True Films

Tired of the big Hollywood summer blockbuster hype that so rarely delivers anything more than access air conditioning?

Thanks to the magic that is NetFlix and access to truly interesting films, you need not lament the absence of the latest John Sayles film or chase down a two-day screening of the riveting documentary Gunners Palace.

For a film that combines the best of documentary, fine art and nature, watch Rivers and Tides, the on-screen revelation of the work of Andy Goldworthy. Afterwards, you'll be inspired to venture outdoors and create beautiful works of your own from found objects a nature's own art supplies.

Film Movement was started in response to the regional hegemony of film distribution companies that squeeze out any indy film (unless it gets picked as an Academy Award front-runner!). The group's mission declares that...

Film Movement is for anyone who does not want to miss out on outstanding films because of where they live. Most films do not receive a national release despite critical acclaim and awards at Cannes, Sundance and other top film festivals. As a result, most of us don’t get to see many of the year’s best films. Film Movement is changing all that…

Similar to NetFlix, this is a subscribtion service of $19.95/mo. (or $159/year). However, the DVDs are your to keep instead of ship back, and it is limited to one per month. The upside: these are the primer DVD and include access to press kits, dicussion guides and insider information to assist teachers, discussion groups and cinemaphiles.

Kevin Kelly, formerly of WIRED and The Whole Earth Catalog, has compiled a review of 100 DVDs at his own True Films.

Kelly is a sponge for the useful, the quirky, the singular and the essential. His list of Cool Tools brings the top picks of gadgets, books, hacks, tips and manuals ranging from igloo making to reusable menstrual cups and extreme pogo sticks.

Art of the Mexican War Streets

Peter and Diane Durand will be participating in the open house celebration at the Firehouse Studios on Pittsburgh's North Side:

Firehouse Studios
1416 Arch Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
(located off North Ave. near Allegheny General Hospital see map)

Friday evening, June 24
Opening reception on from 6 to 10pm

Saturday & Sunday, June 25 & 26
Open studios from 12-4 pm

The Durands will display works inspired by their recent trip to Sante Fe, New Mexico. Dozens of local painters, photographers and ceramic artists will also be on show.

The Slings and Arrows of the Designer's Craft

My doctor friend has a theory: People tend to stick with the haircut they had at the moment in time when they felt at the top of their game, when all was right with the world, when they were cool.

Styles may change, and the common opinion about what defines cool may change too, but each of us clings to that haircut. (In fact, even Marge Simpson had to check with her children if the word "cool" was still cool.)

Same can be said for design and designers (or singers!). Once a certain way of composing a piece of work leads to success, the trap is sprung and they're stuck.

It is the very rare artist that can slalom between the demands of the market and the drive for authenticity. In the creative tension between the two, true genius thrives.

To get a glimpse of the process that such designers employ to propel them, check out the archived interviews conducted by designer, researcher, writer and teacher, Ellen Lupton at designwritingresearch.org.

Don't miss the free advice page with links to designers who've survived the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the shifting technologies of the designer's craft.

Contributors include Pantagram's Michael Bierut, MIT's Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and, my favorite Russian constructivist, Vladimir Mayakovskii.

Beirut, along with several other designers and critics, has launched a blog, DesignObserver, dedicated to keeping an eye on international design, evolutions in cyberspace, and (his word, not mine) design bullshit.

See full list of quotes.

Posters: A Way of Thinking

There you are: wandering the sprawling, urban landscape, cluttered with signage, garbage, traffic, human dwellings, human activity.

Here, among the refuse and decay--engineering and architecture slowly returning to nature really--you see a brilliant, colorful gem. A poster. A single spot of color on a grimey brick way holding up a parking structure, perhaps. Or a series of dozens of identical images plastering a surface the size of a tremendous movie screen, like a fim strip strung out life-sized.

A poster! Color and type and image all arranged perfectly so.

It jumps out as a paradox, a complexity of roles: they may serve a visual haiku, an inside joke, a political punch to the gut, an appeal to your moral core, but posters are so much more than just another pretty picture.

The city could be any city of any size, the preserved medeval center of Krakow in Poland, or the gianormous city-state of México City with a population larger than that of Canada (30-40 million!). But the poster plays the same role: it is a gift. A poster is a seed of art planted amidst the background scenery of daily life.

Milton Glaser, master of the poster, godfather of modern design, says, "Art performs a pacifying role in culture."

