I have recently become addicted to the work of fiction writer T. Coraghessan Boyle after reading his novel “Drop City” and the collection of stories “Tooth and Claw”. You can hear him read Tobias Wolff’s short story “Bullet in the Brain” and read a short story he has written for the New Yorker entitled “The Lie”.
“Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein”.
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you”. - Nietzsche (via wikiquote)
Since the first computer games there have been building games/simulations that encourage and reward creativity. The early great simulations like Railroad Tycoon and Sim City to the strategy games like Civilization, Master of Orion and X-Com were pioneers in defining what a game could be. The next logical step in the epic game promises to be Will Wright’s Spore which is set to be released in September. Essentially, it allows the player to assume the God-like role of creating and evolving creatures. It is also a tool for creating 3-D rendered and animated creatures with ease. Another, profound aspect of the game is how it integrates user-generated content from other players universes together to create a richer experience. I’m not sure if I’ve seen social networking/sharing so deeply rooted in a game concept before. This also raises the question, when does Spore eclipse being a game and turn into something else entirely? The stages of this epic defying game seems to be directly influenced by the documentary film powers of ten. It begins in the tide-pool phase where your creature grows as it accumulates points for surviving and finding food. Eventually, your creature crawls on the land, and as it evolves further, mates and establishes a tribe. The tribe over time will then expand into a civilization which will then travel into space. Along the way the player can customize and evolve the creature and the structures it creates. The creature creator demo is scheduled to be released in June. Here is a video of a creature being created and an up to date fan site.
I remember a time not long ago when there were no rules. Some people called it a free for all, others claimed it was chaos, design for designers they used to say… but I saw it clearly as a rebellion against the mediocre, against modernism.
Before the rise of the design blogs, I used to pick up a copy of Emigre and read passionate essays written about design theory. The direction that visual communication would take in the new millennium seemed vital to the profession and even the world. This might sound elitist, and in a way it is and was, but at least there was a sense of upheaval which is lacking in today’s design discourse. Back then, there were manifestos, plans of action. The First Things First Manifesto comes to mind as a hot topic, but what happened? Nothing. Everyone signed it, all designers signed it anyway (sustainability makes a lot of sense), but in the end they were only words on paper.
The design blogs of today don’t hold much of a discussion on the issues… an article about which actor would play which designer celebrity comes to mind. The profession has fallen back into complacency and modernism and mediocrity are apparently good enough. Strangely enough, Jeffery Keedy’s essay in Emigre Issue No. 64 titled “Design Modernism 8.0″ written in 2003 seems to ring just as true today.
“Helvetica”, the recent documentary film by Gary Hustwit brings the issue right out in the open and straight to the public. Though I agree that the film shows both sides in designers preferences for typeface helvetica, it also is a discussion about modernism. The problem is that the public comes away from the film with a new preference that they didn’t know about or consider before. Now there are people out there (potential clients) and even design students who scream “I love helvetica, I want this to be helvetica” as if this is what everyone’s doing and I should be doing it too (without knowing what it means).
Now I imagine a world, or maybe one in parallel, where designers are forced to use helvetica and stick to the tried and true system of modernist grids and rules that have worked in the past and will always work. A nightmare scenario begins to build where mediocrity is always acceptable (just make it look good enough) and communication that doesn’t relate to the ever changing world around us. I can only hope that this isn’t the case, a bad dream and nothing more. We should be optimistic about the endless possibilities in design, less full of angst and less comfortable with what we already know.
In 1963, way ahead of it’s time, the Heineken brick bottle (WOBO – world bottle) solved a recycling and housing problem at the same time. Alfred Heineken envisioned a product with a complete life cycle that could efficiently serve two purposes.
“The final WOBO design came in two sizes – 350 and 500 mm versions that were meant to lay horizontally, interlock and layout in the same manner as ‘brick and mortar’ construction. One production run in 1963 yielded 100,000 bottles some of which were used to build a small shed on Mr. Heineken’s estate in Noordwijk, Netherlands. One of the construction challenges “was to find a way in which corners and openings could be made without cutting bottles,” said Mr. Habraken.” (via Inhabitat)
Created by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville in 1959, the dream machine (dreamachine) is essentially a flickering light that pulses at 8-10 times a second. The original dream machine was created as a cylinder with slits sitting on top of a turn table. A light was housed inside and the slits were cut precisely to produce the right flickering effect. Against closed eyelids, the flicker causes the brain to submerge into a dream like state and produces an interesting effect of patterns and imagery. As with all flickering lights, it can cause photosensitive epilepsy in certain people. Check out the online dreamachine and how to build one yourself. There is also a documentary!
Offically, the opening day of Major League Baseball was on March 31st, but today marks the official re-opening of the season when the world champion Boston Red Sox play the A’s in Oakland. (Their first two games were played in Tokyo, Japan.) If the Sox can stay healthy, having almost retained the entire team, they will be able to defend their title. They have great “up and coming” talent in Ellsbury and Pedroia, the powerhouse Ortiz – Ramirez one two punch, along with the unstoppable pitching of Beckett, Dice-K, Papelbon (in the bullpen). The season should be an interesting one, which means I just might need to sign up for MLB tv, or add the games to my cable subscription. It’s definitely tough living in enemy territory.
graphic designer
Brooklyn, New York