At least five years ago—seems like a hundred!—I was contacted by a bright young design student named Mig Reyes who interviewed me for a school project over iChat. Times and technology changed and this year Mig contacted me to interview me again—over Video iChat! He’s collected an amazing lineup of creative professionals giving advice over iChat at Humble Pied and I’m honored to be the most recent interviewee. My advice—which I’m sure will not surprise you—is to ignore your job title and start your own business as soon as you can. Thanks, Mig!
Ignore your job title
February 3rd, 2010Don’t just sit there
January 31st, 2010
If you read this blog, you probably know by now that I love walking everywhere in LA. But you might not know about another of my favorite pastimes: Couch walking.
Couch walking is great because it starts in the comfort of your own home and can take you anywhere you choose.
It’s a great activity to do with friends. Actually, you have to do it with friends because couch walking is pretty much impossible to do by yourself.
Couch walking can be done any place you do regular walking, just be sure you know the rules of the road: Ottomans and love seats have the right of way.
But my favorite part about couch walking is that no matter where you go, you always have a comfortable place to sit and chat when you get there.
Action/Reaction: Help me curate the California Design Biennial!
January 26th, 2010
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m going to be co-curating my very first museum exhibition! The Pasadena Museum of California Art has just announced its fourth annual California Design Biennial and I’m curating the Industrial Design portion of the show, alongside these extremely able bodies: Frances Anderton/Architecture; Louise Sandhaus/Graphic Design; Rose Apodaca/Fashion; and Stewart Reed/Transportation.
I’ve covered the PMCA’s design biennial for the last few years and it’s always served as a great survey of the state’s design. This year, however, we decided to theme it in a way that was appropriate to these times:
“Americans today live in a world of transformation and upheaval; we are facing a national economic crisis and worldwide political uncertainties and are becoming increasingly attuned to environmental issues. The designs in California Design Biennial: Action/Reaction will address how designers are responding to these issues and how the products they create reflect the influences of our changing world.”
So, I am looking for a range of industrial design pieces, from furniture to gadgets, which evoke these principles:
- Visually excellent (this goes without saying)
- Initiated or furthers positive change: economic, political, environmental, or social (creates an Action/Reaction, if you will)
- Designed in California between January 2008 and early 2010 (as in by now)
To help me out, add worthy products—either your firm’s, something you own and love, or maybe something you spotted in a magazine or blog—to the CA Biennial Industrial Design Flickr group (or you can email directly to me, but uploading to Flickr would be really great). And if you’ve got something in the Graphic Design, Fashion, Architecture or Transportation fields, be sure to pass it along to my cohorts. We must receive all submissions by March 1, 2010.
The opening for the show will be Saturday, July 17 (so be sure to mark your calendars!) and it will run until November 1. I’m really looking forward to the huge task and momentous honor ahead of me, and I hope that your work can be a part of it, too!
River ride
January 25th, 2010
When the sky isn’t dumping a year’s worth of rain onto Los Angeles in five days, one of my favorite places to go in the city is the bike path of the LA River. This concrete chute is probably the most misunderstood place in all of the city, as well as one of the fastest-changing. Here, in the soft-bottom corridor of the river near Frogtown, it’s easy to imagine what the river was like before it got reigned in a half-century ago, which is also how it could look again in the future.
The Los Angeles River Master Plan was completed in 2007 by the lovely Mia Lehrer, among others, and contains all sorts of amazing ideas for revitalizing the watershed. Until then, there are small victories to be seen. Tons of pocket parks have sprung up along the river, and there’s a string of major rec centers where people’s soccer games echo into the concrete walls. Crews had just broken ground on a new bike path here (the paved one currently ends at Fletcher) and it made for a bit of a bumpy ride but it was exciting to see this part of the river finally getting some solid services.
But as much as I want the river to ease back towards naturalization, part of its strange beauty are moments like these graffiti-splotched walls near Hyperion, which I’d hate to lose in a total return to wilderness. A great resource that illustrates the many personalities of the river (as well as the many personalities along the river) is KCET’s awesome interactive river project for Departures. And if you just want to get a closer look at our riparian treasure, Friends of the LA River leads cleanup walks, birdwatching adventures, and other tours along the river.
A few blocks away from all this is more evidence of the river’s changing role in our city: The great Coco’s Variety. This is a bike store, that’s also a purified water store, which also features, among many other things, a giant parts carousel filled with all sorts of things you never knew you could live without, from Band-Aids to Mexican wrestler figurines (made in Japan). While we were there, three kids were charged with choosing one toy each from this tower of goodness, and the decision looked excruciating. Keith has some more amazing photos of Coco’s.
I’m on Studio 360 this weekend!
January 16th, 2010
I like love and all, but there’s something about Valentine’s Day that makes it feel so cheap (and yet so expensive). So I was thrilled when I got a call from Michele Siegel, a producer at the fantastic public radio show Studio 360 to help launch a new contest to redesign Valentine’s Day! I went to a little studio in someone’s backyard just off Melrose and talked to Kurt Andersen about the agony of prix-fixe dinners, heart-shaped candy and the most perplexing Valentine’s icon of all, that diaper-wearing Cupid. I’m on the show this weekend, so you can hear it when it airs on your local public radio station, or just listen to the episode right there on the site.
But the coolest thing is that we really are taking designers’ submissions for a redesigned Valentine’s Day, and we’ve also enlisted one design firm who will be reporting on-air with their redesign on Valentine’s Day weekend: Armin Vit & Bryony Gomez-Palacio, my old friends from the Portfolio Center. You can submit your redesigns through Flickr, and I’ll be pulling my favorite concepts throughout the next few weeks and posting them on Fast Company. Be sure to have it uploaded by February 7 in order to have it considered for the show, and then check back Valentine’s Day weekend to hear the results. Unless, of course, that interferes with your $300-20% tip-included dinner.
It’s good to know that lots of other people out there despise Valentine’s Day. I just found out through Kate Bingaman-Burt that AIGA Nebraska is holding a similar contest: A Love/Hate Valentine’s Card Contest. I’m thinking some of those cards may be fair game for Studio 360’s challenge as well.
Love ya!
