Design and Everyday Life

basic shapes

2009-11-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

A family of animal characters were created by combining the square, circle and triangle. The characters were silk-screened to a 1680 X 500mm modernist growth chart for kids.

Honest, pure and devoid of superfluous details, the product imaginatively introduces kids to basic geometric learning and spark the imagination through the inclusion of memorable animal facts.

The charts are compactly packaged in custom triangular cartons made from 100% recycled post consumer waste pulp. They can be purchased at COÖP or Design Within Reach

Why tangible?

2009-11-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

Story 1: Fascinated by intangible digital technology

Bill Moggridge is a co-founder of IDEO, a 'global' design consulting firm. In a documentary film 'Objectified,' he talks about his, and arguably the first laptop computer design from 1980s; he explains several features that he added to this laptop such as popping-pencils-out cover or an angled stand on its back, and how smart he thought of himself to come up with those solutions. While using the computer, however, what had become more visible to him was intangible elements behind tangible elements he carefully designed. That is, nowadays, called interaction design or intangible interface design. Wii game, touch screen, and internet are offsprings of this field of design.

So interaction design is really big these days, right? Everybody wants to own these cool gadgets that blow up their mind...

Story 2: Back to tangible!

There are designers and artists who refuse to be addicted to intangible digital media, and attempt to evoke the actual senses of people. Here are some examples:

1)Fruit Juice Packaging by Naoto Fukasawa at the Exhibition, Haptic-Awakening the senses curated by Kenya Hara

2)Gel Remote Control by Panasonic Design Company at the Exhibition

Haptic-Awakening the senses

3) Tangible from Gestalten

In this book, authors questions:

I find the answer from a French Sociologist, Henri Lefebvre. He said in his book, Dialectic Materialism, written in 1920s:

Humans are beings of flesh-and-blood, and this physical connection to the nature requires tangible experience as the essence of human existence.

Form follows function.

2009-10-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

Form follows function. When I was way more ignorant of design than now, somebody hysterically shouted this phrase at my face as if he knows about design. I barely remember how he explained this way-to famous-to-be-understood-as-it-is sentence. Yes, we were talking about design, drunk.

Although some time has passed since then, I still recall that moment. Why form follows function? Did he really know what he meant? For some people, it is the ultimate guideline of design, for others, it is as old as a fossil. I was confused with it, because I didn't know how to read it.

This morning, I happened to read first few pages of a book, Architecture and the Spirit of Man, which I read few chapters before, and put aside. The first chapter, What buildings are beautiful, had some insights on aesthetics of buildings. It made me to rethink and analyze my thesis, which is about designing for invisibility. So I continued to read more.

Form follows function; the form of a building must be a consequence of its purpose.*

This is a common understanding, and also that of a surface. Read the following sentence.

The form of a building must tell the story of its life, of its inward activities and outward affiliation.*

The story that reflects people's life and their use of objects needs to be embraced in the form. As a sentence, form comes before function; this order confuses me to read its meaning properly. However, in a real life, the form and function of the building or the object advance dialectically not consequently.

Dialectics is the method of argument, which two opposite characters develop integral relationship. When you think of dialogues, it is easier to understand. Two or more people make series of dialogues in order to explore a particular subject, and solve a problem. Good design or long-live design embraces this dynamic of dialogues of the form and function; they are open for change. However, the famous Form follows function mistakenly indicates a consequential relationship, A follows B, make people confused about the idea behind the sentence.

