Skills. Designers have a lot of them. Designers need a lot of them. Some of us are swept up in our endeavor to be better designers and deliberately choose to improve our sketching, learn some new piece of software, read up on that latest ‘design trend’. However, I put it to you that there is […]
Liberalism and Design Culture
Living in Holland is strange. Its liberal attitudes towards soft drugs are amusing. Its insane transport layout of cycle-lanes and roads are confusing. Their willingness to speak whichever language you happen to speaking (be that English, French, German or Belgian) is bemusing. In its essence living in Holland is just like living in the […]
Design: What we can learn from Africa
Africa fades in and out of the limelight pretty regularly. Reporters report on the awful deaths and killings in the Middle East but reports on the thousands dying from AIDs, war and famine every week are fading and distant. Africa is a thorn in the western worlds side, a technicality that is only of importance […]
Giving ‘design’ the middle finger
Recently I walked into a very well known and established design shop while in Amsterdam called Frozen Fountain. Built in the old part of town, it stands right on the edge of a canal, busy with a variety of boats chugging by like cars on a busy urban street. The converted house extends high into […]
Designing the Super Normal
In the first few weeks of April I had the opportunity to go to the Milan Design Week and run around the city manically trying to find and look at everything there was to see. Whether it was fate or pure luck I don’t know but I managed to wonder into La Triennale di Milano […]