Design has ramifications beyond the simple form and function--teacups are actors in rituals and environments are where we stage experiences. Turns out the design of my grade school building played a bigger role in my education than I thought.
I grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio, home of Antioch College, where I attended the Antioch School. Arthur Morgan started it in 1921, the same year in New York that Elizabeth Irwin founded the Little Red School House and seven years after City & Country School opened. It was very progressive when progressive was really experimental! While we played with blocks and made up plays, from nursery school through sixth grade, the student teachers actually did experiments with us! Some worked and others didn't work so well!
Concurrent with my high school reunion, the Antioch School had its own funky little reunion. As I chatted with some other much younger alumni, I was...
I grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio, home of Antioch College, where I attended the Antioch School. Arthur Morgan started it in 1921, the same year in New York that Elizabeth Irwin founded the Little Red School House and seven years after City & Country School opened. It was very progressive when progressive was really experimental! While we played with blocks and made up plays, from nursery school through sixth grade, the student teachers actually did experiments with us! Some worked and others didn't work so well!
Concurrent with my high school reunion, the Antioch School had its own funky little reunion. As I chatted with some other much younger alumni, I was...
- 11/12/2009
- by Tucker Viemeister
- Fast Company
Economics grab all the headlines but beauty is just as important, and even has serious financial ramifications. Beauty does serve a function. Didn't the way that cars used to look--and no longer do--have a big effect on the failure of Detroit? Beauty is more than skin deep. Beauty is powerful. Utility is beautiful and beauty has utility. Let's call it "Beautility" for short.
The Avanti Studebaker, designed by Raymond Loewy (and one of my dad's favorites)
Beauty has different meanings in different cultures and eras--but everybody has some idea of beauty (even the Hell's Angels). Although humans can't agree on specific examples, we do all share a general formula for beauty: It has a very pleasing physical sensual element combined with mental enlightenment. "Aaaahs" and "Ah-has." It's the combination. There is an intellectual component to a beautiful person and an emotional component to a beautiful mathematical proof. The experience of...
The Avanti Studebaker, designed by Raymond Loewy (and one of my dad's favorites)
Beauty has different meanings in different cultures and eras--but everybody has some idea of beauty (even the Hell's Angels). Although humans can't agree on specific examples, we do all share a general formula for beauty: It has a very pleasing physical sensual element combined with mental enlightenment. "Aaaahs" and "Ah-has." It's the combination. There is an intellectual component to a beautiful person and an emotional component to a beautiful mathematical proof. The experience of...
- 11/3/2009
- by Tucker Viemeister
- Fast Company
A few weeks ago, Marc Fitten, editor of the Chattahoochee Review, wrote an op-ed called "Our Cars, Ourselves" in The New York Times that said this: "Gm left its Atlanta plant to rot. So I left my Gm loyalty behind." Gm is an example of how branding is changing in this post-economic era. The field of brand strategy needs to change as much as the derivative business because the market is changing, the climate is changing, technology is changing, and the customer is changing.
Branding is a great framework for corporations. Branding finds the soul of a company and applies it. The brand mission aligns all facets of a company creating a coherent presentation to consumers--strong brands use all their packaging, products, advertising, services, and expectations to build a brand experience that lots of people want. For the last few decades, the branding mantra was to build internal teamwork so...
Branding is a great framework for corporations. Branding finds the soul of a company and applies it. The brand mission aligns all facets of a company creating a coherent presentation to consumers--strong brands use all their packaging, products, advertising, services, and expectations to build a brand experience that lots of people want. For the last few decades, the branding mantra was to build internal teamwork so...
- 11/2/2009
- by Tucker Viemeister
- Fast Company
At Razorfish we used to say: "Everything that can be digital, will be!" We built a Web site for Charles Schwab that could execute stock transactions faster and better than your broker--and unlike selling physical widgets, adding customers didn't cost Schwab anything! We predicted that digital technology would do almost anything faster, cheaper and better--an unbeatable combination--especially if "better" meant the user experience is better.