*Joseph Hudnut, Architecture and the Spirit of Man, (Harvard University Press, 1949), pp12

Ampelmann and traffic light design of the world

2009-10-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

Today I was waiting for the traffic light to change in front of Rochester downtown Java's, and starting to think about designs of traffic light that I've seen. When I traveled to Berlin, Germany, the first thing I recognized was its unique traffic light. (I stayed in my friend's apartment which was located in the east side of Germany.) I instantly fell in love with it. It seems I wasn't the only person who liked its cute look; there were shops called Ampelmann ("Traffic light man" in English) selling bags, t-shirts, posters and other souvenir products using ampelmann as its mascot and the graphic element. I regret that I didn't buy anything besides a poster..yes, I was a cheapstake. Anyway traffic lights seems so ordinary to urban dwellers but there are subtle differences among them which interest me so much. Here are some more examples that I found from Ampelmann's website and The Columnist Manifesto:

Above: Taiwan- We have similar number counting signs in Korea. I get nervous when I see the number counted down. That wobbly green guy seems nervous too!

Above: Holland- Strangely I never noticed this black and white post of traffic lights when I lived there. I guess I jaywalked too much in Holland.

Above: Ampelmann shop in Germany

Bonus story: In Korea, we call green light blue. I don't know why we do that, but we learned to call it that way; Red to stop and blue to go. However what we actually have on Korean streets are green lights. I wasn't aware of this until one of my dutch friend looked at me strangely when I was shouting "blue, blue, blue" in front of traffic light, which actually meant green.:)

Metaphys Celtis board game

2009-10-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

Celtis' form and function are not too different from other board games (e.g Gemblo) However its subtle beauty caught my eyes. It would actually feels nicer to play with since a player can move gems so easily. Each gem reminds me of a pebble and that of Korean cheker, Baduk, shown as below.

Muji Bath Radio

2009-10-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

Designed by Industrial Facility for Muji

This is a radio that can go with Muji shampoo and conditioner bottle as if it is part of the health and beauty products. I love its simple and humble aesthetic. Although it looks more organized with the brand products, it will also look fine with other beauty products. Sadly, this is only avaliable in Japan.

Design for Invisibility To place Things Better

2009-04-23T13:55:00.001-07:00

Successfully completed my thesis show last week.:) Now it's time to refine some details and get ready for the final defense.
To see more images,click here.

The Practice of Everyday Life

2009-04-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

Images from theselby.com

Strategies are able to produce, tabulate, and impose these spaces, when those operations take place, whereas tactics can only use, manipulate, and divert these spaces.(...)
These modes of use- or rather re-use -multiply with the extension of acculturation phenomena, that is, with the displacements that substitute manners or “methods” of transiting toward an identification of a person by the place in which he lives or works. That does not prevent them from corresponding to a very ancient art of “making do.” I give the name of uses, even though the word most often designates stereotyped procedures accepted and reproduced by a group, its “ways and customs.” The problem lies in the ambiguity of word, since it is precisely a matter of recognizing in these “uses” “actions” that have their own formality and inventiveness and that discreetly organize and multiform labor of consumption.

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, UC Berkley Press, p 30
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You see how people interact and identify themselves with "given" environment and objects. As de Certeau puts it, there is the problem laid in the ambiguity of materials("word") although they are "designed" to use in certain way. However this ambiguity also makes the use of objects so much more fun and open ended. What makes Design so fascinating is that it transforms itself within people's everyday practices.

2008-12-06T11:22:00.000-08:00

'I welcome any technological advance that reduces my need for mental work but still gives me the control and enjoyment of the task. That way I can exert my mental efforts on the core of the task, the thing to be remembered, the purpose of the arithmetic or the music. I want to use my mental powers for the important things, not fritter them away on the mechanics.'

p.193

'In making things visible, it is important to make the correct things visible. Otherwise people form explanationsfor the things they can see, explanations that are likely to be false.

p.198

'Get the Mappings right

-Between intentions and possible actions

-Between actions and their effects on the system

-Between actual system state and what is perceivable by sight, sound or fell

-Between the perceived system state and the needs, intentions, and expectiations of the user

Natural mappings are the basis of what has been called "response compatibility" within the fields of human factors and ergonomics.'

p.199

The design of everyday things, Donald A. Norman

Natural Order- a desktop organizer project 2008

2008-11-17T17:49:00.000-08:00

These are variations of Natural Order[3d cad rendering]. Each of the unit stick together since they are magnetized material. They are light and easy to assemble. They are shipped flatm, which will cost them less for shipping and packaging.