The practioners create commonalities between us. Glaser sites the writer Louis Hyde, who studied primative cultures, the passing on of gifts is a device that prevent people from killing one another. It is in the passing on of gifts, that we become part of a single experience. This is what role artists serve in a culture. Artists provide that gift to the culture so that people have something in common.

The 8th International Poster Biennial in México is organized by Trama Visual and endorsed by Icograda, the 8th International Poster Biennial in México featured posters from 145 graphic designers in 35 countries, selected from approximately 5,000 entries. [See article in Commarts.com]

“I cannot accept posters that are only a display or form, a fashionable design, but that lack content and have nothing to say. The poster is, first of all, a way of thinking. It should surprise, challenge and intrigue us. Although sometimes it looks like a sign, it should also be a symbol; it should possess a depth and a second plan. It should make us think!”

Juror Bojidar Ikonomov of Bulgaria,
Director of the International Triennial of the Stage Poster

Interactive designer-turned-videographer Hillman Curtis has produced a series of video portraits of poster designers at work, including the rabbi of poster design, Milton Glaser.

Take an inspiring tour through Glaser's studio and warehouse that holds two to three hundred thousand posters. It will inspire you, bring you peace, and change the way that you look at any poster!

See more of Glaser's work (and purchase his posters) at miltonglaser.com.

World Citizens: Travel Bravely, Travel Safely

A winner of the 2005 Webby Award for activism, this on-line guide is designed to raise awareness of travelers, especially young Americans.

It has a wonderful Flash interface and a downloadable PDF version.

Among the contents, a list of 25 simple suggestions to make travel safer, more interesting and more authentic. Also included is an information graphic depicting the demographic makeup of the world if we shrank the earth’s population to a “global village” of only 100 people and kept all the existing human ratios.

[Thanks to Leah Silverman for the link.]

The World Citizens Guide

25 Simple Suggestions:

1. Look. Listen. Learn.
2. Smile. Genuinely.
3. Think big. Act small. Be humble.
4. Live, eat and play local.
5. Be patient.
6. Celebrate our diversity.
7. Become a student again.
8. Try the language.
9. Refrain from lecturing.
10. Dialogue instead of monolougue.
11. Use your hands. Watch your feet.
12. Leave the clicjes at home.
13. Be proud, not arrogant.
14. Keep religion private.
15. Be quiet.
16. Check the atlas.
17. Agree to disagree respectfully.
18. Talk about something besides politics.
19. Be safety conscious, not fearful.
20. Dress for respect.
21. Know some global sports trivia.
22. Keep your word.
23. Show your best side.
24. Be a traveler, not a tourist.
25. Have a wonderful trip!The guide also has tons of pertinent links to help travelers identify embassies in different countries, seek health advisories from the Center for Disease Control, including vaccines, travel insurance, customs, study abroad programs and more.

Almost 15 years ago, I set out with two friends to backpack across Europe. This led to a five year stint on the road, hitchhiking and catching trains as far East as the Crimean coast and Moscow, and back again across Western Europe to England. It was the early 1990's and a time of tremendous openness.

Now young travelers are looking over their shoulders. Nervous. Knowing that being American, being "western" makes them a target.

In Young travelers face potential dangers outside U.S. by Kimberly Durnan and April Kinser appearing June 14 in The Dallas Morning News, the article admonishes:

"[When] young people and other travelers go abroad, their safety is not something parents or even the U.S. government can guarantee. Following the recent disappearance in Aruba of an 18-year-old from Alabama, law enforcement officials, schools and travel agents are warning parents and their children to follow some basic steps that can increase the odds of a safe trip abroad."

Anxiety about allowing young people to travel abraod is high. Understandably so. Family and friends are still frantically searching for Natalee Holloway, who was in Aruba with classmates to celebrate high school graduation when she disappeared May 30 after a night out at a popular bar. It is a terrifying scenario, one that strikes fear in the heart of every parent watching their child venture out into the world.

However, if it is a choice of whether to travel or not, I'd say YES! Especially if one can committ to a year or more. That year will resonate for the rest of your life and define your personality into the future.

I was very fortunate to have traveling grandparents on both side; my grandmother's last trip was to China when she was 80 years old. My father lived and worked in Asia and Africa for seven years, and my very American mother chose to give birth to her first child (me) in East Africa.

