Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sara De Bondt

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Sara De Bondt (Belgian designer based in London) designed the inside of Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes. She would be good to interview a.) for the sculptural work with Foer, and b.) for her high-theory publishing house, and c.) because she’s a woman.

Sara De Bondt is a London-based Belgian graphic designer who has been running her studio since 2003. Before that she worked for Foundation 33 and studied graphic design at Sint-Lukas, Brussels (BE), Universidad de Bellas Artes, Granada (ES) and Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht (NL). She has given workshops/talks at Beckmans college Stockholm, Ecole des Beaux Arts Lyon, Ecole de Recherche Graphique Brussels, deSingel Antwerp, Jan van Eyck Akademie Maastricht and Laus Symposium Barcelona.

She teaches at The Royal College of Art and co-curated the The Form of the Book conference at St Bride Library in January 2009. In 2008 she started Occasional Papers with Antony Hudek.

She also designed bookends out of recycled printed matter by screwing through blocks of paper:

2wice

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The pages of 2wice, the performing arts publication designed by Pentagram’s Abbott Miller, have always provided a unique and innovative venue for dance. Now Miller has designed “Fifth Wall,” an interactive app for 2wice that transforms the iPad tablet into a new kind of performance space. Created in collaboration with the choreographer Jonah Bokaer and 2wice publisher Patsy Tarr, the app takes advantage of the unique spatial and physical parameters of the iPad.

http://new.pentagram.com/2012/06/new-work-2wice-fifth-wall-app/

Peter Bil’ak: Dance Writer

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The renowned typographer Peter Bil’ak (History, Greta) collaborates with Slovak dancer/choreographer Lukás Timulak. Together they created Dance Writer, an program where you can type in some letters and watch a dancer “perform” them by describing the letters with her body in space. This is a true merging of dance and typography into something new and unique.

Dance Writer 2, 2006
http://www.typotheque.com/dancewriter 

http://dancewriter-app.com/ 

Jonathan Safran Foer: Tree of Codes

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This book was a designer’s hit when it came out…2010? Because Foer made it into an art object by having words cut out of pages and the reader interacting with the sculptural build up of the holes as well as the actual content. Designers on the project are Sara De Bondt and Jonathan Gray. Foer, like Dave Eggers before him, is an example of a writer deeply concerned with typography and design. These guys are interdisciplinary

An article about the making of the book is here:
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662680/inside-jonathan-safran-foers-unmakeable-interactive-book

 

“The book is actually a kind of interactive paper-sculpture: Foer and his collaborators at Die Keure in Belgium took the pages of another book, Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles, and literally carved a brand new story out of them using a die-cut technique.”

 

Rob Giampietro

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Rob Giampietro, Tense Relations, Dot Dot Dot Issue 12, pp. 62–66.

Rob Giampietro, designer and writer, partner in Project Projects, writes in Dot Dot Dot magazine about what designers do. Here he’s commenting on a book called Dutch Resource: Collaborative Exercises in Graphic Design, and quotes the back cover copy from that book:

“Today’s graphic designer, a specialist and jack-of-all-trades in on”—a hybrid of hybrids!—”who is not only meant to be a good designer but often works as a writer, researcher, editor, curator, critic and photographer as well.” (66)

“The best collaborations assume a diversity of their participants’ gifts” (66)

BUILD?

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In Method we discuss process, Scale sets up your work space, BUILD could be how to put your project into action.

a more concise description about how to build a project
how to make perimeters that are inspiring and not confining
this is where we could include exercises and lots of examples
from conversation to actuality
getting your idea/project out in the world (kickstarter, etsy, lulu…)
large to small examples so we still cover scale

I’m suggesting we take out the exercises from the other chapters and make this last chapter more action based. Lots of projects to work on, filled with examples of what has been done and how they got started.

d.school at Stanford

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Wall-E: Reconfigurable Walls at Stanford d.school Make Each Class the Perfect Size, by Linda Tischler, 4/28/2010, on the Fast Company website

http://www.fastcompany.com/1631889/wall-e-reconfigurable-walls-at-stanford-dschool-make-each-class-the-perfect-size

Fast Company article on the moveable walls of the new d.school building at Stanford. The innovative idea here is that the instructor can literally change the layout of the classroom making a “perfect fit” for each class.

“The school’s second floor is, essentially, one large room, framed by a truss system that lets planners design a series of sliders, attached with a gizmo they call a “taco” to a beam-mounted C-channel. That allows teams to create instant studios, of the exact dimensions appropriate to the day’s activities. Need a cozy nook? Done! A wide-open expanse of space? Not a problem.”

“The system allows a modal shift between intimate and open,” says Scott Witthoft, co-director with Scott Doorley of the school’s Environments Collaborative, which designed the arrangement along with Dave Shipmen of Steelcase.”

Department 21

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Department 21 was launched in 2009 by a group of students at the Royal College of Art in London, with the aim of artists, designers and architects coming together to do interdisciplinary projects. I think they’ve recently disbanded.

http://www.department21.net/?page_id=1919
“Emerging from an institutional context in which individual authorship and outcome-driven projects are the dominant frames for creative production, the project is the result of a need for new, collaborative forms of exchange between students from different disciplines: it is a means to get in touch with other peoples’ practices (and in this way question one’s own practice), as well as being a platform to support collaboration beyond specialties.”

“Particular to Department 21 is the emphasis on a physical space within which ideas can grow and serendipitous encounters occur. With a belief that the physical and social design of a learning space has an impact on the learning that happens within it, Department 21 has sought to work with a variety of spaces, both within and outside the Royal College of Art, to encourage different forms of social interaction and dialogue and participation. For each location the project inhabits (alternatively shared common space, occupancy of the college’s galleries during exhibitions, outdoor events etc.), the question of design comes first.

Recognising the impact that structures have on how we interact and learn, and using the inter-disciplinary knowledge of the group, Department 21 has created a purpose-built moveable working space, to enable the activities of learning, teaching and collaborating to flex to fit a wide variety of spatial environments.”

This is the moveable furniture they have created to facilitate their various events and meetings:

 

Arranging Your Desk

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On March 10, 2008, How Magazine ran a feature titled Make Your Creativity More Productive Around the Office. It focused on Behance, the online portfolio site and their approach to office space. I like the simple idea of keeping stuff up on the wall and keeping the desk clear. The notion of balancing order with chaos. And the simple idea of lining your wall with fiber board (homosote) to make a large pin up area.

Above: Chief of Design Matias Corea at work. He tends to keep his wall full and his desk clear, what he describes as a “proper balance of chaos and clarity.”

 

Chief of Design Matias Corea’s desk, with his “Action Pile” to the far left.

The famous “Done Wall” that is a testimony to ideas happening as a result of action steps being captured, processed, and completed.