The first floor was an exhibition titled “Design USA,” which was a show consisting of the winners of the National Design Awards from the past 10 years. The winners showcased were pretty predictable—many famous names like Diller Scofido + Renfro, Stefen Sagmeister, John Maeda, Adobe, Herman Miller, IDEO… I think Pentagram was mentioned a few times. I kept getting exasperated at how insular and limited and.. like, self-congratulatory the design world feels sometimes. These are names I hear over and over until it’s drilled into your head. You’d think no one else has any good ideas or knows how to innovate.

…But then I had to keep reminding myself that the Cooper Hewitt is for the general public, not for people like me who are already interested in and engaged with the design world. So it would be good for them to know about John Maeda, because he IS awesome.

But that raises the question—if their goal truly is to eduate the public and teach them about how wonderful and important design is in our everyday lives, then why did this show feel so flightly and non-informative? Visitors were offered no more than a cursory glance at each of the wide array of works without really exploring any one of them deeply enough to fully appreciate their importance. Part of it might have been that the space was cramped because they were undergoing massive renovations. The works were also organized around themes (Craft, Experience, Tech…) but the plaques were not well-placed. I did not even notice there were themes until midway through the exhibition. And most of the visitors were just filing past the displays with slightly puzzled looks on their faces. Only a few stopped for long thoughtful looks. It was frustrating, and made me a little sad.

The film Helvetica did wonders for making people appreciate the magic of design by focusing long and hard on one aspect of it: a certain Swiss typeface. But this exhibit lumped all flavors of design together and shoved it all in the viewer’s face under the general heading: look, isn’t all of it rather cool?

Anyway, it wasn’t all bad. The upstairs exhibit, “Design for a Living World” was pretty engaging. Ten designers were each given a sustainable and/or natural material to work with and they had to come up with something to make with it that, hopefully, utilizes the strengths of the material and helps the local people, ecosphere, and economy. The exhibit was set up in such a way that each room was devoted to one or two projects. Each project was explained through video, sketches, beautiful wall panels with photography from the locale, maps, background info, and of course a display of the finished product.

My favorite of the projects was probably the cocoa grater and packaging designed by Yves Béhar. He worked with an indigenous Costa Rican women’s cooperative that made these easily transportable, easily storable patties out of cocoa powder. By observing their lives and how they used chocolate (for medicinal, ceremonial, and daily purposes), he invented a circular tube grater that basically grates and collects the powder from a cocoa patty. When you are done grating, you just stir the tube directly into a cup of hot water to make a cocoa drink. There is a little stick protruding from the wooden handle of the tool that allows you to hook it to the side of a cup. I found this little implement very ingenious and it also opened up the possibility of selling it with the patties as an export gift item, to bolster incomes. People overseas who buy it will get these awesome handmade patties, completely different from their everyday heavily processed chocolate products, and get to enjoy a product that links to a different way of life.

Another project I particularly enjoyed was the gigantic knitted wool rugs by Christien Meindertsma. She used organic wool from Lava Lake Ranch in Idaho to make huuuuge yarn (over an inch thick per strand) and knitted super chunky hexagon rug modules out of them. Each rug module was knitted from exactly one sheep’s worth of wool, and if you linked a lot of them together, you get what she called a “flock.” I thought that was an interesting way to get people to remember the source of a material, by reminding them of the behaviors of the living animal that it came from. Not the world’s most useful or even usable product (the rug was pretty lumpy), but still, very charming somehow…

My least favorite ones were the furniture design ones. I don’t know. I think I am predisposed to find furniture design a little frivolous because so much of it just feels like embroidering a theme. How many more fancy chair designs does the world need? Especially flatpack plywood interlocking chair designs? (Yeah, there was one.) I get that chairs are iconic and therefore any industrial/furniture designer is just itching to design their own signature seating, but for a show like this, it felt like a cop-out solution. The maplewood bench by Maya Lin and the bamboo “forest” concept of furniture by Ezri Tarazi were beautiful aesthetically, but didn’t contribute so much towards bridging gaps or solving problems as the simple little cocoa grater did.

It was a theme of the show to have a positive effect on the world through design, but I felt that only about a third of the projects were really there in spirit. So much of design still focuses on the aesthetics and the formal qualities of an object, not enough about solving a human problem or fulfilling a pressing need. That’s not something that will ever really change. I mean, certain aspects of design like interior, fashion, and jewelry design will pretty much always be about aesthetics. But it can be so much more, and it should have been in this show.

