insight

Research is important, but experience is necessary.

My portfolio is finally finished. Please, take a look and enjoy!
www.carmenliu.com

Life advice

In the style of Calvin and Hobbes, an inspirational quote from Bill Watherson, illustrated by Gavin Aung Than.  I clipped it, but do click through for the full strip. here

The quote in full is:

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.   

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.   

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

This quote used is from a graduation speech Watterson gave at his alma mater, Kenyon College, in 1990.

Work hard friends, don't give up yet!

Congratulations Industrial Designers of America!

You have been finally recognized!

I'm happy to hear that the role of the industrial designer is being officially acknowledged, and that it's not as an individual role but a very useful and supportive role. Go team!

I also agree on that note about ID and innovation being tied to manufacturing, and I think that is one of the reasons why Canada is so slow when it comes to design.

Supporting American Manufacturing with Industrial Design

... Industrial designers develop the concepts for manufactured products such as cars, robots, home and electronic appliances, sporting goods, toys, and more. Working in a range of industries, these creative individuals combine the principles of art, business, and engineering to design and improve upon products and systems so they don’t just work but rather work with the people using them. ...

... In short, industrial design innovation is most effective and efficient when coupled with intimate knowledge of and influence over the manufacturing process, and vice versa. Separating the two processes of design and manufacturing—through the often-short-sighted model of design at home but manufacture abroad—can interrupt this iterative feedback process and slow the development of next-generation innovations. 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/08/22/supporting-american-manufacturing-industrial-design

1. See the world as it sees itself
2. Get over yourself (practice humility)
3. Live a principled life
4. Remember what’s important, and make time for it
5. Take responsibility, whether it’s chosen or not
6. Accept a little imperfection
7. Know the limits of reason
8. Appreciate the role of faith (acknowledge the 1% you can’t explain)
9. Be patient when the speed of life doesn’t match the gear you’re in
10. Leave room for the unexpected
11. Look up at the stars sometimes, for perspective
12. Encourage humanity in the face of incivility
13. Abolish self-doubt and thoughts of defeat
14. Always seek answers and solutions (don’t dwell on problems)
15. Embrace those closest to you
16. Never be satisfied
17. Strive for excellence
18. Seek truth and avoid cheap substitutes
19. Listen carefully
20. Don’t be so hard on yourself — enjoy life once in a while

http://michaelbabwahsingh.com/

crossroads

...but don’t make the mistake of confusing “design” with “art.” I’d argue that there’s a difference, and it matters. Designers create solutions – the products and services that propel us forward. But artists create questions — the deep probing of purpose and meaning that sometimes takes us backward and sideways to reveal which way “forward” actually is. The questions that artists make are often enigmatic, answering a why with another why.

---John Maeda on "If Design’s No Longer the Killer Differentiator, What Is?"

Is it design or is it art? I really enjoy the space between the two. Design that makes you think, reconsider your values, changes directions. Even though I personally agree with his line of inquiry, I don't think it holds true to all industrial designers out there...
But I think it's more about the principles of art..

Experiments are elaborate filters set up in the space of phenomena

I am secretly in awe of Olafur Eliasson, and found this quote on his Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute for Space Experiements) webpage:


“The physicist George Darwin used to say that every once in a while one should do a completely crazy experiment, like blowing the trumpet to the tulips every morning for a month. Probably nothing would happen, but what if it did?”

www.raumexperimente.ne

The Writer

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten.  I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

~The Writer by Richard Wilbur
and here as a book, by Charles Hobson

Breaking up

From This American Life: On Break Ups

Starlee Kine

Do you think he'll come back?

Phil Collins

[LAUGHS] I hope so, because you obviously do feel a lot for him.

Starlee Kine

Do you think I'll ever stop feeling bad, like I am now?

Phil Collins

Well, but you kind of like feeling bad, don't you?

Starlee Kine

Oh, yeah. Well, it's something--

Phil Collins

I don't think you really want to get over it. I think you're kind of enjoying it. So that's kind of a dilemma you have to sort out.

Starlee Kine

You really have me pegged. It feels like important or big or something. Like it feels like I felt really-- I felt so much for him when I was with him. And the only way to still feel like that strongly about something is to not let it go. I would love to be the person who was just like, he meant nothing to me. But instead, I'm the person who's like, OK, I'm going to write a break-up song and play it over the airwaves. And I've like lost all my cool.

link 

"Your heart is too big" he says
"I know," she replies, crying, "it holds too many people"

: (

"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. " Mark Twain

人不是魚，怎會了解魚的憂愁。

魚不是鳥，怎會了解鳥的快樂。

鳥不是人，怎會了解人的荒唐。

人不是鳥，怎會了解鳥的自由。

鳥不是魚，怎會了解魚的深沉。

魚不是人，怎會了解人的幼稚。

你不是我，怎會......了解我。

幾米

The person is not a fish, how can (it) understand fish's sadness. 

The fish is not a bird, how can (it) understand bird's joy. 

The bird is not a person, how can (it) understand person's absurdity. 

The person is not a bird, how can (it) understand bird's freedom. 

The bird is not a fish, how can (it) understand fish's deepness. 

The fish is not a person, how can (it) understand person's weakness. 

You are not I, how meeting.....  (you) understand me. 

Looking

Where do these products come from? How are they made? What materials have been used and what social aspects cling to the creation process?

[9:30:39 PM] Jue Qian: You are like a flying kite...Don't know how to grab you but have to let you go....

"My design, amid all the others, is different, the joker in the pack"  -Mendini

word.

It would be a pity, if art was only to be found in museums and the private possessions of a few people. In the end, culture stands for the integration of art and life." Isamu Noguchi

"don't threaten me with love, baby. let's just go walking in the rain."
- billie holliday

... did you know jean-paul sartre once called each of alexander calder's sculptures "a little private celebration"?

Nendo

Nendo's concept philosophy:

Giving people a small " ! " moment. There are so many small " ! " moments hidden in our everyday. But we don’t recognize them. and even when we do recognize them,we tend to unconsciously reset our minds and forget what we’ve seen. But we believe these small " ! " moments are what make our days so interesting, so rich. That’s why we want to reconstitute the everyday by collecting and reshaping them into something that’s easy to understand. We’d like the people who’ve encountered nendo’s designs to feel these small " ! " moments intuitively. That’s nendo’s job.
http://www.nendo.jp/en/

I spend my time...