Design

Best American Cities for Design

1 July 2008 - 8:00am
Business Week

Business Week looks at a recent list of the best cities for design in America.

Celebrating Buckminster Fuller

3 June 2008 - 7:00am
The New Yorker

In expectation of a new exhibit opening at the Whitney Museum of Art, the New Yorker reflects on the curious life and career of Buckminster Fuller.

Improving Design Can Improve Interaction

20 March 2008 - 5:00am
The Chronicle of Higher Education

This piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at the role design plays in encouraging interaction amongst academics and calls out for better planning.

Design is Social Activism

23 August 2007 - 8:14am
“I have always thought that design can be a form of social activism,” says Don Meeker, environmental graphic designer and co-creator of “Clearview” typeface. This small but radical quotation was buried in an article from the 8.12.07 NY Times Sunday magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html) on the redesign of highway sign typeface. Meeker, James Montalbano, and a team of collaborators understood that it was the design of highway signage that was contributing to highway fatalities. They applied an understanding of human psychology and function to the solution of a “civic issue.”

Radical idea. It’s called Universal Design. Or social activism.

Taking The “Short View” On Shrinking Cities

1 July 2007 - 11:20am

I’m not basing this quick observation on any specific historical research or book, so bear with me. Cities grow and shrink; in effect they change rapidly (although sometimes it doesn’t seem rapidly enough and at other times all too rapidly). Where we operate in that continuum I think shapes much of how we see our role as professionals. Planning to address either shrinking cities or growing ones can seem, at times, like totally different professions. A colleague of mine remarked that planning for shrinking cities is definitely a niche market. With so much discussion surrounding growth and how we grow, there is much less dialog that defines the opposite.

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