• You’re taking your sources too seriously. Figure out what you want each part to say and use your sources to support that point. They need to work for you.
• It’s stupid to set goals that end up being unreasonable. Set markers, but generally speaking, allot 2.5 the amount of time something should take.
• It’s not due next week. You have to live like this for over a month, so you need a better game plan than what you have. That’s what your paper and your attitude are telling you.

It’s true, I’ve been setting myself rather unrealistic goals for the last month, and I’ve missed almost all of them. As I keep uncovering new research, I keep trying to figure out how to work it in, and I’ve lost the larger argument in my thesis. I’ve spent most of waking time isolating myself and trying to write but have achieved very little (that I’m happy with) to show for it.

Somehow, I had the idea that I was going to crawl into a hole, write my thesis, then come out. Ha! Ironic because my thesis is very much about the need to be more human, yet here I am trying to be a writing machine, neglecting food, sleep and social needs in order to finish my thesis.

I really need a better game plan.

Inkodye is a light-sensitive dye that sets permanently when exposed to direct sunlight for 6 minutes. It seems so simple and inexpensive that I know I’m going to have to try some myself and gift them to crafty friends.

My mind is definitely procrastinating on thesis right now, just thinking about all the projects I can start in the sun! But for now I will go back to writing about the profanity of typography and how typography is an extension of our bodies.

In a small passport photo booth, a woman tilts her chin down and allows her side-swept bangs to fall in front of her nose, covering her face almost entirely. With a quick flash, her photo is taken. Captured in this faceless photo, the wave in her hair reveals a letter S.

This photo contributes to a poster designed by Paul Elliman for Fuse 5: Virtual Fuse in 1992. Twenty-six of his friends were asked to visit a passport photo booth and each act out letters of the alphabet with their bodies, from the shoulders up. Sitting still in a confined space, participants were limited in their props and positions. Using long hair hanging over the right shoulder to represent the descender of a P, a loosened tie to form the diagonal stems of a Y or a mouth opened wide to imitate an O–each letter required its designer to think carefully about how their body could resemble and express a character in the alphabet.

“Elliman’s unwillingness to ‘separate the body from the writing’ is a reflection on contemporary uses of technology and the idea that ‘every mark and image and human act, in a very cybernetic sense, is more or less understood as an extended writing’,” writes Teal Triggs, a graphic design historian fascinated with typographic experimentation. She traces Elliman’s inspiration to use the body to form letters, back to early medieval manuscripts which were adorned with painted images of humans to give the alphabetic writing a living presence.

We had two full days of intensive Work-in-Progress presentations with visiting critic Peter Hall  and other faculty members last month, and I was (and kind of still am) overwhelmed with the feedback. While most of it was positive and helpful, I had to open myself up to new themes and readings that have restructured my thesis narrative almost entirely. And I’m still working on that elevator pitch.

Research for this thesis has been so intriguing so far that I just wish I had more time. I thought I would be sick of the topic by now, but it continues to evolve and connects me to new things all the time. Though I’ve interviewed at least a dozen designers and critics, there are still so many people I want to talk to. I feel like I’ve just started to write and won’t be able to conclude anytime soon.

Deciphering the Doodle is to become familiarized with Graham’s most iconic poses, beginning with her signature solo from Lamentation in 1930. Grounded with a wide stance, the first dancer who is drawn shrouded in a stretchy tube of fabric pulls tensely from the torso to the arms to represent the feeling of grief trapped under one’s skin. In Eilber’s choreography, the motion of pulling the upper body over the head slowly traces the top curve of the lowercase E. The dancer freezes once the character is performed. Quickly sweeping into a different figure like a phantom and leaving the static E behind, Woodward’s next dancer springs upwards with wrists flexed out, to capture the blissful energy of Graham’s performance in Satyric Festival Song. The figure even wears the same striped maxi dress as Graham did in 1932, and accentuates the long ascending lowercase L shape by flipping her long hair up in the air. The next character is more complex: to draw two parts of the double-storey lowercase G in a single swish, the dancer ducks low and spins on the spot while swinging her flexed limb upwards to draw the top circle, also known in type design as the bowl. This dancer mimics the gracious ballet style of the Bride in Appalachian Spring closely. Following the Bride, the double O’s in the wordmark Google are constructed with a ferocious leap. The dancer draws two circles in mid-air with both legs in a split, inspired by Night Journey, which premiered in 1947. This leaping move is especially significant as it exemplifies Graham’s technique to contract and release in dancing. Finally, the animation concludes with a high kick and the sweep of a long skirt forming the largest arc yet to construct the uppercase G. This move, derived from the performance Frontier ends the sequence with a fierce stomp of the leg on the baseline, revealing the Graham-inspired identity in its entirety.

With only 48 days left until my entire 10,000 word thesis is due, I’m really going to have to extend my writing beyond descriptions and be much more critical about the subject matter. Hence, I will be locking myself in at the NYPL tomorrow, filling my head with thoughts about performativity, cyborgs and typography. Along with my findings from Occupy with Type, I have a lot of material I need to work through.

Chin up, Cheryl.

We started off the new year with an intimate gathering with some close friends, followed by a relaxing getaway. After the most intensive semester yet, I took a short but much needed vacation with my boyfriend to The Poconos this week, where we rented a small creekside cabin. It was extremely secluded, but well-equipped with a retro kitchen, a charming fireplace and lodge-style furniture.

A chance to curl up on the couch to read leisurely by the crackling fire was just what we were looking for, but this cabin was extra special as it had a room with a banquette facing the creek, which was perfect for napping as the water rushed downhill outside. We spent our time being relaxed and indulgent–sipping red wine, apple cider, hot chocolate with Bailey’s and cooking up hearty homemade beef stew and torellini carbonara. Given the beautiful surrounding landscape, we also took a long walk one afternoon to find a frozen lake, baby evergreen trees, creekside swings and a hammock.

Next Monday, I will begin my last semester of D-Crit. It’s hard to believe that when I prepared my grad school applications in 2009, I hoped so much to be a part of Class of 2012. And now in only a few months, I will be graduating at Radio City Music Hall with my MFA!

There’s so much uncertainty about this upcoming year: will I find a job to stay in New York? Will the new Dark Knight movie live up to its hype? Will the world end? Either way, I will find a way to enjoy 2012.

So this morning, we set out at noon as planned to “Occupy with Type” at Duarte Square in New York City.

We performed the words occupy, listen, reason, react, revise and solve, in that order in front of a crowd of protestors and media. I decided on using verbs only to show that the movement was protesting for action. There has been so much criticism towards the movement and its demands that I didn’t want to add to it by introducing words that were too confusing. I felt the six-lettered words really reduced all the slogans and chants down to what the protestors wanted to see happen.

As someone organizing the performance and being a part of it as a human letter at the same time, the experience was extremely overwhelming for me. We initially were just rehearsing, but as many cameras clicked and a crowd started to form, we quickly had to proceed with our performance. It was difficult to determine where the “stage” ended and audience began. While standing still as a letter, people weaved in and out in front of us, bombarding us with their queries. For the most part, we attracted a lot of attention and the crowd reactions were great, and it was especially warming when someone would repeat the word we formed out loud, acknowledging that they had deciphered it in its challenging legibility. They enjoyed the spectacle but I have yet to decide whether or not the medium was effective in communicating a message. I felt we may have been limited by only 6 people and 6 letters, as the more people participate, the more refined and clear the words could be.

A big thank you to Andrey, Barbara, Katya, Phil and Victor for coming out and helping making this possible! And thanks to two friendly strangers, Misty and Dan, who we managed to find on the spot. And of course to the wonderful Amandine for devising such a fun way to perform letters. This extremely impulsive project came about as I was writing a profile on Amandine for Imprint. Just as I was sending this to my editor, I decided the OWS third month anniversary would be a perfect opportunity to try her wearable lettering out. I had to gather volunteers and sew boleros in only two days, but I’m so glad we pulled it off as it was a rewarding and worthwhile experience.