Natural Order- Ideations and sketches

2008-11-17T17:13:00.000-08:00

My initial idea was to design a 'spiral' shaped tower. It is combined with three vessels which are in different heights, sizes. It allows the user to put different sizes and scales of documents all-in-one. Also, I thought this shape was ideal for the user who wants to throw in their stuffs to the basket without thinking too much of 'organizing'. Throw things into each slots! The other reason [I liked about this idea] was that it has a room to create its own 'sculptural beauty' when the user puts in each file/paper/memo with different colors, material and sizes.

However, while I was playing with paper and aluminum, I found more simpler solution than to put three pots vertically in a centric order. Magnetized sheet metal and plastic came into my mind as the material. Magnetic feature can hold three units in one easily. Also, it allow the user to assemble more than three with various ways of putting them together.

Natural Order-idea sketches

2008-11-17T16:50:00.000-08:00

I'm really bad in organizing my self and the surroundings. My books, folders, documents are always on the floor or on the desk, piled. I try to put them on the bookshelf or in folders but that only lasts for few days. [OTL] They are always back to the floor and creating a mess. Also when I finally organize things in a folder or a binder, I often forget if they are there... What a disaster!

So, I though of designing a desktop organizer for three reasons;

1. It should be in front of me. Therfore, I will design a 'desktop' organzier.

2. It should reveal what it holds. It should not hide the information which it keeps.

3. It should be able to accept the mess that I'm creating, instead of being surrendered by the mess.

The process to find the new typology-Tithi

2008-11-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.tithi.info/new/main.htm

The everyday of Tithi- 'a cup of...'

2008-11-17T16:33:00.001-08:00

2. a cup of...

Tithi Kuchamuch, a London based designer who just graduated from Royal college of Art in London, seems to be interested in looking at typologies of everyday objects. She studied different typologies for beverages and combined each of them to that of the tea cup. Below are some of the results: the lemon tea cup and the rum tea cup.

These combination creates quite a different look from ordinary cups. They don't seem that noisy with too much of decoration. These new typology of her objects shows the feeling of very calm, elegant and straightforwardness to the point!

The everyday of Tithi-'all year rings'

2008-11-17T15:55:00.000-08:00

I just found this beautiful website - http://www.tithi.info/new/main.htm I like her aesthetic very much. It is very clean, simple, yet elegant. Here are some of her works that I really liked.

1. 'All year rings'

This set of twelve-months ring is made by laser-cut paper. It is shipped flat and lets the user to assemble each ring by themselves. I'm sure they will be a great gift for somebody you love and care. I actually wanna have one by myself. It looks as if it is really simple to make!

It also reminds me of my 'Natural Order' [my desktop organizer project]. Maybe that's why I like this:D

Design grows within history

2008-09-07T20:47:00.000-07:00

Design refers to the will to interpret the meaning of human life and existence through the process of making things. Art, on the other hand, is the act of discovering a fresh human spirit.

(...)

Art is an expression of an individual's will to society at large, one whose origin is very much of a personal nature. So only the artist know the source of his own world. This loftiness is what makes art so cool.

(...)

Design on the other hand, is basically not self-expression. Instead, it originates in society. The essence of design lies in the process of discovering a problem shared by many people and trying to solve it. Because the root of the problem is within the society, everyone can understand plans for solutions and processes for solving the problem, in addition to being able to see the problem from the designer's perspective. Design is appealing because the process creates inspiration that is engendered by this empathy among human beings in our common values and spirituality.

Kenya Hara, Designing Design, p. 24

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Last week, I found a book written by Japanese Master graphic designer, Kenya Hara. So I immediately checked it out from the library. He certainly knows how to describe design issues to the very detail point that I wanted to say, but I couldn't. His writing helped me to clear my cloudy vision out. I really like and agree on how he differentiated between art and design, that art is subjectively and design is objectively understood in society.