Special hellos go out to friends of the Studio who are world travelers, especially Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar Tereneh Mosley in Kenya (above) and Peace Corps Volunteer Jacquelyn Jancius in Romania.

Recipes for Design, Recipes for Disaster?

In his weekly newsletter/blog, Mark Hurst, founder of Good Experience, warns of the dangers of looking for rules for good design.

In his post titled The Good Experience Worldview, Mark writes:

To be sure, there are some user experience experts who assert "the 205 rules of proper design," as though being a good practitioner merely means memorizing the tactical rules and methods. Call these the "gurus"; there are plenty of followers who want, and demand, what they're offering.

It seems that Hurst's irony was lost on a few. One frustrated reader responded to his criticism with a plea for even more structure and guidance:

Guess I've been too busy over the past 11 years to learn the rules. Feeling the fool, I googled "205 rules of proper design' and got zilch. Since my marketing and design techniques have developed from doing, as opposed to reading about them, can you provide a reference?

Ah, the rules. We clammer for them later in life after spending our youth flaunting them.

I agree that adhering to any "dogma of design" can lead an individual or group down a dangerous--or worse, a predictable--path. However, I find so many organizations begging to learn the process of creativity, and that of creativity's persnickety step-sister, design.

It is easy to say that no rules is good rules [sic] when one has experience. Now, what if I wanted to learn another complex art form or practice, like, say, Kung Fu. When I was ten-years-old, my friends and I were convinced we knew all about this martial art from watching Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon".

God help us if we ever did battle with a real evil genius!

I often see the same phenomenon after a group of MBAs watch the episode of Nightline that profiles IDEO's ideation process used to redesign the shopping cart.

Perhaps the best "toolkit" includes fewer rules and more guidance on appropriate questions to ask, for example:

- What is the need?
- Where can we find inspiration?
- Have we defined the problem?
- Are we asking the appropriate questions?

Bruce Mau's famous incomplete manifesto offers curt aphorisms such as:

Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

After the launch of the major exhibit Massive Change (the rules of which are 1. LEARN and 2. ACT), Bruce Mau has shuffled off the title of designer, and taking a more expansive view of design itself. Even lending a hand at redesigning the rules of engagement by the UN. You can hear a presentation by Bruce Mau on "global creativity" presented at Pop!Tech at IT Conversations.

Dominic Muren of ID Fuel describes the job as a designer as "...someone who finds new ways to solve problems using the materials, processes, and understanding that we have now."

For those of you who are on the path of uncovering the problems, principles, processes, questions and dilemmas of design, I do recommend Mark Hurst's Good Experience newsletter as well as the product design site, ID Fuel.

As for Alphachimp Studio, we have avery simple rule set: "Make stuff. Makes stuff happen."

Richard Florida, Tracking the 'Creative Class'

Creative competitiveness seems to be the key to success in any business, in any country.

Living on the edge of the creative process involves innovation of existing products, services and systems; it requires the creation of inspirational experiences, fantastic landscapes, and intellectually stimulating communities.

It requires an ever-bubbling pool of talent. It requires access to the latest technology. And, most important, according to creative class expert, Richard Florida, "..there's this third T -- apart from Technology and Talent -- called Tolerance."

In an interview detailed in the article The Flight From America by Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet, Florida goes on to say:

The reason this third T is an important part of economic growth and economic advantage is because it attracts talented creative people from all races, ethnicities, income ranges, -- whether they're white, black, Hispanic, Latino, Asia, Indian, women, men, single, married, or gay. So places that are the most tolerant, the most diverse, the most, in words of the new book, "proactively inclusive" have an addition economical advantage.

In the latest installment in his career as experienced tracker of creative populations, Florida details the dangers and unintended consequences of America's increased security requirements. Namely, he takes a critical look at the increasingly restrictive policies towards foreign students, immigration, and the all-important creative class.

The same phenomenon can be said to exist in the ever-expanding "red states": diversity of ideas and ethnicities are facing policies of discrimination and atmospheres of religious and intellectual intolerance. Bill Savage of Seattle's The Stranger writes of the important influence of blue cities, particularly college towns, in culturally homogenous, and politically conservative, red states.

If I just take a look at the paternal side of my family, chock full of lawyers (a father, an uncle, and two cousins), I also find an engineer, two physics professors, three designers, three fiber arts, two amateur birdwatchers, a master chef, a stuntman and a self-described advertising huckster who spends his retirement decking out his "Elvismobile" (click to see Quicktime of his Elvis Shrine Room).