Maybe that is why I want to be an interaction designer after all these years of wanting to be an architect or a graphic designer. I love aesthetics and its communicative properties, and I still believe clear and effective, even inspiring, communication is a priceless and important quality to strive for. But more than anything else, interaction design seems focused on solving human problems, mostly with the help of technology (super flexible, always changing), and always with a sensitivity to effectiveness, friendliness, and usability. Everything from preventing accidents to helping people make connections to making daily life easier to handle, whether for young or old, wealthy or poor. And it’s still a budding field, which I am excited about.

Tomorrow is Open House at SVA and I have to get to bed, but all I can say after today is I hope x1000 that I get into this program. I want to be in NY. I want to spend all my time walking around and observing and learning from this richly diverse, crammed-together place of sharply contrasting parts. And I want to be an interaction designer, not just because “it’s terribly trendy to care” (David Stairs), but because I think designing ways to make people’s lives less stressful, more enjoyable, and maybe more full of delight is a wonderful thing to do for the rest of my life.

Reading these books was spurred, in large part, by a growing unease that I never learned design the “real” way. The merits of feeling this are up for debate (yes I am aware there are plenty of untrained, successful designers out there) but I still can’t help but feel that way.

What makes a great designer? How does she get there? What is her education like? These are things I’ve pondered a lot, ever since I’ve begun to have ample time for such ponderings (i.e. when I am at work, being an HTML and CSS monkey).

I think I’m fairly lucky to have what many people might call an unorthodox design education (but it’s actually a fairly orthodox liberal arts education in disguise). I barreled through Tufts and the Museum School in the most haphazard way possible, on the way engaging in copious amounts of theory and experimentation, and sticking my toe in everything from anthropology to metalworking to architectural drafting to programming. This has given me access to and an elementary understanding of a fairly large number of viewpoints and interpretations, and it has always taught me to question, to never take popular assumptions or trends without a grain of salt. Furthermore, it has made me insatiably crave knowledge and alternative perspectives.

So far so good. There is a downside, though (there always is). Because of this, I’m not really ever sure of how to judge my own design work, whether it is acceptable/effective/beautiful or not. The mainstream design world has some very basic rubrics against which to evaluate design. The problem is, I was never exposed to those rubrics in any definite sort of way. I’ve never had a typography teacher yell at me for kerning a word wrong or creating a horrific color combination. For people who’ve gone to the Museum School, it can even seem downright unbelievable that anyone actually teaches any creative field like that anymore. The SMFA mindset believes in the potentiality of rule-breaking, not the sanctity of rules. And because they’ve had a long long time to indoctrinate me, I have come to hold this to be true.

But sometimes you just plain need a few guidelines. As I said, I have no idea how to judge my own work. And not knowing how to judge, I can only guess how far I’ve improved by sort of comparing my work to my peers’ work, or by staring at the work for a long time until my eyes melt. Learning through guessing is friggin’ hard, and sometimes it feels downright impossible.

I have good intuition, and I am good at interpreting what people mean when they talk about design, which is how I manage to somehow remain effective at work and in personal projects. I’m also slowly becoming fantastically great at copying or expanding upon a “style” or “look” that someone else has invented. But is that all there is? Am I to spend the rest of my life being great at cosmetic pastiche? It’s true that there’s no such thing as originality because culture builds on culture. But there are varying levels of that, with cosmetic pastiche at what must be close to the very bottom. I dearly hope that I don’t spend my whole life there, on that bottom rung of the profession. I wouldn’t want to stay there, even if it makes all the clients in the world happy.

Not to be impatient, but the awareness that there are tons of designers out there like me, young and idealistic and ambitious, who nevertheless end up doing solid but unremarkable work for the rest of their lives… that gives me the chills, and fuels my anxiousness to learn faster and more effectively. I guess my goal then would be to put the best of what I got out of college to good use: I have to figure out how to learn design myself. I can perhaps begin by ending this blog entry right now and training my SMFA-wrought freewheelingness to have a little RISD-esque discipline.

With a grain of salt, of course.

When was the last time we had a president who had trouble making a speech because people couldn’t contain their cheering and had to let loose after every other word? When was the last time we had a president who actually could make a stirring speech at all? When was the last time people teared up to see a president dancing with his wife? Or the last time people teared up about electoral politics at all? When was the last time it was ok to throw parties for an inauguration? Or to bake a bi-partisan (blueberries and raspberries) pie with the president’s name spelled out in extra pie dough on top? Or to bake cookies in honor of the first syllable of a new president’s name? Or sat at work alone, after everyone else has left early to celebrate, watching a choppy video stream of the inauguration ceremony in CNN.com, and practically bawling? (Yes that was me… no qualms about it.)

Maybe I am too young because I cannot remember the last time any of this has happened. I was not around to experience and fully understand JFK’s star power. But this must have been what it was like.