As the Occupy movement is planning to assemble again this weekend for its third month anniversary, I want to take part peacefully and test the impact of human typography. Amandine Alessandra, an amazing designer I’ve been corresponding with from London, has used a bolero and a group of people in her Letterform for the Ephemeral project, acting out simple words in various public spaces as social commentary on our current culture of speed. She has compared this method of dispersing a short message to an analog tweet, guerilla advertising and graffiti. It is also legal, ephemeral and not damaging.

I will need a minimum of 5 other people to at least act out each of the letters in OCCUPY with me, and someone else to document this with a video camera and observe passer-by reactions. The more people I can get to help, the more words we can form. The human letters will wear dark colors and I will make bright colored boleros over the next two days for everyone to slip over their arms. The letters look pretty easy to act out but also don’t have to be perfect because typography can take a lot of abuse and still be legible. Since the bolero is a flexible tool, I will bring a list of words to perform at the venue so we can project the voice of the movement.

I hope to perform this Saturday at noon with a sequence for about an hour. I’ll make extra boleros so that anyone enthusiastic from the audience can participate as well. If it is well-received, I would be happy to stay and type dance with people for the rest of the day :)

This is a collective experience so I will need volunteering bodies for this to work. It could also be fun! So if you or anyone you know is interested in taking part, please pass this on. I will be so grateful for your help on my thesis.

Luckily, Rosalie and Arthur have compiled a stop motion video to share the spirit of their wedding. They’re a fun couple, aren’t they?

Congratulations, guys!

PS. It is especially funny when you know their dog’s name is Dudu, and is appropriately featured in the video whenever the soundtrack goes du du du du du du…

Winter, I am ready for you.

Drink while editing.

After a few sips of wine, you will have less tolerance for convoluted statements and long-winded sentences. You will feel dettached to your writing and be free to “kill your darlings”. Drinking helps with brutal and efficient editing. Try it.

…now back to writing so I actually have convoluted statements to edit.

I will be hoarding all sorts of photos, videos, links and quotes… and as I am trying to organize my thoughts, feel free to ask me questions to challenge me and throw me off.

My own “No Google” essay from Steve’s class, Rediscovering a Stereoscopic World, was published this morning on Design Observer (!!!)

Since I couldn’t use Google, I flipped through 3 years worth of Stereo World publications at the library before coming across an ad by View*Productions, which helped me arrange a phone interview with the company’s co-founder, Michael Kaplan. The objects I chose, a stereoscope and a View-Master, were quite generic so I was very lucky that this encounter ultimately provided me with a different angle and ended up becoming the main narrative of my story.

In other extremely exciting news, I will also be editing the third D-Crit chapbook with Steven Heller (this year’s National Design Museum Design Mind!) this Fall, compiling all the fun “No Google” stories that came out of this class. More on this as it happens.

Not using Google was pretty limiting, but all these fruitful outcomes have made the resistance worth it!

I was especially excited that Urbanized premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival–an event that I am extremely familiar with in my birth city! The first time I saw Gary speak was also in Toronto after the Objectified screening at Hot Docs in 2009. At the time I was still preparing for my YSDN grad show… so much has changed since!

I was able to catch a private screening on September 19th, and was so glad that I was a part of this! The film is very informative and the topics discussed collide with so many things we are learning at D-Crit. Having seen so much footage during the editing process, the film seemed rather short, but it was already packed with many vibrant case studies and takeaway points. I had a lot of fun doing it, and I highly recommend seeing it, not only because my name is in the credits (heehee!) but also because it’s just fascinating to learn how people are living and building their lives in cities around the world.

I’ve mostly been submerged in school, work and other special projects lately but I promise this absence from the blogging and tweeting world means exciting things are happening in real life. I will be back to blog a lot more this month!

Dearest friend,

Tomorrow I will be flying to the other side of the world for school, this time alone–no boyfriend, no close family and only about three friends in the city. But it all feels great, and I can’t believe that after so much anticipation and excitement, I will finally and really be a masters student in New York tomorrow.

After sending out all my graduate applications in the first week of the new year, I began 2010 with one simple resolution–to accept defeat with grace, as I did not know what the new decade would bring. But I felt like a quitter, since just as everything was coming together in January, I made the rash decision to pack my bags in 10 days and go home for an indefinite period of time. Part of it was simply being tired and ashamed of unemployment, and part of it was just the need to be near family again. But despite the defeat I felt, there was not one person that did not support my decision, including the important people I left behind. And very soon after arriving, I was granted the opportunity to take on a different career path as a design critic.

As uncertain as the past 6 months in Hong Kong were, they were extremely worth it. In this short period of time, I battled and gained more than I expected. I had to face and overcome my fear of injections three times this summer (and if you know me well, you’d know this definitely ranks as one of my top fears in life), I gained new appreciation and skills in leather crafts, wrote about design for one of my favourite blogs, and I learned what it was like to be a graphic designer while finding meaningful company among so many talented people at my workplace. I had time to see old friends again, rediscover Hong Kong as my home, confirm my directions in life, and probably most crucially, demonstrate and reassure my family that I needed to be somewhere else to accomplish the things I wanted for my career. The chance to come home in between my two degrees was the refresher I needed… Hong Kong will always be home so it is obviously difficult to leave, but it gets easier each time knowing life holds adventures for me elsewhere.

Despite the fact that my family have not always approved of design as the ideal career, I am thankful that they have never denied me opportunities, always supporting my ambitions financially and constantly providing me with what I needed to succeed. As a friend of mine wrote: “not everyone has the opportunity and privilege to come to New York to pursue their path in the first place, and not everyone has the privilege to leave behind their family to create a life apart from them.” Not everyone has family that loves so unconditionally like mine does.

So this is it, tomorrow I will arrive in New York–a city that I hope is an eclectic mix of the past two cities I’ve lived in. I will finally be able to enjoy East coast culture and independence from Toronto, without giving up the vibrance, pace and urban lifestyle of Hong Kong. I am particularly excited to move into my new home in Manhattan with my lovely roommate. After the 9 roommates I had during my undergrad residence, I know it is rare and hardly easy to find someone bearable to share your living space with. So I already feel at ease knowing that I will have good company as I build my new life in New York.

Lastly, thank you for reading so much and being an influential part of the story so far. Knowing how easy it was to keep in touch with Skype, phonecalls, e-mails and 29481429 other social media outlets in the last 5 years, I have no doubt I will be able to keep those that I want close to me. I can honestly say right now that I have never felt my life was fuller. I assure you that the feeling of wanting something for so long and being so close to having it become reality is extremely rewarding and I hope you find the same feeling too.

Lots of lots of Love,
Cheryl

PS. If you are still confused about what Design Criticism is, I will have a clearer explanation when I experience it myself very soon :P

Tomorrow I will have lived in New York for a year. It feels like I’ve been here much longer than that, and I feel I’ve already outdone the initial goals I had for myself when I arrived. What a wonderful year it’s been. And now, onwards to thesis year!

So here’s a quick round-up of some things I’ve been writing for Metropolis POV:

Archiprix 2011 An intensive architectural study of three U.S. cities kicks off in Manhattan.
+ Pool A new proposal for a public floating pool surfaces.
High Line Expansion An experiential account of  Manhattan’s newest park in the sky.
Holding Pattern at MoMA PS1 A temporary playground with lasting benefits for the community.
Mapping the Cityscape An exhibition tries to showcase the myriad representations of the Manhattan grid.

For some assignments, I’ve had the chance to run about the city to check out things on view, so I’ve tried not to wait or ponder too long before documenting my thoughts. I’ve just generally had a lot of fun! Despite being away from home, this summer in New York has been as amazing as I expected.

