Four Bullet Points From Seth Godin For Doing Design That’s Important, Not Pretty
- Erykah St.Louis posted in Design, Creativity and Seth Godin
Speaking to an NYU auditorium full of self-defined “creatives,” marketing guru Seth Godin began with a rendition of the alphabet song and ended with a call to action: “I have no doubt the people in this room are going to succeed. The question is: Are you going to matter?”
It’s the kind of question Godin poses on his blog, in his 17 bestselling books and throughout his many public talks: catchy, inspiring and vague enough to apply to anyone involved in a creative endeavor.
THE DESIGN 75: The Best Designers In Technology
- Rexy Tseng posted in Design and Technology
In the tech world, there has traditionally been more emphasis on engineering than on design. Build a machine that works first, and decide on the colors later.
No more. Innovative companies know that if they don’t get the design right — particularly as it relates to the user-interface — then they might as well not launch a new product at all. If users don’t get it, it doesn’t matter how innovative it is — you’re wasting your time.
Social Designers: Why Our Own Neighborhoods Need Us as Much as Sub-Saharan Africa
- julie kim wrote in San Francisco, Social Design and Cities
Social change is a complex, messy business. It takes a long time. We’re best positioned to affect long-term outcomes when we stay home and work within our own communities.
Many of you are already enmeshed in local design activism. But do we see our work as designers as a form of community service? If not, I think we should. Think of programs and service delivery models like soup kitchens, Americorps, trash pick-up days. These models, more than global humanitarian work, are most relevant for designers looking to work locally.
Push for Good: This Week’s Guide to Crowdfunding Creative Progress
- Alessandra Rizzotti wrote in Technology, Design and Culture
Innovation makes the world go around, so why not crowdfund it? The best thinkers and ideamakers are the those who can make collective progress, so if we support their causes, projects, and ideas, we can be a part of bettering the future of our planet.
Maybe you don’t know what causes you care about yet, or maybe you’re still searching. Consider this a guide of the goodness you can get behind. Take a look at GOOD’s curated Kickstarter page, which we’ll be updating regularly, and check back every Saturday for a round up of our favorite projects from the crowdfunding world.
Here’s a success story that wouldn’t hurt to add a little crowdfunding to:
The Plate Project: What Will We Be Eating in 35 Years?
- Adele Peters posted in Food, Design and Future
Food & Wine asked designers and foodies to sketch out their vision of the food of the future on paper plates.
A Pop-up Fake Train Station in Miami to Show the Benefits of Public Transit
- Adele Peters wrote in Transportation, Miami and Cities
Wish your city had better public transit? Here’s one way to help get your neighbors on board as fellow advocates: build a temporary, fake train station to give a real-life demonstration of what a bigger system might look like. Last week in Miami, a group of students from Florida Atlantic ran the Purple Line project, a pop-up “train station” near unused tracks.
The pretend train station included extra features of urban life that tend to grow up around transit centers, like a farmers market, musicians, and cafes. It also included a “transit confession booth” where residents could share rants about the current state of public transportation in Miami.
Max Schorr posted in Living, Design and Home
Graham Hill’s personal account of learning to live with less and finding more happiness.
-
We live in a world of surfeit stuff, of big-box stores and 24-hour online shopping opportunities. Members of every socioeconomic bracket can and do deluge themselves with products.
There isn’t any indication that any of these things makes anyone any happier; in fact it seems the reverse may be true.
For me, it took 15 years, a great love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I had collected and live a bigger, better, richer life with less.
Illustration by Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch for nytimes.com
A Library for the Subway
- Adele Peters posted in Design, Product Design and Technology
Let’s say you’re stuck on the F train, trying to ignore the person coughing on you, a screaming baby, and a someone staring creepily. (No, I’m not describing my morning). Wish you hadn’t forgotten a book? Here’s an interesting idea from a group of design students: using tech to bring you the first 10 pages of a popular book on your phone, and then telling you the nearest public library where you can go pick up the actual book. Nice way to possibly get more people back in libraries.
Socially Conscious Style Is on the Rise
- Juana Colon posted in Design, Living and Fashion
The good news and bad news is that socially conscious fashion is no longer news. It’s undeniably wonderful that so many designers are paying closer attention to how, where, and by whom things are made.
Why We Love Beautiful Things
- Phillip posted in Design, Creativity and Mathematics
We think of great design as art, not science, a mysterious gift from the gods, not something that results just from diligent and informed study. But if every designer understood more about the mathematics of attraction, the mechanics of affection, all design — from houses to cellphones to offices and cars — could both look good and be good for you.
Why Travel Makes Us Better Designers (and Chefs and Scientists)
- Shaun Ellis wrote in Design, Living and Travel
Oddly enough, there is an intense beauty in these moments of travel. Or maybe more to the point: Part of what makes travel special is that it can yield so many moments that are beautiful almost purely because of their intensity. Here it’s a will-we-or-won’t-we-make-it-across moment. Another day it’s an I’m-not-sure-if-I-can-survive-this-bus-ride moment. Or perhaps a seasick-ferry-ride-to-somewhere moment. Or an unscheduled-pit-stop-in-nowhere moment. Threshold moments, you might say.
This post is part of the GOOD community’s 50 Building Blocks of Citizenship. This week: Get a Passport. Follow along, join the discussion, and share your experience at #goodcitizen.
A Floating School for the Flooded Nigerian Coastline
- Adele Peters posted in Architecture, Design and Resilience
Makoko, Nigeria, floods so frequently that people live in homes on stilts, and canoes are more common than cars or bikes. Climate change increases the risk of flooding even more. A new school design for the area takes the water into account: it floats. It’s intended to be built from locally-sourced wood kept afloat by used plastic drums.
Nothing Stops This Badass Blogger
- Hannah Wasserman posted in Living, Creativity and Fashion
Awesome story about this fashion blogger who has spastic muscular dystrophy. She is uses a wheelchair but that hasn’t stopped her from entering the fashion industry just like any able person.
Making it Hyperlocal: The Story of a (Partially) Homemade Pair of Slippers
- Adele Peters wrote in Design, Transportation and Diy
When Gaspard Tine-Beres was a design student at the Royal College of Art in London, he had an assignment to make a truly local product: something not only made near the designer, but consumed locally too. He thought about what he needed himself, and since he happened to be living with friends in a poorly-heated house in the dead of winter, he was inspired to create a warm (and sustainable pair) of slippers. In London, it was easy to find local manufacturers who used leather. When Tine-Beres later moved to Paris, he wanted to keep the project local, and found a manufacturer using leather and wool felt in his own neighborhood.
This post is part of the GOOD community’s 50 Building Blocks of Citizenship. This week: Measure Your Carbon Footprint. Follow along, join the discussion, and share your experience at #goodcitizen.
Images courtesy of Gaspard Tine-Beres and Ruben Valensi.
The World’s First ‘Moveable City’ Now Operational in Antarctica
- Architizer wrote in Environment, Design and Living
Call it this generation’s “Walking City.” Halley VI, the latest iteration of Britain’s Halley Antarctic research stations, is now fully operational—and it walks, sort of. Halley VI opened today on the centennial commemoration of the first British Antarctic expeditions on the Brunt Ice Shelf, which launched an entirely new and incredibly fertile avenue of scientific research exploring the Earth’s near-space atmosphere. Designed by Hugh Broughton Architects, the new “re-locatable”—i.e. “movable”—facility is the first of its kind in the world.
This post is part of the GOOD community’s 50 Building Blocks of Citizenship. This week, measure your carbon footprint. Follow along and join the discussion at #goodcitizen.
