After my last post about crowd sourced design, I rather enjoyed Rob Walker’s Consumed article “Banana Democracy” here in today’s New York Times Magazine. The piece explores Chiquita’s public competition for designs for stickers on its bananas. Arising out of the popularity of a web-based design-your-own sticker tool (some 25,000 people took part, apparently), the company decided to extend it into a competition. Public voting on the 1,355 entries starts tomorrow.

Walker goes on to refer to the “pop” nature of this design framework. DJ Neff, the Chiquita art director for this campaign, is quoted as describing this as the creation of “a familiar association with an unfamiliar dynamic.” Walker, in turn, suggests that “A big part of being ‘pop’ anything these days is prodding the masses to participate directly.” It is this element of the crowd sourced design competition that makes me wonder about the authenticity of connections between the brand and its audience. My last post queried the ethical nature of these public design frameworks, but Walker identifies another aspect, which is the brand stewards’ desired enhancement of attachment and meaning between a brand and its audience through this sort of interactive contributory evolution. (more…)

The excellent WNYC radio station program, On the Media, recently aired the conversation here between host Bob Garfield and Michael Samson, the co-founder of crowdSPRING.com. The website is a crowd sourcing resource for designers and those seeking design services. The question, which Garfield explores, is whether this is putting established design businesses out of work and exploiting cheap labor or is it advancing the democratization of design, and many other fields of collaborative creativity? (more…)

Gravestones are not typically viewed for their design innovation and appeal. They may evoke a sense of solemn reverence, inspire an interest in the life and times of the person being remembered or provoke a fascination in the passing of time and our mortality. They may even be a Wonder of the World, as the Egyptian Great Pyramid of Giza is. But in my favorite American cemetery you will find three examples of stunningly contemporary, unique personal headstones.

The gravestone above is for Walter Paepcke and is to be found marking his grave in Aspen, Colorado. Paepcke, a wealthy Chicago industrialist, is regarded by many as the founder of contemporary Aspen, including the Aspen Institute, Aspen Ski School and Aspen Music Festival and School. Among his most notable friends was acclaimed Bauhaus creative, Herbert Bayer. One of Bayer’s most visible contributions to Aspen was the design of the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Meadows Resort. As well as the building’s architecture, which evinces Bauhaus design principles, the grounds feature earthworks that add to the Bauhaus environment.

More memorable for me, however, are the grave marker designs that Bayer conceived for Walter Paepcke’s monolith, Bayer’s daughter, Julia’s geometric squares and the offset wedding cake style for his mother in law, Mina Loy. Loy herself was a fascinating woman having lived a life of astonishing Bohemian experiences, and deserved such an original, captivating headstone.

So, what design gravestone should I have? Will you submit some suggestions? I look forward with intrigued interest …

I will leave you with a few lines from a favorite poem by Rupert Brooke, to set the scene:

“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.”

I once made the mistake of referring to a font and was reprimanded. Typeface is correct for a family of visual representations of a series of letter, numbers and the like. Fonts are elements within the typeface family. For example, the Helvetica family is a typeface while its italicized or bold representations are Helvetica fonts. Then again, really, who cares?

The answer should be anyone working in design, of course. It also seems to apply to many who shop at IKEA. Now I confess that I have regarded IKEA as a place for good looking, but inherently cheap and temporary furnishings. My memories of interminable Sunday afternoons guided around the one way floor plan maze are more abiding than anything I have purchased there. Still, many regard IKEA as a beacon of design integrity amid the aesthetic darkness of corporate perspectives. Indeed, the insipidness of many corporate attitudes made IKEA appear to be a bastion for those who saw well considered design an inherent part of elevating our lives through our interaction with our environments. (more…)

Several conversations over the last few months have left me pondering questions about genius and creativity. How do we get inspired? Where does that inspiration come from? What does genius look like? Can we manipulate our circumstances to encourage or, indeed, hinder our capacity for creativity? Can we anticipate the creativity of others from their circumstances?

Wordsworth inspired by Lake District Daffodils

To some extent, these questions are subjective existential reflections on my own sense of creative ability or lack thereof. Remedies I have considered include, for example, a dash back to either New York City or London for a shot of city vibrancy, where the gritty mass of quotidian lives is matched by the sheer power of millions of minds processing visible innovative concepts. I also have wondered about a road trip to some bucolic and cloistered retreat. Then again, pragmatism also produced the idea that perhaps I should just stay home, away from distractions, and let creative inspiration well up in the peace and quiet of familiar surroundings. The common thread through all of this, however, is the construct of environmental circumstance to facilitate creativity. (more…)