This is where I begin to ramble because I’m tired, having spent about 6 hours in the kitchen cooking/cleaning up/making a mess again, and also sniffling happily on and off:

In the aftermath of the hyperjoyful glow, it seems to me that the fervor with which the nation at large is adoring and embracing our new president is not just an indication of the assurance that Obama radiates, it’s an indication of how crazy the challenges ahead will be. I for one desperately want him to be as audacious, wise, and dignified as he has built himself up to be. We have no choice but to put all our hopes in him now. So I can’t help but think maybe, just maybe, the intense cheering isn’t just a cry of support, it’s a cry of pleading. Please President Obama, be as good as you promised us you’ll be.

But if there’s one thing that I’ve taken away from all those speeches of his, it’s that it is striking how he has made it a trademark of his to call individuals to action, and places the responsibilities back in the people’s, not the administration’s, hands. This call for collective responsibility and accountability is strikingly missing in Bush’s speeches, for one. It’s not like Obama is being lazy and shifting his responsibility to his constituents’ though. It is more like he is doing what any good “parent” would do to the child they care about – teach them the skills to fend for themselves. So in the end, whether or not Obama himself is that amazing does not matter. What matters is that, even before he took office, he had the good sense to know how to lead – to ask for help. His opponents would call that weakness but actually… that is exactly what is amazing about him. He is realistic. And wise.

Basically I think I have a very good feeling about this. Even after the contagious happiness, transmitted through internet cables, tv screens, and living room comraderie, wears off, I have an undeniable feeling that this will be four exciting, positive years coming right up.

Oh man. I have to go to sleep. Enough said now – history has been made!
Happy Obamaday! Woooooooooooooooooo!

Oh, one more thing before I begin: I don’t want this to come off as a movie review. The votes are in, they have been for a while, and everyone already knows Wall•E (or, Wall-E, for those unversed in the nerdy joy that is the Option key on a Mac) was a critical darling, a smashing triumph, or any number of jubilantly laudatory clichés. So I am not seeking to be redundant here, even though I do feel nothing but praise for this movie myself. Really what I want to share in this post was 2 of my random decidedly personal observations regarding it. So, like, don’t take it as an exhortation to see it or anything. (Psst, go see it! Yes, again!)

Where do I even start? Okay maybe we can start with how I’ve been most affected by the movie. The movie most affected me by making me open to the idea of being primarily an interaction designer rather than a print designer. Strangely enough, for the majority of my life up until this moment, I had always felt a bit of trepidation at the thought of working with digital media for the rest of my life. I fiercely enjoyed the tactile aspect of print work, which was the main reason I was so enthusiastic to take everything from small metals to bookmaking to acrylic media at SMFA. The aspect of web and UI design that bothered me the most was that I couldn’t for the life of me touch it. Add to this the fact that I had always kind of entertained a slight aversion to robots. They made me queasy in a sort of uncanny-valley kind of way. In the form of a children’s toy, robots were clunky and useless wastes of money, far inferior to the living breathing life-forms they were intended to portray (or, in more extreme cases, substitute.) In the form of laboratory experiments, they were downright scary, their electronic entrails kind of strewn everywhere in a techno-gory array as they appear to struggle desperately, mid-experiment, to interact with you. In the form of everything else that didn’t try to assume biomorphic form, they were kind of just plain difficult to relate to. Efficiency and downright usefulness aside, they were still symbols for that turn-of-the-century fear of the dehumanizing side-effects of the Industrial Age.

So perhaps I’m a bit old-school, that robots come off in this way to me. I have pretty much been left behind when the bandwagon of edgy indie hipsters, with their love of monkeys (another uncanny valley thing for me) and robots, left the station. But now it’s a little different, thanks to this ridiculously good movie. And I’m not even going to go at length into why — you know how it is: Pixar brings soulless entity to life with masterful styling; viewer falls for aforementioned soulless entity; viewer develops incongruous but irresistible affinity for all other soulless entities like it. Ta-da! A potential interaction designer is born.

