A Visit to the Denver MCA

Practices of Design had their final meeting at the Denver MCA
(Mu of Contemp Art).
I brought my camera and couldn't contain myself at all the opportunities of reflections and planes.

I went snap happy.

David Adjaye, the architect created a delightful play of light, shadow, and shape not diminished in the least for its lack of acute angles.

The museum reminds me of ones in Europe, understated hiding among the urban landscape.

Revealing their secrets only when you stumble upon them.
It messes with your perceptions of what you think you know about this urban landscape.

MCA is a Leeds Certified building which adds to its aura.

Sustainability, renewable resources and a conscious business approach are championed by this building.

Its their poster child in a community that is saying to the rest of the world: "Yes we know and we are acting on it."

Oh, the art inside, on the walls is great. Easy to look at, to contemplate with room to breathe.

As much as I'm not a great fan of Damian Hirst...
I must admit his piece Saint Sebastian was most memorable and striking.

The Aftermath

For all my cynicism about certain prescribed holidays and the commercialism surrounding them I really did enjoy mine. Thanks giving that is.





















My favorite art piece was the brilliant yellow orange, stand-in for potato mash, butternut squash. A colorful alternate to tradition.













A visual delight, food as art, where I imagine the origin of color resides. In times past to be an artist required an intimate relationship with the offerings of nature and the secret of her colors.
Can butternut squash be the new purple of today?
Ernest the rooster might know.

Motion Graphics

Here some cool motion effects from vail

In Good We Trust, Denver Biennial 2010

In Good We Trust is an idea that deliberately points to the friction between the image of the US and its efforts in the world over the last 10 years and the actual acts of good occurring all over the country. The focus is away from the negative to the positive intentions of those actions and getting the words out. Bruce Mau, Massive Change a well known designer/artist came to Denver a couple of weeks ago to present his ideas for a biennial event planned here in 2010. Initiated by Mayor Hickenlooper, local Denver artists including Seth Goldenberg instructor at UCD, are working towards developing a vision and the tools needed for this event. Mau's vision includes very interactive exhibits, "We want people to change the way they think." Sustainability and reproduction over production are some of the topics under discussion. They hope to expose people, open their minds to the creative possibility to change the world. Sounds like talk about infrastructure to me:) What do designers and artists have to do with infrastructure? (see my previous post).
Main idea: What would happen when you bring science and art and business together to create intuitive, inventive ways of changing existing processes and dynamics. They intend to build an experience in the Denver Biennial where you can walk into that vision and come away with motivation and ideas for changing the possibilities they see needing it in their world.

Infrastructure

In his book "The World is Flat" Thomas Friedman talks about how culture and infrastructure affect how countries grow their economies in today's global environment. This is the crux of the job issue in the US today.

I visited India somewhat alarmed about the imminent takeover of the US by India and China after reading Friedman's book. What I found there surprised me. Their infrastructure was horrible. The poverty endemic. I couldn't imagine how a country with such overwhelming issues could possibly overtake anyone. What I did notice was, despite this, India is pushing ahead with high quality education and technological development. The business sector is tasked with creating patches of reliable infrastructure where it is most needed. These modern city island sectors are spread out all over the country like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi

Barak Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" talks in depth about the importance of infrastructure redevelopment in the US. Like in the past when the Steel Belt turned into the Rust belt key sectors of our economy need a realignment. What does this have to do with design? Design is an important element to any reworking of processes in regards to conceptualization, communication and incorporation.

61 Trees Per Person

Npr - article

Nalini Nadkarni a professor of Ecology at Evergreen State college in Washington appeared on NPR revealing some interesting info: "Some of the finest forest ecology studies being carried out today are the result of NASA-funded multi-disciplinary collaborations." She noticed that trees give off specific light reflection signatures allowing her to estimate their numbers through out the world.

In 2005 there were some 400,246,300,201 trees on the world, with 6,456,789,877 people in the world that comes out to 61 trees per person.

As a designer alone I must use up close to my allotment of trees in a couple of years. Good thing they are renewable resources.

Wangari Maathai 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, is helping the world's people to increase their individual tree allotment.

Recycle Conundrum

Remember the saying most of grew up with that was tossed at us at the dinner table by our parents? A warning like a dull knife of awareness raising: "Eat your food, there are children starving in Africa, China, Uzbekistan...", or some version of. To the mind of the 7 year old concepts that broad were incomprehensible.
This incomprehensibility can be used to describe the recycling conundrum of today.

On a recent trip to Moab, Utah, I chanced to visit the recycling center attracted by the large hill of crushed glass, which no one wanted, has no commercial value, took 2 years to accumulate.

The story of this recycle center is just one of many seeping like toxic waste from small communities around the West.

Moabians have taken a little time getting used to recycling. The idea has a difficult time gelling with the myth of the indomitable West of unending resources, unregulated freedom, and independent spirit. So the efforts of all citizens are to be celebrated. Drop into this mix the difficult reality of recycling, its inability to etch a place in the capitalist market which values production over reproduction and sustainability and what you get is a small hill of crushed glass thats growing faster than our economy at this point in time.

This is really a dicussion about value, intrinsic, verses capitalist.
Enough.
Moab's recycling center is looking for great ideas for reusing glass.

Thanks to the folks at Moab recycling center for taking the time to fill me in.

