers in large organizations and more likely to work in small organizations and skip from one to another.
We are less likely to find success and accumulate wealth as small interchangeable cogs in very large machines and more likely to do so as unique contributors to nimble and adaptive enterprises. We can no longer rely on the brand names of our employers but must seek to establish brand names of our own.
Time to get on it, my fellow designers.
We’ll be leading the way on this one.
Lately my mantra has been, “What is this situation’s giant neon cowboy with animatronic dry-humping hips?”
Some personal metaphors require more explanation than others.
Go to Wikipedia and click “random article.” This is the name of your genitals.
“Terry Major-Ball.”
(Source: unicornsandtruckerhats, via merlin)
This is one way to handle transparency.
"Brain wiring that effortlessly recognizes faces, animals and other symmetrical objects can be thrown off by letters and numbers, leading to reading difficulties. A restless nature was once helpful to people who needed to find food sources in the wild, but in today’s classrooms, it’s often classified as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder."
—
Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang in a NYTimes.com article called Get Your Kids The Fuck Outside or something.
My brain isn’t wired for the modern world.
Something I’ve known since the first grade.
Silverado Senior Living.
Where apparently you drop in on that shit in an effin’ kayak.
After retirement.
Amazon.com Review
Known carcinogen. May cause reproductive harm.
Bottom line? If you’re looking for a snobby hipster thing endorsed by dead artists where you can cram your slam irony and vegan poetry, you might as well pick one of these up. Chain smoking that American Spirit is already sending you to the grave, so why not climb down from your Sutro Tower and live a little?
