Posted: January 4th, 2010 | Author: rf | Filed under: Book Review | 3 Comments »
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This book had been out of print for a while and I would fall short if I tried to express my excitement when I found out that Gestalten had published a second edition for the exhibition in London. At the time the publisher wasn’t shipping to the US nor was it available on Amazon so I had it shipped to my home in Portugal where I would be spending Christmas holidays. Often times high expectations are followed by disappointment and the fact that the book and I were traveling for an epic rendez-vous in my hometown only added more drama and suspense to the whole thing.
Was this going to be the nerdy Christmas gift I’d hoped to be?
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Posted: December 28th, 2009 | Author: rf | Filed under: Design | 1 Comment »
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A lot has been said lately about the current state of the union in all things Industrial Design and some of them with a less positive outlook into the future, particularly in a consultancy environment as the one I’m exposed to and live in on a daily basis. One school of thought says our practice has been loosing focus while the other says that it’s a much-needed reinterpretation of our role that makes us more relevant in facing the way challenges and opportunities present themselves to the world today.
My position in this matter is that of someone who’s agnostic on its way to become an atheist. Design Thinking being the world view supported by atheism and author design being whatever religion you pick. I’ve always seen myself somewhere in the middle and had been trying to counter balance the gravity pull that is definitively sitting on the Design Thinking theories these days. As of late I decided to stop resisting, embrace it and leverage its momentum.
This is a big identity crisis for many Industrial Designers today since embracing process and broadening the scope of action (often times with no physical product as the outcome of a project) detaches us from the physicality of things that is so dear to us. We grow apart from the idea of the craftsman that I believe most Industrial Designers aspire to be.
That being said, I want to anchor the focus of this post to the publishing world taking the ID magazine as a starting point.
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