Bill Moggridge is attributed with coining the name "interaction design," because, as he says, "designers of digital technology products no longer regard their job as designing a physical object--beautiful or utilitarian--but as designing our interactions with it." Interaction design is also a lot nicer than what the engineers call it: "computer human interface."
Digital technology makes inanimate things smarter and more intelligent when it's interactive. Instead of only watching and embedding interactive media, the audience becomes an active player in its own experience. Video games...
Bill Moggridge is attributed with coining the name "interaction design," because, as he says, "designers of digital technology products no longer regard their job as designing a physical object--beautiful or utilitarian--but as designing our interactions with it." Interaction design is also a lot nicer than what the engineers call it: "computer human interface."
Digital technology makes inanimate things smarter and more intelligent when it's interactive. Instead of only watching and embedding interactive media, the audience becomes an active player in its own experience. Video games...
- 10/30/2009
- by Tucker Viemeister
- Fast Company
When the dot-coms were revvin' up their engines, we thought things were changing fast, and that opened up plenty of opportunities for design. We loved to read about speedy people taking advantage of the quick changes. Today we really need to think faster about the future--if we want one! Aesop's fables about grasshoppers, ants, turtles and rabbits are basically about how we can control our future if we are careful and plan ahead. They are stories design about making the future better than today.
I used to think that fables, myths, songs and movies were mostly about love. But now I've been thinking about how they all boil down to the conflict between truth and fiction (love still fits), reason and magic, now and later. And like the heroes on quests, solving crimes, or combating dragons, designers are fighting those battles everyday: Trying to get clients to believe in the...
I used to think that fables, myths, songs and movies were mostly about love. But now I've been thinking about how they all boil down to the conflict between truth and fiction (love still fits), reason and magic, now and later. And like the heroes on quests, solving crimes, or combating dragons, designers are fighting those battles everyday: Trying to get clients to believe in the...
- 10/29/2009
- by Tucker Viemeister
- Fast Company
Designers often talk about the moment they realized their destiny lay in design. For Tucker Viemeister, it was pretty much the moment he was conceived. Yes, Tucker was born to Read Viemeister, a famous industrial designer (and an activist mom, Beverly, who nurtured his social responsibility side). And the name Tucker? It's because of the 1948 Tucker Sedan, the legendary automobile that his dad Read was busy designing at the time of his birth. Yes, Tucker Viemeister is named after a piece of industrial design...which his industrial designer dad worked on! Talk about a birthright.
His career path went about the way you'd expect it to go. He was the co-founder of Smart Design with Davin Stowell, where he co-created the now-household-name kitchen tools Oxo Good Grips. He then went on to found the New York office of frog design. Since 2001, however, he's been ensconced in the office of our...
His career path went about the way you'd expect it to go. He was the co-founder of Smart Design with Davin Stowell, where he co-created the now-household-name kitchen tools Oxo Good Grips. He then went on to found the New York office of frog design. Since 2001, however, he's been ensconced in the office of our...
- 10/28/2009
- by Alissa Walker
- Fast Company
It's fun being a designer. We designers use our hands, heads, and hearts. We get to invent things and then make them into real things--things that we want. We use our heads for strategy, tactics, science, and thinking ahead. We actually make things with our hands: drawings, models, and samples. And we use our own emotions to connect with the hearts so that people will want what we created. The combination is what makes being a designer so interesting and valuable.
My father, Read Viemeister was an industrial designer--so even as a baby I could hear him brainstorming ideas, watch him make renderings, and then build stuff in the shop. I wanted to be President (back then that was more normal) but I saw that designers changed the world in better ways.
My mother, who was into politics, went to Antioch College and thought that Horace Mann was speaking to her when he said,...
My father, Read Viemeister was an industrial designer--so even as a baby I could hear him brainstorming ideas, watch him make renderings, and then build stuff in the shop. I wanted to be President (back then that was more normal) but I saw that designers changed the world in better ways.
My mother, who was into politics, went to Antioch College and thought that Horace Mann was speaking to her when he said,...
- 10/28/2009
- by Tucker Viemeister
- Fast Company
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