Natalia posts about design and culture—but only when she has something to say.
Ever one to hope for the best, last semester I suggested that students use ChatGPT as a “research partner” in the big bibliographic project they do in the Fall term of Parallel Narratives , their Junior-level history-and-criticism class. In a 27-person class, only one student took me up on the idea. The rest looked vaguely distrustful, and didn’t consider it. Later in the semester, that one…
Thank you, Steven Heller, for publishing this today with links and images, here: https://www.printmag.com/typography/in-memory-of-david-lance-goines/ A few days ago, my sister forwarded me an obituary. Poster designer David Lance Goines died on February 19th after a stroke ten days before. I looked at the red envelope that stood propped on my desk. I always save his Lunar New Year’s card to open…
Why do I have two accounts? Give me a moment while I pull up your account. CTL Virtual Agent • 1:28 PM Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account. CTL Virtual Agent • 1:28 PM agent Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account. CTL Virtual Agent • 1:32 PM agent Hold on, I'm still working on getting your account. CTL Virtual Agent • 1:32 PM Have I mentioned how much I hate chatbots?…
The first time I published a book— many a long year ago—it was a trade book, which means that it was a book for everybody, not just for a small group of people. I had asked an agent if she would be interested in representing a book about various iconic signs in our culture. She turned down the proposal, but then said, “This chapter on the meanings of blonde hair— I would represent this as a book,…
Some years ago, when Matt Monk got us all together to start a Graphic Design MFA up at Vermont College of Fine Arts, I ended up with the Design History hat. (This hat is now being shared by a number of people at VCFA-- Silas Munro and Ian Lynam and many others.) But in those days, Silas was still mostly a practitioner and Ian hadn't clambered aboard yet, and it was a bizarre thing for me–a…
Martin Pedersen was my editor when I wrote for Metropolis . He's now the executive director of a group called the Common Edge Collaborative, which is dedicated to reconnecting architecture and design to the broader public that it's supposed to serve. He saw me fuming on FB about someone else's thinking how great Amazon might be for Philadelphia, and suggested I write my own essay. (Just click on…
A long time ago, I started out working as a "counter-girl" at a printer, then as a paste-up production artist at a printer, and then as a printer at a printer. It was only in my mid-twenties that I started working as a graphic designer. Graphic designers and printers exist in two separate social strata. Printers generally consider graphic designers a necessary evil; Designers generally consider…
There's a fashionable attitude in education right now that assumes that making things more interactive and more entertaining and more experiential for students results in a better education for that student. I think we'll live along into a time in which we will look back on this strategy and see its shortcomings clearly. Surprise and novelty has a place in the studio, but not as a central dynamic.…
I was on the bus to the ferry when I realized it: no phone. A shiver. No text from my sister wishing me a good day. No instant update on my three different email streams. No language lesson while sitting in my usual spot on the boat. No checking my bank account while the ferry unloaded. No calming tunes while I tried not to feel the bigness of the sky on my walk to the next bus, and then again on…
Design at Cornish College of the Arts is launching its first apparel class this semester. We're starting to build toward an Apparel track, adding classes and studios semester by semester until we reach a concentration level in 2017. We'll need important approvals along the way, but here we are, taking our first toddling step toward designing a completely new kind of apparel education in the…
Well, the final news is out, the fix is in, headlines tell us that three major universities agree: we’ve had it, the sixth great environmental catastrophe is upon us, species are going extinct in unprecedented numbers, and humankind may not last another hundred years. It’s a relief, I must say. When they finally get a diagnosis proving there’s something really wrong with them, people often feel…
On the day after the Senior critiques finished up last month, a student hobbled into my office for her post mortem , wearing sweats and a tendonitis boot. This student, along with making work for her first Senior Degree Project critique, had overworked her body, preparing to dance the Snow Queen in a local company’s annual Nutcracker ballet. And so, the boot. Some dancers are not highly…
In CityArts Magazine What’s good design? A plum-colored Max Mara coat on the cover of W ? An all-steel kitchen advertised in House Beautiful ? Anything in the Design Within Reach catalog? For most of us, good design is a luxury, in the way that old cognac is a luxury or a vacation in a hut on a Bali beach is a luxury. We’ve learned to equate good design with having money—lots of money—and with the…
When he was young and worrying about the continued existence of humankind and his part in that continuation, my father had a hard time sleeping. His job did not allow for his being groggy in the morning, so sleeping pills weren’t an option, and he wasn’t the kind to take pills anyway. Somehow, he struck on a simple solution to insomnia, and for years after-- long after “the Sovs” had become…
When I first started teaching design history, it occurred to me that in order to reward students for finding me in factual error, I could give them a treat of some sort. I figured this would keep me from making incorrect statements and keep them paying attention, for I have noticed that all students are hungry and all people like treats. I started with candy bars and packs of Oreos, but it turned…
My identity recently got a jolt from one of those things nephews say when they aren't really talking to you and you aren't really listening. I didn't hear what Wes said until hours later, when collapsed in a chair with my feet up later in the evening. My sister had asked him to bring me some chairs she was giving me, so he'd driven them over. We'd met in my garage. He's tall, charming and…
I live on a small island in the Puget Sound. This island has a town called Winslow and a main street called Winslow Way. The main street is about two blocks long, from the clapboard church on one end to the false-fronted building that houses the pizza place on the other. It's a little one-horse town, though the horse died years ago. And it resisted making a mockery of itself with the fake country…
The Lovely Lady Banks For all the appropriate reasons, the condo board has informed me that my climbing rose will be cut down. Seems it's twining around the porch railings, which could cause bad things to happen to the structure someday. I am told that no plant shall touch the building, much less twine around it. Imagine the future damage. Imagine the incipient rot. The rose bush probably would…
I'm in the enviable position of being one of the last professors Graphic Design students see at Cornish College of the Arts. I get to spend time with them as they work to create their degree projects: the capstone design and book and film and motion and sound exhibition they make that proves that they have gotten their minds and skills into the sort of functioning order capable of pulling off…
Not long ago, a doctor furrowed his brow and told me that I had registered off the scale on a test of my "visual sensitivity." For some reason, this tickled my funny bone enormously and I went around telling others the news, laughing uproariously, and receiving only a blank stare in return. After a few blank stares, I forgot about visual sensitivity and went back to normal jokes about fleece and…