So, here comes the cutting board again. First image is a cutting board exhibited at Smithsonian museum in DC. The other two are my old cutting board that I've used for summer. I have to admit that I was wrong when I said that current chopping board market doesn't have various design options(refer to my older post about a chopping board). Actually, it does have quite a few design options besides shape varieties; such as the way of manufacturing, and usage of different materials. So far,design isn't just about verifying the form.

Also, as you can see from pictures above, its rectangular shape has been proved by history, that it is somehow OK-design since it has survived for thousands of years.

However, I won't stop searching for better possibilities. I still believe there are the nature or behaviors of human being which haven't been recognized by designers or creators of tools whose waiting to be discovered and applied to objects. And those solutions might help to solve my problem: The world is full of unnecessary things which we think of them as necessities.

The face of current design

2008-09-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

Just wow. No matter who had said this line, it just wow me.

This is what I want to talk about on my thesis as a problem. And my solution for this problem will be...continued.

The nature for the upcoming future

2008-09-07T19:45:00.000-07:00

How brilliant poster this is! by Klas Ernflo

It makes me sad, but maybe this is our future sea-level landscape.

Quirky aesthetic sometimes brings an inspiration!

2008-09-07T19:36:00.000-07:00

It's best not to question what is you are looking at, rather, bathe in it's awesomeness. According to the good folks over at Instructables you will need:

-a laptop computer, pda, or other electronic device

-yarn (I used about 10 skeins for this)

-knitting needles (straight, double-pointed, and circular)

-stitch markers

-stitch holders

-yarn needle

-scissors

-a sense of humor

Technology meets fashion, or fashion meets technology, this is far beyond quirky and it wins for that alone. It does solve a problem or you could just, you know, go to another room if privacy is your thing.

from: http://scrapbook.citizen-citizen.com/subjectivity/

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This Laptop compubody sock reminds me of the 'personal space' dialogue that I was digging on last last quarter.

routine but haunting shots of stephen gills

2008-08-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

[Notice: Paragraphs with smaller size and faded color are intended to make them hard to read, because I thought those lines weren't necessary to convey my point. It was rather distracting. If you want to read them without disturbed by different sizes and colors, go to guardian.co.uk]

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Stephen Gill likes to photograph things so insignificant they barely exist - the backs of billboards, cashpoint machines, and so on. Now he calls me and says he's been photographing invisibility. He shows me some of the pictures. They are of rail and street repair workers wearing bright, fluorescent "High Visibility" jackets. Stephen says he got the idea for the series because he wears a fluorescent jacket when he's taking photographs and doesn't want to draw attention to himself - when he wears his fluorescent jacket, he says, nobody gives him a second glance.

The fluorescent jacket has - it turns out - an appropriately wondrous and dazzling lineage. The story begins one day in the early 1930s when an Ohio teenager called Bob Switzer was unloading crates for Safeway in a railway yard in California. He tripped and hit his head so hard that he fell into a coma for months. When he finally regained consciousness, the doctor told him he should stay in a dark room until he recovered. And so, to pass the time, Bob took to waving fluorescent minerals around in the air. Then, when he got better, he started mixing them with wood varnish in the family bathtub. Before long he had invented the world's first fluorescent paint. He called it Day-Glo.

Bob and his brother Joe, both amateur magicians, used the stuff to create stage tricks such as the Headless Balinese Dancer. Bob is dead now, but his son Paul has a stack of letters that his father wrote at the time to fellow illusionists. He reads me one of them down the phone. It is addressed to "Kleeland the Magician". Bob, then 20, clearly felt that he could make a bit of money from selling Day-Glo paints around the conjuring community. "We are manufacturing a number of magical illusions that are most startling and weird," he wrote. "The Balinese dancer appears on a dark stage in a flash of brilliant light and dances in a strange manner. For the climax she twists her body in agony and raises her glowing hands with long fluorescent fingernails as she draws her head off of her shoulders. She continues to dance but slowly falls to the floor. Her head continues to move about the stage. This illusion can be packaged in a small bag and sent to you for $75."