With a little bit more time on my hands lately, I’ve been spending more time outside of Manhattan. There were some days where I ventured out for a day at Six Flags in New Jersey, danced outdoors by Gowanus Grove, went to Coney Island for carnival rides and looked for Indian food in Jackson Heights. But on other days, I stayed close and tanned on the High Line, strolled for two hours in Central Park, enjoyed a ballet at Lincoln Center and joined foreign architects on an informative Archiprix tour of notable architecture. The contrast of these activities in and out of Manhattan made me realize how this small overpopulated island is constantly energized, and sometimes stepping out is what I need in order to recharge.

This beautiful time-lapse video by Josh Owens the emphasizes the pace, liveliness and beauty of Manhattan. It’s not always this glamorous, because on the micro level there’s a lot of grunge too, but then a lot of the time it does feel like this, just constant motion and change.

‎”The best times in New York are when I go away with it, which is why it’s so attractive to visitors.

Life in New York has become a sort of life under siege. One gets used to taking all sorts of precautions that get very exhausting and expensive, which leads to conclude that the day will inevitably come when the best tip of all will be to leave New York… Leave New York as often as you can. No matter how exotic your destination, when returning to New York you’re bound to be reminded that, although it is not the world’s most leisurely, comfortable or Elysian style, it is still the most exciting place to live.” – New York Magazine, 1989

As much as Manhattan is exhausting, I couldn’t feel more relieved each time I arrive at an airport or bus terminal. I think I have the energy for another year of Manhattan.

Graham was kind enough to send me a copy of his film, so I wrote up an interview and review of the documentary on Motionographer this week. If this is the kind of thing that excites you too, New York in Motion will be screening for free tonight at the SVA Theater here in New York. It’s worth checking out!

PS. I’ve been a bit of a writing machine lately, so look out for more new articles soon.

As much as I am happy to commission a web designer to fix things up here, I can’t wait to see what these videos by Jessica Hische and Russ Maschmeyer will teach me.

Because these last eight months haven’t been easy, I’ve grown incredibly close to the nine other like-minded students in my class. Together, we’ve cried over personal essays read out loud, then had weekly post-crying class drinks. We wrote odes to objects, memorized design history flashcards, divided and conquered readings and organized thesis pow-wows to help each other brainstorm. We held onto each other for our lives while ice-skating in Bryant Park, and huddled closely as we lost body heat during a freezing tour of the Brooklyn Bridge… and then we had a soup party to defrost.

Eight months doesn’t sound like a lot of time together, until you realize when you wake up that it’s summer and you don’t know what to do with yourself because you’re not scheduled to meet with classmates anymore for months. That’s when you know how integral these people have become to your life. As we gear up for a whole year of thesis work, next semester will be a different kind of challenging. But luckily, unlike settling into the program last Fall, this time we will have each other to count on. That makes me much less terrified.

To recap my time in New York, whenever I wasn’t hiding out at D-Crit headquarters, I was tweeting for the New Museum‘s New City Reader and managing social media for our own department, D-Crit. Since December, I’ve been helping out with editing on Gary Hustwit’s upcoming film, Urbanized. I also worked at SVA’s Visual Resources Collection, fixating daily on art history slides. I know, I’ve been a very busy person… but you snooze you lose, right? New York has an abundance of opportunities to offer, and it would be silly for me to pass up on all these experiences.

With all the activities I’ve been doing, it’s become difficult to define my role, so it took me a while to decide when I designed my new business cards. But in the end I settled for designer and critic. Steven Kennedy and Earl Kallemeyn kindly printed a batch of 200 wonderful silver letterpressed business cards for me, and I wish I knew how to photograph them to show how fine the letters are. I’m very pleased with them!

Summer break is finally here–and although it won’t be much of a break, this will be the last time I have time off as a student. This Monday will be my first day at Metropolis Magazine, where I will work all summer alongside the editor-in-chief Susan Szenasy on their blog, Point of View. I’m eager to hone my writing skills, and excited to join our new D-Crit graduates Avi and Aileen!

And just so I am held accountable later on, I’m going to record in writing here that this blog will finally receive the makeover it deserves (since we all know how ugly it is) so look forward to some visual improvements.

I’ve been fuelled with happiness lately, and I hope that is infectious. Love!

So I spent 16 weeks with this little guy, researching its history and culture without the aid of Google. That’s right–this research class also known as “No Google” forbids us from using the Internet, which seems like a pretty crazy idea these days. But this project introduced me to a lot of things (for one, that is how I became the Foursquare mayor of the New York Public Library). I found the picture collection, the periodicals and microforms section, the local history section, and all the other nooks of the library I never visited before. I had some interesting conversations, used directory books for telephone numbers and addresses, went through all the National Geographic back issues from 1950-58 to look for ads, and had to read a rare book on optics which had pages that were literally chipping as I flipped them. It was frustrating when books weren’t available, if I didn’t skim fast enough to know if something was even relevant (and no Ctrl+F!) and when librarians assumed I Googled for background reading, they almost seemed irritated with basic enquiries, like “when was the stereoscope invented?”

I was told many times, “just Google it!”

And all of this ended up in a 2,000 word paper and presentation (but more on that later). I love Google, but as I tweeted for One Day for Design, Google searches are often an uninspiring place to start. Internet searches help clear up a lot of things, but the process is definitely not as rewarding as scavenging through real things. Hopefully even with these limitations lifted, I’ll still be motivated to do these in-person searches for thesis next year (although, winter weather is very discouraging).

PS. Ironically, it was Google Doodle that reminded me the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace happened 160 years today. It was here that the stereoscope was presented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and unveiled to the world.

It’s the final stretch of the semester and I really should be finishing my presentation on stereoscopic equipment right now, but this beautiful video by Everynone reminded me of a stereograph. And you know how much I love parallels.

I was a clumsy designer at first, but Atticus was there to accompany me in the learning process. When I forgot to save my files, he would never throw tantrums, but instead patiently redid everything with me. He tolerated my ignorance with uncompressed files, my unorganized folders and even working straight off a server. He very rarely shut off before I did and despite all his later cosmetic defects, we paid very few trips to the Genius Bar. We were a team. Sometimes I would reward him for his co-operation. I’d make a deal with him: if we get everything done quickly, we can go enjoy the sunshine. So we would–we’d go out and sit on the grass and read together.

A month into our friendship, I hurt Atticus, but only by accident–I would never mean to hurt him. Staying up one night working on a 3D model, with an exacto knife in one hand, I left a 5mm cut on his face. I put a bandage over the small incision and hoped that when I woke up, it would be gone. Atticus didn’t resent me, but the scar left behind a reminder to always be more gentle with my friends.

I didn’t learn my lesson though. During a second-year History of Design lecture, I got up to leave and accidentally nudged Atticus off the desk that he was comfortable seated on. Later, I discovered that the fall had cause his screen to dislocate and develop an overbite. His latch broke, meaning he could only go to sleep manually from then on. That day, we did have to go to the Genius Bar, but they said he was fine and it would not be worth the repair. I might even have cried that day because I was responsible for his insomnia, but Atticus was a brave boy and functioned just the same.

Atticus had a rash that developed on his right cheek over his first humid summer in Hong Kong. I’m not sure what it was that made the metal corrode where my wrist brushed while using the trackpad, but Atticus didn’t react well to it. The patch of scratches never grew, or go away, so it naturally became like a birth mark, something to identify him by. After a while, it didn’t bother either of us, and instead added character.

By the time I graduated in 2009, everyone around me told me I had to let Atticus go. Initially, I hesitated at the idea of such betrayal, but it was evident that the kind of work I was doing was changing, and Atticus could no longer assist. He was a great companion for leisure, simple internet tasks and writing, but he lacked the capability to handle video rendering and much larger projects. It seemed Atticus and I wanted different things. So I sold Atticus–yes, I sold my friend for money and I’m not proud, but it had to be done.

