brains & beauty: making meaning’s visual narrative at midstream

many would generally include in a broad definition of design, to varying degrees,
a mixture of art and science. bruce mau recently commented that he see it as,
“a mixture of brains & beauty.” i like to think of our making meaning design students as hybrids, where we (jeff kapec and myself) are asking them […]

alphabets for the blind & asphalt: mcvey hardware

if you are interested in disparate dialogue about the nature of things related to the arts, the sciences, design and technology, in the character of james burke’s * book, the pinball effect, then i would encourage you to look at john mc vey’s website called hardware. i have known john for about ten years as […]

storm king turns fifty & making meaning turns five . . .

on saturday september 11th, at beginning of autumn semester at pratt and the fifth year of making meaning, we went to storm king art center, which happens to be celebrating it’s 50th anniversary . . . the weather couldn’t have been better for our all day excursion in the hudson river valley, what a wonderful […]

design apprenticeships & the educational experience . . .

design schools in the united states, usually value curriculum structures that place strong emphasis on the individual’s ability to enter the profession immediately upon graduation. at wentworth institute of technology and the university of cincinnati, the schools’ educational models and curricula take internships into account with graduation requirements. in vocations where craftsmanship is of […]

urban mobility & bicycles . . .

don’t miss the exhibit, our cities ourselves: the future of transportation in urban life, at the center for architecture, 536 la guardia place, new york, ny 10012. the exhibit will be closing on in about two weeks on wednesday, september 15, 2010.
http://cfa.aiany.org/index.php?section=exhibitions&expid=119
nick foley, who graduated from the industrial design department at pratt this […]

noam’s therapeutic rehabilitation for furniture, through design

this past spring, noam tabenkin graduated from the department of industrial design at the bezalel academy of arts & design, jerusalem*. in the spring of 2009, we had the good fortune of having noam as an exchange student for the id department at pratt. her studio choice was making meaning and she complimented our group […]

berlin’s university of the arts open house . . .

otherwise know as, rundgang10, tage der offenen tür, universität der künste berlin, from july 16th through july 18th 2010. this was my third design school open house in three days and i was very quickly reaching a sensory overdose level, however once the udk’s product design area archives their venue this year, i would encourage […]

morphology & weißensee kunsthochschule, berlin . . .

here are a few examples from this year’s rundgang at weißensee, a design school in berlin germany. shown here are second semester product design student’s morphology explorations using nature as a reference, in particular various seed pods from different kinds fruits / vegetables.

here are also some other examples (from professor susanne schwarz-raacke’s students, among others) […]

rundgang in weimar . . .

here are a few of my impressions / images from this year’s bauhaus university’s (bauhaus-universität) rundgang from july 15th/16th/17th . . . this is only a very small sampling from all the work that was shown during rundgang, so try to visualize this small excerpt into an exponential factor of five for the full effect. […]

good bye and hello again . . .

well, it’s time to say good bye to our wonderful id departmental advisor, but also hello to the new, interim assistant chair for the industrial design department for the coming academic year 2010-2011: laurel voss. i’m very please to say that i’ve truly enjoyed working with laurel and her crew of graduate and undergraduate student […]