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Travel the World

Go to Antarctica

Unite the World

Play Music

Go into the Peace Corps

planview: 2D, looking from above

vector-based: illustrator... logos, can blow up image and images are always sharp

mathematical equations have infinite possibilities to keep image sharp

Poetry Slammed.

Taylor Mali blew me away with a badass yet powerfully messaged poem called, "What Teachers Make." In the poem that phrase is intended to ask how much teachers earn financially as compared to the lawyer sitting at the same table. In reply, the teacher reveals all that teacher's DO for children and their parents using the word MAKE. I make them wonder, I make them spell, read, write. I make them tremble, I make phone calls to parents to tell them what a noble thing they did at school that day. Teachers develop the minds of youth to become the leaders of tomorrow... it doesn't matter what they "make" financially. Then again, a teacher should go battle Adora Svitak for her opinion....

Nathaniel Ayers's Violin Teacher.

Robert Gupta, violinist in the LA Philharmonic, shares his story about he became Nathaniel Ayers's violin teacher. Ayers is the man man featured in the book and movie, "The Soloist," a well-educated and decorated musician whose life was turned upside down by schizophrenia. In Gupta's story, he explains that the first lesson was fearful... Ayers started imagining illusions and fading into a schizophrenic phase when Gupta just began playing the violin... immediately, Ayers started playing by ear and the two engaged in musical conversation. Ayers's imagination was transformed into his musical phrasing instead of just another phase of temporary insanity. "Music is medicine, music is sanity." - Robert Gupta.

Its amazing how the human brain can find an affinity with music to help save someone's sanity, and for all intensive purposes, someone's life.

Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister

Born in 1962, Stefan Sagmeister has become a world-renowned graphic designer and typographer through his fresh, timeless, and of-the-moment designs. Sagmeister is a Bregenz, Austria native who began his design career at the early age of 15 when he worked for “Alphorn,” a popular Austrian youth magazine. Only a few short years later, Sagmeister studied graphic design at Vienna’s University of Applied Arts. Due to his outstanding work, Sagmeister then received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in New York. Finally, his formal schooling behind him, Sagmeister tried his luck in Hong Kong with advertising executive Leo Burnett’s Hong Kong Design Group in 1991, but he returned to New York after only two years. In New York Sagmeister teamed up with M&Co Design under Tibor Kalman, an influential American graphic designer of Hungarian descent. Unfortunately, as with when Sagmeister was in Hong Kong, his stay at M&Co Design was short-lived thanks to Kalman’s depature to be the editor-in-chief for Colors Magazine.

In the same year of 1993, Sagmeister founded his own firm titled Sagmeister Inc., a New York based design group focused on branding, graphics, and packaging design. Sagmeister had an great affinity for music, which may have been the reason for his common design collaborations with musicians such as Lou Reed and David Byrne. He also design artwork for the Rolling Stones. Along with his work on visualizing music, Sagmeister has been hired by an array of diverse companies such as Time Warner, HBO, and the Guggenheim Museum. Sagmeister also has a plethora of his own solo shows mounted around the world. He now teaches graduate classes at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York and has recently released a book of rules from his personal diary called, "Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far." Currently, Stefan Sagmeister is living in Bali, Indonesia taking the year off to refresh his vision and experimentation.

A kickass clock.

Analog plus digital = Art Lebedev Studio's cool new clock. It combines the analog arms of old clocks and the digital appearance of numbered/counting clocks. It is sleek and fashionable and quite simply mesmerizing to watch. Two hands per pivot point create roman numerals as seconds fly by!

Skinput?

Chris Harrison is a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and has prototyped a new concept called skinput. Skinput allows users to wear an armband that understands complex motions in one's arm or finger when touched or poked or pinched. When determined they can act as buttons attached to devices like iPods and iPhones or even for playing a game like Tetris... this is also made possible by the armband which can project a graphic on the arm for visual purposes. Insane. No more surfaces to carry when your own body is the platform!

Carlo Heckman

Found an article on a hometown boy from Akron, OH.... Carlo Heckman was an industrial designer and in the 1950's he created a method for organizing birthday candles by essentially creating tally marks in fives with one long candle across four short candles. Interesting. Later he wrote a book called, "A Practical Guide to Sticks," laying out the... practical use of different kinds of sticks you can find in your backyard. After moderate success in Italy, he recorded a tape cassette of him reading the book and sold them at rock shows for a buck. He then faded into the abyss and died in 1998. It seems now that his designs are finally picking up pace. Why? Urban Outfitters and hipsters? Maybe.