When my new laptop arrived, I made the conscious choice not to name it, apply any sort of personality or attachment. Maybe I’ve grown up now that I’ve worked and am in grad school. But Atticus–he will always have a name, and everyone will know him as my good friend from the past.

The art direction for the March 2011 issue of Martha Stewart made me smile this morning. This summer, I’m going to get back to making things of my own, while writing about things by others.

I spent the last week being lost in London, seeing high school friends, visiting exhibitions and consuming way too much food and fun. The city feels home-like to me with its double-decker buses, Oyster card, British accent, traffic rules and of course familiar faces. And after hustling in New York for six months, it was a good idea to step out and take a much deserved break.

Leaving New York for a bit was a good way to realize that I am exactly where I want to be. Even just for six days, I missed the noise, my apartment and roommate, all 9 of my classmates and our school routine, my own bed and the 24/7 nature of the city. I was able to meet with some MA Critical Writing students from Royal College of Art, and while our programs are very similar, I couldn’t be happier that I am at D-Crit. London was wonderful, but New York is really something else. And it was nice to return with that reassurance.

Today, everything just feels right. It’s a good feeling.

On February 15th 2011, The Landmark Preservation Commission gathered to discuss the designation of landmark status to the first and second floor interiors of the building at 510 Fifth Avenue–an overdue discussion that should have happened when the building exterior received its landmark status 14 years ago. Fascinated with the building’s historical significance, I attended this public hearing. Designed by architect, Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merril, the building was initially commissioned by the Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust Company. Its most distinguishing element was a sixty-ton metal screen wall, crafted with an acetylene torch by Italian designer, Harry Bertoia. The screen sculpture, viewable from the outside, was the building’s most valuable element. When the glass building was erected, the screen was a spectacle to the financial world, architecture enthusiasts and pedestrians alike. The transparent building design was radical, as it housed a large financial institution, boasted a breath-taking Bertoia sculpture and revealed an oversized vault within, designed by industrial design extraordinaire, Henry Dreyfuss. This daring architecture transformed the standards for American bank design. The architecture and sculptural art were one–the beauty of the design was the complimentary coexistence of the exterior and interior. But somehow, decades later, the value of the site-specific sculpture was overlooked, and the site’s most recent owner, JPMorgan Chase, dismantled the screen wall when they evacuated from the building, leaving behind an architectural corpse.

Did the Commission really think that landmarking the remaining interior now would compensate for the loss of an original Bertoia sculpture–one that spanned the 70-foot width of the building, filled the second floor mezzanine with a bronze shimmer, and essentially gave the building its distinction from other ubiquitous glass structures of its time? Of course not, but they had to try to put it behind them, and preserve the tiny details that were left. Throughout the meeting, each member reiterated distinct qualities of the remaining elements such as geometric purity, advanced construction materials and the unity of the interior and exterior, while avoiding the mention of the lost architectural art. Each presentation slide displayed on the projector referencing the original building, was a reminder of the irreversible mistake that the Committee had made in not landmarking the interior in 1997 prior to Chase’s removal of the Bertoia screen wall. An unspoken but noticeable remorse lingered throughout the 20-minute discussion. As we sat in a boardroom in the Manhattan Municipal Building trying to salvage what was left of a mid-century landmark, the 800 brass, copper and nickel textured panels from Bertoia’s prized work lay somewhere else only known to Chase, unappreciated and not to be seen in its assembled form again.

The building is rumoured to be the new home of a chain retailer, Forever 21–a distasteful and degrading repurpose of the once iconic Modernist masterpiece. The outcome of this controversy makes me question why the priority of preserving architecture trumped art, when both were equally as important to this particular landmark. The art completed the building’s design. Even with its original luminous ceilings and twin escalators still in tact, 510 Fifth Avenue will never be the same. As I stand outside the lifeless landmark, all I can do is fill the empty box with my imagination, referencing the canonizing black and white photography by Ezra Stoller and the descriptive reviews by architecture critics, Lewis Mumford and Ada Louise Huxtable. I have never seen the Bertoia screen installed, and unfortunately, I never will.

In the presence of these young creatives still figuring out what it means to be a designer, I admired their refreshing energy and curiosity.

–

In 1476, Duke Frederico da Montefeltro commissioned a study in his Ducal Palace in Gubbio, as a grand display of his wealth, reputation and high regard for scientific knowledge. Created in intarsia, the entire studiolo was made of highly intricate wood inlays to create two-dimensional representations of his three-dimensional objects of interest. Among the objects depicted were books, tools, armoury, astronomical, musical and mathematical instruments–each demonstrating the extent of the elite’s education in the Renaissance, and the Duke’s position as a military leader. His studiolo summed him up in a single space, almost like the profiles I create on social media networks. Although he was not born into the upper class, the possessions in this cabinet of curiosity attest to the social standing he attained as a general. The Gubbio Studiolo, now permanently on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, remains as an artifact of the Duke’s wealth and influence.

Today, there is no need to commission a skilled craftsman to spend countless laborious hours, creating a room to demonstrate my social standing to my peers. All I need is an online social media account. Inhabitants of the internet can build their own cabinets of curiosities, free of cost and instantaneously with an e-mail address. Established in 2004 and 2006 respectively, Facebook and Twitter make it extremely easy to share personal photos, links and event attendance–everything I want others to know about my life, personally curated by myself. Unlike the Gubbio Studiolo which was limited in size and its contents therefore carefully selected to represent the Duke’s fine taste and wealth, social media sites can hold an endless trove of information about an individual’s life. Every thing I “follow” or “like” is easily visible on the side, and the interests and influences I claim will build my character online. If I follow the New York Times, this suggests I am somewhat educated and interested in a breadth of issues. Or I could publicly “like” Justin Bieber (even though I don’t) and suggest my level of maturity. On the internet, activities displayed on my feed exposes my personality and popularity, just as a stuffed dodo in a 15th Century studiolo implied a fascination with natural history.

In late 2010, both Facebook and Twitter introduced new interfaces, organizing the individual profiles into clearer categories. Their redesigns focus on the “information architecture”, a term coined by Richard Saul Wurman in 1976, to describe the need for a solid structure behind the large amount of information we interact with. The internet isn’t only architectural in structure with its underlying grid-like Modernist construction and CSS decor; the networks provides large public spaces that facilitate interaction between people, regardless of geographical location. My own internet home consists of several estates designed for different purposes. While I reserve Twitter for professional networking affairs, my friends and family are invited for more intimate gatherings on Facebook. I send my mom my photo albums, tagged with names to identify the faces of people I talk about, and I share links to articles I write so anyone who is a connection can be directed to my work. Social media helps build new connections, while making it easy to maintain the old ones.

Twitter is the Wall Street for information exchange, and the architectural foundation of the site is key, as a wealth of time-stamped 140-character tweets flood in with no end. By default, the microblogging service has a light blue backdrop–a popular color chosen by most social media companies, because it is inviting and neutral. Twitter can easily be decorated, as users are welcome to upload background wallpapers and customize colors for their own estate. I used to enjoy the simple two column grid of the original Twitter, with my feed occupying a double-width column on the left, and everything else like the navigation, trending topics and searches stacked neatly on the right. But the new Twitter is wide and complex, with external sources that are referenced in tweets, such as TwitPic and YouTube videos, sliding from the main column to the adjacent navigation chamber. The links used to open in a separate browser window, but now are embedded and crowd the space. The new Twitter makes unnecessary adjustments, and the most notable of these is the reduced scale of the “What’s happening?” input box–the window opening of the page, which was previously prominent enough on the page to prompt users to update the Twitterverse. This box is much smaller now, and no single feature stands out on the page, making the entire layout appear flat. The addition of unlimited scrolling is appropriate though, accommodating for the continuous flow of tweets. Without hierarchy in the typography and forms, the page loses a clear focus. To stay engaged in conversations and topics, the mentions, searches and tags need to be easy to access and clear in their presentation. Twitter’s original feed, has been transformed into a virtual Times Square, cluttered with news zippers and billboards all equal in size and in competition for attention.