From time to time, I consciously allow myself to be manipulated by Disney. Anyway, next point:

The other thing about Wall•E that struck me as thought-worthy was the response of its right-wing critics. It seems that some extreme rightists take major issue with Wall•E because they view it as a dangerous leftist piece of propaganda designed to scare their children into, heaven forbid, not trashing the Earth. I want to try and be an open-minded fair person here (as I have tried to do throughout the entire spectacle that was the 2008 Presidential Election), and consider why the extreme right might feel this way. But honestly I am failing, and for this reason: Do you have no soul, extreme right? How can you even watch this movie and not have every nerve in your heart be touched by it? Does everything have to ultimately come down to a cheap battle of beliefs? Did you not follow the love story? Did you not notice the beautiful score (which I think, in this case, has got to be as apolitical as it gets), or the stunning technical brilliance, or the endearing plot? Okay, sure, oftentimes in this dangerous modern world, you have to be on guard for being mindwashed by the “enemies,” but are we so utterly jaded and distrustful that we can’t even for a moment put aside the politics we make up and just walk away with a warm feeling from just having witnessed one of the purest, most innocent romances ever concocted by the powers of mass entertainment? Glearrgh!

Huff, huff.

Well, I guess I kinda answered my question with the reference to the Election up there.. yes, sometimes there are people out there who actually believe the seemingly unbelievable. (Or it just seems unbelievable to me because I’m one of them dangerous lefties.) After all, for every piece of great art, there are its fierce detractors. In this country, freedom is law and opinion is sacred. So really, I should just be content that the vast majority of people seem to agree with me that this movie was a masterwork.

But speaking as someone who hopes someday to make art powerful enough to change people’s lives, I cannot entirely be blamed for wanting this movie, or any great piece of art, really, to succeed completely in connecting us, inspiring us, and helping us find what is human and basic and common to all. If love, portrayed in as pure and un-corporal a way as only childlike animated robots can deliver, isn’t what that is, then what is?

Perhaps what this just says is that we, as cultural producers, need to try harder. Wall•E can teach us as much through its success as through its failure. It shows that there is much work to be done, and now is not so much a time to celebrate as to get down to business.

So let’s get down to business! Yeah!

This was the first year I have been able to actually go, and Yang was also there. I had never seen a Revels performance before, though I’d been hearing about it extensively, as my company has had a very close relationship with them and designed a lot of stuff for them in the past. (I even got to do a logo comp for the Revels SummersDay festival, back in my internship days.) I was very excited to finally get to see them performing.

Revels is a tradition-inspired song, dance, and story performance company. They are nationally based, but have a pretty big presence in Boston. Their work is largely focused on celebrating the seasons through joyful family-oriented events/shows, and they take cues from a variety of different ethnic traditions. The Christmas Revels in particular seems to be focused on European traditions, which makes sense as it’s Christmas. Every year the Christmas Revels has a different theme, but there are some unifying recurring elements such as a Mummer’s Play and a Lord of the Dance audience-participation dance. Last year was a spectacular Balkan theme, which Carol says was absolutely stunning and soul-stirring but apparently not very well-received because it was too “esoteric.” (Yeah… what??) So this year they really toned it down. The theme/plot was a loose rendition of Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree, which is essentially a love story, but Revels adapted it to be more of a portrait of a traditional English village celebration of Christmas.

The performance was centered on one of the themes of the book, the dichotomy of tradition/past and innovation/future. Though I found the heavily-accented dialogue hard to understand (costume beards too thick? ^^;) I managed to gather that the light plot was about the arrival of a new harmonium (a symbol of progressive technology at the time) at this little quaint village, and there was an altogether spirited outcry by the townspeople against it replacing the charming old quire and boisterous caroling/mumming tradition. In the end, cherished tradition won over of course, and the children got their parade, and there was much caroling and dancing both joyful and somber.

It was a charming performance through and through, and though I knew close to nothing about English villages and old-school carols, I found myself belting out the lyrics to Donna Nobis Pacem next to a very expertly harmonizing Yang (and, on my other side, co-worker John, who was mumble-singing for all he was worth). Unlike any of the other holiday-season shows I’ve seen in my entire life (and I think I’ve seen a fair share), this one was truly “toned down” in many ways. The costumes were not fabulous by any means, nor where there awesome displays of stage pyrotechnics (there was some snow and dry ice, though), nor dazzling displays of virtuosic skill. There was just good, solid charm, and some beautifully rich singing voices. And, after you walk out of there, you realize you don’t need any of the showy fabulous to really feel fabulous about the season and all it entails.

Additionally, I think the show raises an interesting and forever relevant question: that we should all carefully  consider, as the relentless march of time continues, what things we should keep and preserve for posterity. We should question whether new things can rightfully replace the old just by virtue of being the “latest and greatest.” The answer that Revels proposes is a resounding “no.” That there are traditions that bind together and warm hearts, like songs requiring a crowd’s unified voice to sing, and dances that remind us of the rigors and challenges that humanity has overcome, and all that good stuff, that we should definitely keep. And I think, after seeing Christmas Revels, they are right to believe so.

Happy Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice, 2008 world… here’s to hoping 2009 is just as songful, danceful, and joyful for all… if not more.