And, to be fair, the lawyers in our family consist of a professional percussionist, an amazing singer/songwriter/marathon runner, and martial arts/meditation expert. My father the lawyer taught me everything I know about cartooning.

In daily life, it is the eccentric element, the rebel, the quirky friend, the flake, the loveable spaz, who makes life interesting--and enriching--by taking the train off the tracks of predictability and taking flight.

Who knew that it would also become the secret to our nation's sustainability as well!

MORE:

Cities Seek to Prosper by Luring Creative People
NPR's Morning Edition,September 7, 2004

Richard Florida, Tracking the 'Creative Class'
NPR's Weekend Edition - Sunday, May 22, 2005

Creativity: Outsourced and Outsized

Once again, talk about design is everywhere. Op-ed pages, weekly magazine covers, stump speeches, and a deluge of new books.

The main message seems to be: If you don't want your job to be outsourced, be a "Creative".

I'd laugh it all off if I had not just had lunch with a local creative firm in Pittsburgh who is outsourcing their creative brains to China!

This small firm can't find enough business in Southwest Pennsylvania, but they have an offer to give multiple presentations in multiple cities across China for high-flying fees.

For a kid like me, this is a refreshing turn, and I have to admit, a bittersweet revenge. Way back in the Reagan '80s, I was told by my high school principal, "You know, you should maybe major in engineering, to have something to fall back on in case this whole art thing doesn't pan out."

Dan Pink, author of Free Agent Nation and writer/blogger for Fast Company has a new book in the market, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.

Read Thomas P.M. Barnett's reactions to recent articles by Pink and Tom Friedman, whose book The World is Flat is fueling the fire of the left-side/right-side brain debate. (See a great visual synthesis of Friedman's interview with Charlie Rose.)

below: The Wes Anderson film about a fercely independent (and wacky) family of intellectuals is advertised next to the Chinese symbol of conformity. [photo by Anthony Hartman]

Use Your Imagination (and Duct Tape!)

Traveling back from a conference in Rhode Island this week, the TSA searched my art supply bag after repeated passes through the x-ray machine.

The offending object of suspicion: A roll of duct tape!

See! It can be used for anything, even WMD!

Pictured above, Lake Ridge Academy’s splendidly bedecked, duct tape elephant takes first prize in the Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival parade held Saturday, June 19. Keep reading for more on the magic substance from one of the finest news sources, Weekly World News, found in every American grocery checkout lane.

From Weekly World News:
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DUCT TAPE! It's Good For Everything! By TAYLOR BRIDGES

Tim Nyberg and Jim Berg call themselves "The Duct Tape Guys." The brothers-in-law have written six books with titles like "The Ultimate Duct Tape Book," "Duct Shui," and "The Jumbo Duct Tape Book," and have dedicated their lives to "The Ultimate Power Tool."

"There are basically two rules in life," Tim says. "If it's stuck and it's not supposed to be, use WD-40. If it's not stuck and it's supposed to be, use duct tape."

Read about the miracle uses of duct tape here.

[Thanks to Jarrell McAlister of Donkey Top]

Uncle Walt, Father of American Poetry

Born into the American Experience on this day in West Hills, Long Island (1819) was Walt Whitman, whose wandering life and joyous, staggering poetry gave voice to the chaos and virility of a nation in puberty.

From The Writer's Almanac:

Walt Whitman moved back to New York City and started writing for newspapers. He loved the penny papers—the cheap ones—their lively style. He said, 'I like limber, lashing, fierce words... strong, cutting, beautiful, rude words.' He liked to walk up and down Broadway and around in Battery Park.

"He wrote a novel about the evils of alcohol called Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times, (1842). It sold more than 20,000 copies. He went to New Orleans in 1846 to write for a newspaper there. He was amazed at what he saw: the mixture of Spanish and English and French. He saw slaves being auctioned on the block. He came to believe that he should write something to hold the country together, that America needed a poetry unlike poetry of Europe. The first edition of Leaves of Grass came out in 1855, unrhymed, un-metered poetry that combined language of sermons, romantic poetry and working class slang.

More at The Walt Whitman Archive.
Listen (Real Audio) to Garrison Kieller read excerpts from Crossing Brookyn Ferry.