With over 500 million Facebook users worldwide, even architects of physical spaces find it necessary to give the design of the website more thought. A designer at the famous design firm, Bruce Mau Design, recently re-imagined the layout of a Facebook profile, just a few weeks before Facebook rolled out its own latest update to the interface. When the site first started, The original design was bare–just a single profile picture, without shelves along the side to hold additional photos, videos, links, third party applications and relationships. The household grew bigger and more complex over time, with hyperlinks on names and photos acting as passages to libraries of knowledge. The main profile picture remains as the most dominant element on the top left corner, hanging like a portrait painting in a Renaissance mansion. Next to it, tagged photos are displayed in a row on a mantelpiece. Directly underneath are small graphical icons accompanying the subheadings for each feature, aligned along the wall as a row of bunting. And then there is the wall–the most fundamental and telling feature in the estate, where the master of the house and visitors alike leave traces and contributions. In contrast to the new Twitter layout, the new Facebook is well-proportioned, and remains true to the Facebook aesthetic of a strict grid, sans-serif typography and blue and grey color scheme. Designers have followed this style guide since the foundation. In the Facebook estate, everything is perfectly arranged–easy to find, and even easier to curate.

Since I joined Facebook in 2005, I’ve noticed a pattern of protest against every revision of the website’s design. To accommodate for the growth of the network, Facebook has been adding features to appeal to a broader audience. Advertisements take up greater real estate in each revision, but someone needs to pay for these online homes. With each redesign, the organization of information evolves to make profiles more accessible, upsetting users that feel Facebook makes it too easy for others to extract details about them. A wave of protestors always publicly threaten to deactivate their accounts after feeling overexposed by founder, Mark Zuckerberg’s eroding privacy policy. No one really opposes how their profile is laid out, but they care significantly about what is being put out there. There are greater concerns for privacy than appearance here, even when Facebook intrusively shuffles the furniture in our virtual homes. These seem like moot complaints, since social media profiles are self-curated, and each profile is only built with information that the user volunteers. Facebook makes it as easy to publicize conspicuous consumption, as it is to maintain a degree of privacy. Private conversations in the form of messages, can occur in secret chambers, with the entrance subtly located as a graphic icon at the top of the page in dark blue, on a low contrast blue background. Even with privacy options, the internet is primarily a public space, and those looking for more privacy clearly don’t belong. The agenda of social media is all about transparency, and everyone who participates is choosing to be participate and contribute to a community.

Although the new design is not quite resolved, fortunately, Twitter is open to the influence of social media. The site encourages users to respond to the new layout, by marking their tweets with the tag #NewTwitter, allowing the company and other users to engage in discussion about the layout preview and increase site traffic. The power of social media is being able to contribute continuously to the space you use, and with a strong follower-base and history of proper tweeting etiquette, what you say can possibly influence the design of the landscape. The rapid growth of social media in the last few years, has given life to a new kind of living and interaction. While my Manhattan apartment is tiny and my savings are even smaller, I can create a lavish home on the internet. Social media networks provide the virtual space to build an online presence. Through Facebook, I’ve met a compatible roommate, and have encountered several freelance design opportunities on Twitter. On many days, I find myself engaged in short enjoyable conversations with like-minded strangers (sometimes even my design heroes!). Like the Duke of Urbino and his Gubbio Studiolo, if I am selective about what I expose on Facebook and Twitter, I can use social media to establish a strong status gradually–only I get to have my own studiolo built anywhere, viewed by anyone, and it will be free.

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To visit an archive of Facebook’s design over the years, visit this blog.

The combination of Hoefler & Frere-Jones typefaces (Gotham is my favourite!) with the red and muted teal colour scheme might just make this my favourite report of all. Pre-order a printed copy of the Feltron 2010 report here.

The line-up of events this Spring is impressive, and the speakers were picked and invited by all 10 of us in our class. Aside from Valerie’s lecture on April 12, where Barbara and I will be giving introductions on the night, a guest speaker I am very excited to see again is Michael Bierut.

Michael Bierut is the reason I ended up at D-Crit. In November 2009, Michael was a speaker at Design Thinkers in Toronto, and was invited to speak to students at YSDN the following morning. After his presentation, I asked him to sign my copy of his book, which was one of the first graphic design gifts I had ever received as a design student. I told him I was seriously considering applying to grad school, had a few schools in mind, and was scheduling a trip to some of them for tours the next week. He mentioned that he taught at the D-Crit program and that I should look into it. So I did, and after that I planned a visit to SVA in New York, prepared my application, and am now an aspiring critic. So, as cliché as it sounds–I would not be here if not for him. And everything will come full circle when I see him speak again at D-Crit on March 1!

The full list of upcoming D-Crit events can be found here. Also, please follow @DCrit on Twitter, mostly because I am the Media Manager now and you don’t want to miss out on everything design-related and amazing.

We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with.

Some objects empower us, and some make us extremely vulnerable, but either way, simple inanimate objects have a way of playing a significant role in our lives. Following the theme of Design & Play, this is my evocative object.

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Along with hopscotch and skipping, the card game Memory, is one of my first recollections of a game I could play alone. It was also the only thing I could sit perfectly still for. I remember sitting by a window on my child-sized furniture as my mother explained the game to me: place all the cards faced down in a grid, and turn over only two at a time. If the two were a pair, I could remove them from the grid. If they were not, flip them over and try again. The purpose of the game was to find all the pairs, and it became easier as the removed cards left gaps, and I remembered the location of cards uncovered previously on failed attempts. As a child, I was cautious when handling my cards, even though they were a tad big for my hands at the time. I would focus very carefully on aligning them in a grid, minding the corners as I flipped them over so I wouldn’t bend them. The concept was simple, but could occupy a restless child like myself for a good length of time.

Memory was my first card game, and the introduction of playing cards into my life opened up many more opportunities for entertainment. But not all the games I played were solitary. Among my favourites were also Old Maid, Go Fish, and one that I never seem to tire of: Slap Jack. In my earliest encounters with cards, finding pairs helped me remember numbers, and also recognize the differences in the shapes. As I became older, cards became a core prop in social drinking games–easily attainable at bars or for sale at any convenient store. When I started working, Poker games became a part of Friday night rituals with co-workers. We rarely played for money, and the winner usually treated everyone for drinks.

One of my favourite things about playing cards is that they are never upside down. The designs on the cards are always right side up, as the Queen, the King and Jack have two identical heads on both poles of  the card. The most basic card design incorporates symmetrical symbols for the suits: hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. The cards are also predominantly two colored–illustrated simply in red and black, sometimes with an accent of yellow. I became fascinated furthermore by the design of the playing cards, when I saw them come to life in Disney’s 1951 animated film, Alice in Wonderland–a movie of imagination, curiosity and wonder. It’s not difficult to be mesmerized by the scene with the card march. The uniform movement in their dance routine exhibits a light-weight bounce, and mimics the shuffling of a deck of cards closely.

Ubiquitous, inexpensive and easy to acquire, playing cards have accompanied me through many experiences. The flipping sound of thin paper cards being shuffled, the contrast of simplicity and complexity in 52 patterned designs, and the wide variety of combinations in games will always resonate with me.

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Tucked away on the edge of Chinatown, stretching from Canal Street in Manhattan, reaching over the East River and landing onto Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, is the Manhattan Bridge–a grand infrastructure built in 1909 to connect the two boroughs. From Canal Street, the bridge begins at a wide classical arch, with a pedestrian walkway on the right hand side. Walking along the pedestrian lane of the beautiful infrastructure, I notice the combination of industrial steel construction decorated with neo-classical ornamentation and columns.