Take Turns.

Gary Lauder, a managing partner of an IT firm in Silicon Valley, dissects the financial cost of a 3 way intersection that is questionably necessary. Calculating the cost to stop and accelerate in and out of the stopping area in gas and in pollution, the results are astounding in dollars per year... in fact it is enough money to buy the lot on the intersection and sell it for profit. Essentially, Lauder concludes that it is not always the car that needs to be changed to save the environment or your money but the design of the road. He also explains how roundabouts save an extremely high percentage of lives lost in intersection accidents. How can we as a community learn to create better roads OR how can we just learn to "take turns," mixing the meanings of a stop sign and a yield side which would create enough uncertainty to cause a driver to slow down and be cautious but maybe not always come to a complete stop. Interesting indeed.

A Typographical story.

Rives hits up TED again... this time telling a story about a boy and a girl through the constantly developing language of typography. Using only type, Rives illustrates and describes a meeting between a boy and girl. In the most unusual but seemingly natural of ways... generation Y has designed a language full of emoticons, symbols, and codes. I thought it was stupid at first, but it seems that it is so in depth now that it is commonly accepted across the globe. A new universal language?

Art for money? Art for passion.

In Seth Godin's blog blurb about doing art passionately, he raises the point that you can't be doing art o make money... you have to have passion and trust and faith and just the idea that you're doing what you love... just to do what you love. The only people that should expect to make money by doing art are the ones who have made money on previous projects. So. Until you happen to make money on a project... don't work on a project to make money. Sounds about right?

Bill Stone explores caves. Deep caves. When we speak of design, sometimes we forget some of the most obvious and intricate designs... like that of the earth. Bill Stone explains expeditions into the last "nuggets" of unexplored Earth... expeditions toward the core. With new expeditions that are happening as we speak reaching downwards to 9,000 feet... it is essentially climbing a mountain in the opposite direction. There are millions of caves to be mapped, terminal siphons to dive through, and perilous adventures to undertake. Check out the undiscovered design of the earth:

Huge. Humongous. Human. Pronounce the freaking H.

I was watching a TED video (again) and I don't even want to talk about the content of exploring Saturn's moons... partially because I couldn't get through it without being extremely irked by a simple lack of the pronunciation of the letter H in the beginnings of words that start with H-U-etc.... I'm not from Long Island but I find certain speech patterns here annoying... just different cultures I guess, but it must be interesting in how they started (unfortunately, we may never find that out).

So. As I watched the presentation I noticed this woman, Carolyn Porco, kept pronouncing the word "human" without an "h" sound... so it sounds like "uman" (long "u" sound). I immediately looked up where she was from... born in NYC, went to school on Long Island. I knew it. I have several teachers who don't pronounce the letter "h" when the word begins with "H-U-." WHY?!?!?! The design of speech patterns may be fascinating but when it completely neglects a letter AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WORD... I just want to slap something. seriously. I understand its how you grew up, but its just so frustrating.

Revolution: Beginnings.

Another Derek Sivers (creator of CD Baby) 3 minute presentation explains how movements become revolutions with a simple video. One guy starts the movement and looks ridiculous doing so UNTIL the first follower takes the chance to support him. Once there are two it is easier for others to join. Once it becomes cool to join the ridiculous guy, it seems ridiculous to NOT join... A revolution has been created. The key element in the design of a revolution is NOT necessarily the guy who starts it, but the guy who has the guts to join him first.

Everyone can love Classical

Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, gives a lesson in loving Classical music. With a piece by Chopin, Zander digs deep under the skin of the listeners by attaching an emotion to a musical line. He plays it once with no precursor and the audience becomes bored. He plays it a second time while having the audience attach their own personal stories to the sad and weeping line and tears stream. He describes that this same presentation made kids from the ghetto cry for the very first time... classical music! Music is designed to be emotional.

The Kid in Everyone.

Adora Svitak is a 14 year old prolific story writer and she's talking in front of thousands at TED... just another bridge between how adults can not only teach kids, but more importantly learn from them. In her presentation, Adora explains the childish ways of the adult world (war games, george bush, etc.) and the amazing things kids have done (raised money for haiti, helped in the civil rights movement, etc.). Its the design of our culture that is misrepresenting. Children dream bigger without knowing limits... this challenges the world, creating much more progression when dreams actually are accomplished. Maybe our education system can learn from this?