A visit to Anabliss and Ironton

Its always a pleasure to be invited into someone else's art space. I want to thank Matt Coffman of Anabliss and Jill Hadley Hooper of Ironton Studios for welcoming us, (Brian Liester's Practices of Design class at UCD) into their art space and sharing with some of their history with us.

Anabliss:
Matt, the founder of Anabliss, walked and talked us through his space. His staff was friendly and willing to share their experiences. Each had a unique story that led them to the doorstep of Anabliss. Thanks for sharing.
I learned there is a distinct difference between practicing graphic design and branding identity. "Its not just a website [per se], its a complete branding initiative" says Matt. It comes down to controlling collateral. Consistency flows through all aspects of business collateral.













He mentioned Joe Duffy's book, Brand Apart, as a great reference of brand strategies.
Anabliss does a lot of Pro bono work. A current project in the works is the Warren Village Project. Matt talked about how the design process gets started. Words of wisdom: design around copy. Having a good copy writer can be essential to good design work. It helps focus a project in the right direction.











Know what your value is.
Overall Matt was quiet and humble about his work. His passion for design was evident by the way he talked about his work and his design process. I enjoyed seeing the diversity of work completed since he started his business. What a great insight into the business of design.

Jill Hadley Hooper:











There was a distinct difference between the sleek quiet interior of Anabliss humming with the sound of Macs and the, in the trenches, rusting metal facade, smelling of turpentine, feel of Ironton Studios. Jill walks the line between digital design and illustration. Right next to her studio space was a voluminous expanse of white walls used for display. A gallery.











It's something to contemplate. As a mostly digital designer I rarely face the blank wall of judgment, yet there is something elemental about nailing up a piece of your work and giving it the space to be, to settle, to grow. Much of digital design is about meeting deadlines and pleasing clients with hardly time for a breath in between. Jill manages to walk in both worlds successfully.
"Cuter, pinker, rounder, neuterer," says Jill of the pressures of the commercial illustration world.
After hearing some of the stories behind her work I began to see the appeal of having a white wall available for use. The ying and yang of art. That which feeds us can destroy us. Thus the white wall, which on reflection I secretly named Moby Dick. Then I jumped into my vehicle I affectionately call Pequod, and drove away.















"... truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more." — Moby-Dick, Ch. 11

Low Art vs High Art, [A Paradigm Shift in action]

Contemporary art is experiencing growing pains. The established dynamic is being challenged by today's changing cultural technototems spurred on by the unapologetically democratic, universal leveler, the Internet. Shakespeare's famous line"All the worlds' a stage" has come to represent today's reality. An individual's values figure more prominently. Voices once excluded are now emancipated whether for the better is not relevant. That these opinions directly effect change on all levels is what is pertinent.

Bansky, the modern low art technician is fostering this debate through guerilla art marketing

If the word graffiti rubs you the wrong way think of low art in terms of a refashioned use of the idea of recycled reuse.

More Numbers and Percentages

The trillions of dollars lost in the last few days could represent the total number of yellow leaves that have fallen this Autumn in the mountains of Colorado...







8,451.19 represents the number of leaves on the ground in my backyard.
Time: 4:09PM ET
Color Change: -128.00 (1.49%)
Prev. Green: 8,579.19
This Morning: 8,568.67
Day's Range: 7882.51 - 8901.28
52wk Range: 8,523.27 - 14,280.00












FDR's take on his version of the Banking Crisis.
"We had a bad banking situation... bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people's funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. This [shocked] the people for a time into a sense of insecurity and to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted them all. It was the Government's job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible -- and the job is being performed."

Internet Storytellers, Landscapes into Silence

I don't live in a heavy traffic area yet there are days and nights where I wake up thinking this is the day the internal combustion engine will finally been silenced.

silence

I recently came across an internet storyteller, artist, anthropologist Jonathan Harris and his project Whale Hunt. The silence of this piece is profound. It extends into the visual landscape invading the senses in a powerful, elemental way.

Along the same lines, Polar Artist, Irene Sullivan's "Excerpts of the Arctic" a photographic exploration of her time spent in the Arctic in 1980, continues to echo the silence nurtured by many of today's digital storytellers.

Seven is the lucky number?

Last week there was talk about a 700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout.
This week, Monday, the stock market dropped 777 points.
Tomorrow looms ominously.
I took a trip down the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado to take my mind off my disappearing 401K.












I renamed Highway 550 the 700 billion dollar highway.












Molas Pass between Silverton and Durango.

Final Card Design

This is the final look I came up with today...
"Anisozygoptera"
So the question came up, "Why the dragonfly?"
well...
"In many cultures, the dragonfly is regarded as a symbol of light, adaptability, grace and transformation." This seems an appropriate symbol for conscious design.

Here's a dragonfly story that explains it all...

"Oyenstikker", "Trollslanda":
The Europeans thought dragonflies were sinister, but the Asians and Native Americans thought of them as symbols of courage, strength, and happiness. This connotation has spread worldwide in modern times.












In ancient mythology Japan was referred to as "Akitsushima, Land of the dragonflies."

Dead Trees

The Daily Green:

The variety of paper out there in the world is amazing.

The people at xpedex, a great paper resource, are familiar with each and every kind.

Kind of like the tea plantation owners in India.  

They know all the variety and then some.

TMI

Recycled  paper intrigued me.

PWC  post consumer waste %

You can choose.  

There is even 100% PWC paper out there.  

As a designer it is becoming more cost effective to use recycled paper and non-toxic inks.