Compared to the Brooklyn Bridge with its limestone and cement towers, the Manhattan Bridge reveals its rivets and and historical architecture all at once. When walking across the mostly steel-constructed bridge, the historical columns, arches and bronze plates located at regular intervals become reminders of the bridge’s influences when it was built in 1909, engineered by Leon Solomon Moisseiff. The contrast between these different styles of architecture and industrial processes, reference Manhattan’s very own skyline and urban landscape, which also demonstrates an evenly mixed combination of different style skyscrapers that have been built throughout the city’s history.

One of my favourite things about living in New York is being able to walk through the city alone, observing the people, the buildings and their interactions. There are so many ways to look at New York to draw out its beauty. A walk through Central Park in the fall is a stimulating experience–enclosing me in a collage of red, oranges and ambers and for a moment, I am removed from the hustling city. But this recent discovery of an elevated view from the Manhattan Bridge over the water, quickly became one of my favourites and offers yet another perspective of New York City. It reminds me that New York is in fact made up of islands, each with a different character.

The walk across the bridge is both a quiet and disrupted one. The distant view of the waters and the Brooklyn Bridge in the late afternoon is tranquil. But every ten minutes a southbound train rushes across the tracks, creating a deafening roar. This defines the dual character of the Manhattan Bridge–there are always two sides to it. Different points on the bridge offer different experiences and purposes, making the infrastructure a significant one to the New York waterfront.

The 6,855-foot suspension bridge carries seven roadway lanes, four subway tracks and separate lanes for pedestrians and bicycles, and accommodates different things both on its deck and beneath the structure. While the pedestrian and bike lanes provide a dynamic recreational space for athletes and dog owners, under the bridge in Chinatown, the bridge acts as a static shelter for street stalls selling fresh produce. At the nook, you can find various stalls run by locals, selling vegetables and fruit native to Chinese cooking, for $1 a pound to many eager housewives that line up under the infrastructure. Its versatile and combined use for transportation, leisure and business makes the Manhattan Bridge a key structure to New York.

Walking across the Manhattan bridge offers me a deeper understanding about the bridge and its relationship to the two waterfronts. The infrastructure helps me see the bigger picture across the East River–a more removed and elevated view that I did not see anywhere else in the city. It brings me from the busy markets of Canal Street where people scramble for counterfeit handbags and Chinese produce, to a leisurely public park in DUMBO where people sit and rest. Manhattan facilitates cultural exchange and commerce with office buildings and a highway along the water, while Brooklyn plays a more laid back role, with parks and plazas appearing beneath me as I approach the end of my walk.

The Manhattan Bridge is a strong connection, enhancing the relationship between several contrasting elements: architectural styles, the personality of the boroughs, and the dynamic and static uses of the structure. It facilitates transportation and conjunction between two islands, but also stands as a still shelter for markets and parks. Being able to experience and see the various characters of New York from the Manhattan Bridge all at once, is what makes it so beautiful.

Sometimes I will be reading a historical architectural review, and then my mind will start to wonder: how many times was this article reproduced in a photocopier for the type to be so degraded? It’s not that Ada Louise Huxtable’s articles aren’t enjoyable reads… I just get distracted by what I see. I get so caught up with the signifier that I forget to internalize the signified. Other times, I spend way too much time trying to pick a typeface that best conveys the ideas of John Ruskin, even when I know my choice will not affect my assignment at all. But I’m still a firm believer that the right type will affect my reader’s experience of the writing, because a more organic serif typeface will be more suitable than a modern Bodoni or a slab serif.

I’m obviously more of a designer than a writer. I don’t know why I feel there is a conflict–I’m trying to concentrate on improving my writing, but I also don’t want to stop growing as a designer because I don’t have time to practise my skills. Sometimes writing about designers and design, feels a little like betrayal. I have to distance myself from empathizing with the designer’s intentions and laborious design process, and really look at the outcome and decide if it succeeds or not.

And I really wonder if I can be a critic that can do both–be a designer and writer at the same time. The skills feel awfully different to me now, but so many wonderful design essays have been written by designers themselves, so I don’t see why not. I’m just going to have to explore further with patience so that’s its no longer designing vs. writing, but designing & writing.

This upcoming semester, we’ll be looking at the craft of writing more, so I hope my mind will co-operate and take it all in. I’ve also been editing some of my papers during the break, so expect a flurry of posts with more serious topics (and American spelling!)

Visuals from The 2009 Feltron Annual Report

I couldn’t possibly include everything I wanted from the interview. I also didn’t want to repeat too much of the existing coverage on the Feltron Annual Reports, but hopefully my podcast reveals a more personal side of Nicholas Felton.

Interesting fact: Because I am a very thorough creeper, the instrumental used in the audio mix was inspired by Nicholas Felton’s Twitter (I think it worked nicely though!).

I know my 2010 was pretty packed and amazing, but we’ll have to wait a few weeks for the new report to see how Nicholas spent his year. Also, check out Daytum, its iPhone app and MoMA’s Talk To Me exhibition, mentioned in the podcast.

Thank you, Nicholas and Kate for speaking with me. And that concludes my blogging for 2010. Warm wishes for 2011!

By February 1, I decided I had enough of Toronto and made an impulsive but much needed move back to Hong Kong. The next six months were extremely rewarding as I reconnected with faces and places I left behind in 2005, and found myself new friends and hobbies during my stay. I only applied to a few schools, so I wasn’t sure how long I’d be in Hong Kong for, but I made the most of it and discovered many new favourite things.

A few weeks after I arrived in Hong Kong, my school offers started to come in, and I began to get a clearer idea of where I was going to spend my fall. I eventually decided to go with DCrit in April, and despite loving the opportunities of being a graphic designer in Asia, I was psyched for the next two years.

In September I moved to New York, and have since been enjoying the program and discovering the city. I can definitely say there’s nowhere else I rather be right now. I have no idea what to expect for 2011 (asides from a lot of school and writing), but it will be hard to beat 2010. I’m open to anything–although I highly doubt I will be moving across the ocean indefinitely and shipping things back and forth twice again next year!

2011, I’m ready for you.

(Wow, just rereading all my past posts and linking it to this one made me realize this year really was an unpredictable one. I wouldn’t have it any other way.)

Americans are extremely efficient, moving on from one holiday to the next. This Thanksgiving, as soon as we cleared the pumpkin pies off our plates and packed the turkey into the fridge, we decorated my friend’s tree to welcome the Christmas spirit. As I walked by the window displays on Fifth Avenue on Black Friday, I couldn’t help but think of all my family and friends scattered around the world that would not be sharing the holiday with me this season.

So over Thanksgiving, I decided to invite my friends to experience my first New York Christmas with me through a private online advent calendar. Every day until Christmas Day, I revealed a photo and shared a holiday moment.

In retrospect, I was probably a little too ambitious, trying to find quintessential New York Christmas experiences, while also hiding out in D-Crit headquarters battling final papers and a design history exam. I tried not to give myself too much pressure to do touristy things and I did end up with some lovely moments.

Here they are, my select favourite moments out of the batch this December: Fragrant undressed trees lined up downstairs my apartment; ice skating at Bryant Park followed by drinks at Campbell Apartment with D-Crit; an amazing end of semester party at my professor, Ralph’s beautiful home; thoughtful gifts from overseas friends including these specialty teas from Sam; delicious baked treats from my local Amy’s Bread and the cutest santa clothespin ever.

I probably had 28495 photos of decorated trees and window displays, and a ridiculous amount of food porn. It was hard to pick favourites, because there were so many festive events and my apartment also temporarily became a hostel–with a series of visits from two friends and my brother, one after another. But it was the best Christmas I had in a while, even if it ended with Snowpocalypse 2010. Thank you, New York!

In my favourite The Devil Wears Prada scene, Meryl Streep who plays a fashion magazine editor, tells Anne Hathaway off for her ignorance and lack of interest in fashion:

This stuff? Oh okay, I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select, I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise. It’s not lapis. It’s actually cerulean. And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn’t it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of “stuff”.

Despite Meryl Streep’s condescending character in the movie, reflecting Vogue‘s very own Anna Wintour, I admire her authority and grace, and above all her passion for the industry she respects and commands.

Sometimes I struggle with critiquing certain cateogories of design, and I’m especially timid with my opinions on design that I don’t understand. I’m not particularly moved by architecture (although living in New York, it’s kind of growing on me) so I don’t feel I have the authority or knowledge to comment. I’m often unenthusiastic when writing about design on a large scale–looking at cities and understanding how urban environments come to exist–especially when the design process involves things like zoning and building height restrictions. And even though I have a lot of friends working in fashion, I don’t really know a lot about it either. I like discussing typography, graphics and industrial design objects–things that I can hold and feel, probably because I’m quite tiny myself so I’m drawn to minor details. But I know all kinds of design matter, and I should be more comfortable towards learning about anything.

So unless I want to feel extremely out of place and inferior like Anne Hathaway in her “lumpy blue sweater”, I will have to push myself to be informed and open to all areas of design, especially those that I’m unfamiliar with. This cerulean blue monologue will have to serve as a reminder for me to be aware of the larger context in which I practice. I care about design too much to dismiss it as just “stuff.”

Perhaps it will be my project over the break to fix up all the things that are painful to my eyes.

Over the summer, Chris started to work on his Bear Kid apparel line and I didn’t want to miss out on all the fun in Hong Kong. I wanted a BK t-shirt, and he wanted one of my handmade leather card holders, so it was the perfect opportunity to arrange a swap.

I received mine in a bright red, complete with awesome BK tags and a BK bag, so I personally can vouch for the quality. We might not live in a bartering society, but luckily the apparel is now available on their new website that just launched today! It looks like there is going to be a lot more coming up… but ladies will have to wait patiently for now.

This is you! This is so you–music you’d play as you either work or do recordings over. All of their music is you!!!

So I listened to it, and he was right. Lullatone is Japanese pajama pop group “characterized by an innocent, child-like quality and spare, lo-fi sounds”. Anyone that knows me as a person and designer will be laughing now, because this music does sum up my design work. I cut type out of potatoes and make stop-motion, I build plasticine snowmen and I play games on the Internet to record their sounds. I have no skills in Cinema 4D or sound producing, so I try to do most of my motion in a physical space with whatever I am familiar with, and a lot of the time it’s low budget and improvised.

I love Lullatone… thanks, Felix!

Judith was one of the only women in management at Herman Miller in the 1970′s, and I was especially interested in her story of the Aeron Chair’s impact on genders within the work space. Prior to the Aeron Chair, Bill Stumpf designed the Ergon chair in 1974, in 4 sizes: secretarial, technical, management and executive chairs. The naming conventions indicated that the chairs were intended for genders, and women would only ever sit in a secretarial chair. The Aeron chair that came out 20 years later was offered in A, B and C sizes so chairs became more about size and shape of the user than occupation.

I really enjoyed sound editing this time mostly because the subject allowed me to mix in a lot of different clips. The interview was actually 30 minutes long, but had to be reduced to a short and sweet narrative. Thanks Judith for an interesting story about the Aeron Chair.

I skipped documentary night last weekend to spend time with a visiting friend, but I’m going to make up for it this week with Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight and The Visual Language of Herbert Matter, showing at the Architecture and Design Film Festival that is kicking off tonight. On my list of documentaries to watch next are: Lemonade, Art & Copy, Notebook on Cities and Clothes and LennonNYC. If you know any documentaries you think I would like (or even not like), let me know in the comments! They don’t have to be design-related at all, because my favourite documentary series ever is actually Planet Earth. It was my procrastination throughout my final year in university, and I could watch both the Caves and Mountains episodes repeatedly and still be in awe of the beauty in nature.

Even with a background in print, I have a love for motion design–it’s like a series of still compositions and it has the rhythm of book design with the supporting element of sound. I must remind myself to keep up with this routine, because it’s so easy to be caught up in school and forget my long-term goals. And I hope I eventually get to make this documentary of mine, perhaps not soon, but I’ll need to figure out how to get there.

But we get rewarded for our hard work with good company and fun. Every Tuesday, we have an evening lecture series where we get to hear from visiting writers, scholars and critics. So far we’ve had presentations from Rick Poyner on Surrealism in Graphic Design, Jane Thompson on the Design Research store, and Interboro on the fascinating urban planning projects they’ve been working on. And all of them have left me with a lot of thoughts and insight.

Before I got here, my cousin told me that grad school is about finding out how little you actually know about everything in this world. And it’s really kind of wonderful and true, even if sometimes I question whether or not I am cut out for it. It’s challenging, it’s fun, and there’s nowhere else I rather be.

I was disappointed I had to miss the CreativeMornings talk last week, but Steven Heller will be speaking at D-Crit for the next lecture (and next semester he will teaching first years a course!). We really are lucky as D-Critters…

PS. These are open to public and free, so please come!

My roommate reminded me today that now that I’m in a writing program, I’ve stopped blogging. In a similar way to design, I’ve become much more intimidated about blogging these days, partially because I have to do it so often in school, but mostly because right now I actually have to think of myself as a writer. I never consider myself to be a writer because I don’t do it frequently and haven’t been trained to do it. Even when I wrote for IDSGN, I didn’t ever think I was a writer. But then apparently this is what I’m studying to do now. To be honest, I don’t think I have a voice or writing style because I didn’t consciously choose one. My style is really just defined by my limitations, and if I knew more about writing, I probably wouldn’t write like this.

I do a lot of my designing by just seeing things and simply being. When uninspired, I never hesitate to go out with friends, flip through books, talk on the phone, cook a meal or simply look out the window for a really long time because I feel all these experiences enrich my visual bank which I keep referring to. Everything I do is absorbed into my creative sponge, and at the end of the day I can wring it all out and translate it into something visual. My mind never stops designing, which is why I never felt guilty about having fun or keeping a part-time job. I didn’t feel bad when I read blogs at work.

As a designer, I worked better in the evenings and often I could work with only a few hours sleep. Life was a series of all-nighters, naps and lots of designing and fun in between. But now that so much of my time is spent reading, I find my brain doesn’t function very well with little sleep. Instead of working through the night, I wake up at 8AM to read with a clear mind. When I don’t sleep enough, I lose focus and my productivity suffers. Sometimes I read paragraphs over and over again to understand them.

A lot of the time, I think of seemingly brilliant design concepts, that turn out to be the most ridiculous and strange ideas after execution. In design, it’s the process of translating that is so exciting, because some things that don’t seem to work also sometimes do. There’s so much iteration in the design process, but it’s all empirical learning. You never know where each project will take you. But I’ve found that when writing, if it doesn’t sound right in my head, chances are it won’t look good on paper either. There really isn’t any element of surprise because words don’t magically seem more cohesive just because they are written. There just isn’t a different way to look at it. You can’t really mask it, juxtapose it to something else, scale it, duplicate it, print it, rip it or manipulate it with your fingers they way you would with design materials. If words sound stupid, they stay stupid until you think of new ones.

When I am collecting thoughts in my head for writing while on a walk or commute, it’s difficult to remember them later if I don’t take a note of them. Even if what I want to say is perfectly articulate at that moment, sequences of words are harder to remember than compositions and juxtapositions of forms. It’s just difficult to take a mental picture and recall it later on. Maybe I don’t speak the language well enough yet (English?) or I’m not used to this communication because I find typography to be much easier to understand and express than the actual words themselves.

Grad school, writing, New York–all of this is unfamiliar to me, and the combination of adapting to them at once has made me extremely disoriented lately. Every day requires a great deal of energy, maturity and discipline. New York as a city is a lot to take in already, and while I love it, it has been overwhelming. I hope I adjust to all this sooner rather than later, because I have a lot of pending assignments and it would really help if I synced to the rhythm of things. And maybe with more practice, I’ll figure out the writing process too and find that it’s as fun as it is to design.

E.B. White’s Here is New York describes New York as being three cities in one, offering varying experiences to locals, commuters and lastly, adventurers like myself.

There is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last–the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.

The book captures New York in 1949, yet it still offers me a lovely introduction to the city today. I’m sure I will understand it more or feel differently after living in New York for a while though. As a friend of mine wrote: “not everyone has the opportunity and privilege to come to New York to pursue their path in the first place, and not everyone has the privilege to leave behind their family to create a life apart from them.” I’m so excited for orientation and classes this week and to finally begin my masters. I get the same sense of enthusiasm from all my classmates too. I can’t wait to start learning and living here.

Here I will find my own New York!

Alissa is an LA-based freelance writer for GOOD, Fast Company, Dwell, Sunset, Print, The Architect’s Newspaper, LA Weekly, Metropolis, Wired, Design Observer, Core77, Coudal, ReadyMade, I.D., Eye, HOW, and STEP Inside Design. She is also the associate producer for the radio show, DnA: Design and Architecture. She also loves gelato, which makes me admire her even more! I first came across Alissa’s writing on GOOD, and soon became more aware of her work over the Internet, so I am very glad I have the opportunity to learn and share Alissa’s experiences here as I figure out my own.

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As a design writer, why do you feel design matters and why is it important to write about it?
My feelings about why design matters has actually shifted since I started writing about design. I used to think it was important for me to act like a translator for designers—to educate non-designers about design by explaining things like typefaces and buildings to them in a way that they could understand. In the last few years my eyes have been opened to the very real ways in which designers can improve—and are improving—our lives. Now I need to help get the word out about exciting projects, and open up a discussion with my audience about whether or not they work.

What is it like writing for so many different publications, and how does your voice or the material change for each of these?
These are such good questions! I try very hard to keep my writing fun and approachable but I definitely have to shift my voice a bit when writing for different publications. Not only between publications, but also if I’m writing for the web compared to print. I tend to use a lot of exclamation points! And random punctuation. You can’t do that as much in a magazine, which still has a certain formality to it.

Photo by Jorge Menes

What sort of things influence and inform your work?
Most of my inspiration, either directly or indirectly, comes from walking around the streets of Los Angeles and taking lots of pictures.

How did you begin writing and speaking about design?
I began my illustrious writing career as a copywriter, trying desperately to get hired after the dot-com bubble burst. When I didn’t get the full-time job of my dreams, I took a job at a production company, and tried to write on the side, which we all know doesn’t really work. When I finally decided to get serious about the writing, I just started pitching the stories I was interested in, which were basically what was all around me—talented designers, smart ad campaigns, cool animation, beautiful buildings. I started by reaching out to people at publications I knew, and a year later I got a job as editor of the design blog UnBeige—after I was there for a few months, editors started reaching out to me. I also went to every single design conference I could afford and made a lot of friends. I think that was probably the single most important investment in my career!

What are the perks and peeves of being a freelance writer?
There have, of course, been some very scary moments, most of them at the beginning, where I definitely wasn’t making enough money, and I worried all the time. But after the fourth year—I swear, it only takes four!—I had regular gigs and I didn’t have to worry about money anymore (or, shall I say, as much!). Now I think the hard part is making all the choices about what’s right for my career. Choosing which jobs to take and which articles to write is stressful, and I always worry that I’m not making the right decisions. Or taking jobs just for the money that I’m supposedly not worried about.

Most people probably will say that working alone sucks but I am so, so thankful to be able to work at home, by myself, on my schedule. If I ever go to work in an office I spend the whole day wondering how anyone gets anything done at an office. Plus with things like Campfire, IM, and Twitter, it’s not nearly as isolated as it used to be. And besides, if I ever get lonely, I just go out for a walk.

In the emerging field of design criticism, what opportunities or areas would you like to see more writers explore?
I would hope that young writers especially can help strip away the jargon-heavy, self-important pretense around design writing. Write about real life and real people. Using real words. Write about yourself and your own opinions as much as you can. I used to be terrified to write about architecture because I was worried I’d get all the terminology wrong. It’s not about that at all. It’s how the building serves its users, and connects to the community, and fits into the fabric of the city.

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I was relieved to learn that I was not the only one who feared writing about architecture! Architecture seems so different to graphic design, and knowing so little about it made me really nervous. But knowing that writing is really about understanding the interactions and experiences that take place within the buildings makes me feel much better.

Thank you for your time, Alissa!

Having lived on the East coast for four years already, I don’t think I will have as much culture shock this time, but it will still feel new. YSDN was a joint program, so we commuted between a large university and a technical college. We had the advantage of having two experiences in one, but some of my friends tell me I still don’t know what it is like to attend a real art school, where every student is the visual kind of artist (I’ve always imagined it to be kind of like Art School Confidential). SVA will be that sort of real art school where there will be many opportunities to collaborate creatively.

To be honest, I’m a little scared about going back to school with so little experience, having learnt so much yet not enough about being a junior designer. I’m worried about being the youngest in my class, among others that have had much more working and life experience. My last degree included 2 labour strikes (sadly, one from each school), 3 boyfriends and 9 roommates… I can only wait and see what my masters will bring.

My body has conveniently decided to shut down this week so I am sick in bed while I have an endless list of things to do and people to see. But I think maybe it’s a good thing, to sort of clear my thoughts and slow down a little between work and school so I don’t burn out by the time I arrive.

Everything I’ve anticipated and hoped for is actually going to happen very soon. And I think I’m ready to hit the ground running.

The first time I encountered Blissymbols was at the sound and moving image library at my university. My independent studies advisor and mentor, David Scadding, recommended that I borrow Mr. Symbol Man for research. I ended up loving the clicking noise and experience of watching a film reel, and above all was impressed by the enthusiasm of the inventor, Charles K. Bliss.

David never really critiqued my work much when we met for our discussions, but instead taught me things about being a designer–how not to be caught up in marketing or flowery things, to design for the “betterment of the community”. Blissymbols were a good example of designing for the benefit of others, and reminds me of the social impact I can make as a designer. Knowing that becoming a design critic and writer will only reach more people, I want to remember the responsibilities and influence I can have, even if design doesn’t cure cancer.

PS. My last article for IDSGN received over 10K readers! So surprised and flattered!

The Geometry of Pasta combines 100 authentic recipes of Jacob Kenedy and the design skills of Caz Hildebrand in a beautiful, elegant and playful book.

I love that it is full of simple yet dynamic black and white illustrations. I need this book to satisfy both my food and design appetites!

I am not exaggerating when I say that everyone here is an expert at what they do. Just from talking with them and seeing their work every day, I’ve learned so many valuable things. My coworkers have excellent knowledge of design and typography, an eagerness to share their design process, great project management and an open mind to understanding different businesses and mediums. Above all, they know how to have a good time together–initiating group movie nights, poker nights, a boat party, snooker, watching World Cup matches, bowling, discovering different restaurants in Sheung Wan/Soho, attending cultural events/openings/festivals and having countless happy hour drinks until we barely remember.

To show my appreciation, I put my amateur leather craft skills to use and made everyone a tiny gift. A heartfelt thank you to all the wonderful people I met at Whitespace: Danielle, Rosalie, Angie, Kenny, Michell, Andrew, Nick, Ping, Emily, Veronique and Dan.

I’m excited for the next chapter: New York in 15 days!