Audiences were startled, and news of these Day-Glo feats spread until eventually the US army took an interest. Troops in north Africa were falling victim to friendly fire from allied planes, so the army commissioned Bob to mix his pigments with fabric. Bob began to experiment with his wife's wedding dress. It worked. Bob's wife's wedding dress was the world's first piece of high-visibility clothing.

"What's so great about fluorescent colour?" said Day-Glo's publicity material at the time. "Fluorescent colour is seen 75% sooner than conventional colour! Fluorescent colour is three times brighter than regular colour! Your eyes go back to fluorescent colour for a second look 59% of the time!" When Bob died in 1997, his obituary on CBS television began, "Thank you, Robert Switzer, for Day-Glo paint. The world is brighter now, since you came along. Even in the dark, the world is brighter."

"When he died," Bob's grandson Peter emails me, "I had the priest take a bright yellow golf ball I had brought with me to the funeral service and put it in his casket so the colour would be with him for ever."

But nowadays, it seems, if you want to be invisible, all you have to do is wear fluorescent clothing. Perhaps it is just because high visibility has become so ubiquitous. Hula hoops, children's pencils, packets of detergent, glossy magazines, national lottery scratch cards, tennis and golf balls, road signs, safety jackets, steering wheel locks - our landscape is scattered with Bob Switzer's colours. This is because scientists have recently worked out how to make them durable. Until a decade ago, fluorescence faded to white after just a few months in the sunlight. Now it keeps going for 10 years. (I can tell you exactly how the scientists have made this breakthrough. They discovered that Y/MacAdam Limit [x,y] provides an excellent prediction of the suprathreshold appearance of fluorescent colour [x,y]; where [x,y] represents the colour of the test stimulus in 1931 CIE chromaticity coordinates. That's how.)

So maybe ubiquity is to blame. Or perhaps, as dazzling as high-visibility clothing is, even more compelling is the public's desire not to notice those people who scurry around at our feet, fixing holes, mending tracks, cleaning up after us. We trust them and we don't want to think about them. This is how Bryan Ferry's son Otis and the other fox hunting aficionados got into the House of Commons to disrupt a debate last year. They put on fluorescent jackets and told the first policeman they met that they were "going to inspect the electrics". The policeman shrugged and waved them on.

The surveillance specialist Peter Jenkins - who teaches private investigators how to follow people without being spotted - is a fan of the fluorescent jacket, too. He says that if you're observing a target in a rural environment, use hedges and ditches and trees. But if you want to be invisible in a city, just put on a fluorescent jacket and sit in the passenger seat of a transit van, or queue up at a telephone box. (Remember to turn off your mobile phone first.)

Criminals have, of late, taken to wearing high-visibility clothing to avoid being spotted. Just last December 16, 14 men wearing fluorescent yellow overalls stole three and a half million cigarettes from a lorry in Killeen, Northern Ireland. The gardaì say they suspect the Provisional IRA was to blame, fluorescent disguise apparently being a recognised Provo trick. But regular gangs have picked up on this, too. An Asda superstore in Benton, Newcastle, fell victim to fluorescent-attired men on Christmas Eve. And the 12 men who tried to steal the 203-carat De Beers diamond from the Millennium Dome in November 2000 were fluorescent from head to toe. They must have glowed like fireflies, yet they went unnoticed by the 64 members of the public enjoying the Dome that day. Little did the robbers realise, however, that 200 undercover police officers were stationed around the Dome, waiting to swoop. The thieves didn't notice the police, though, because they were disguised as cleaners.

The writer Maggie O'Farrell used to work as a chambermaid in a posh hotel. When she was being trained, she was told never to make eye contact with the guests. She was to drop her eyes. On one occasion, she was cleaning a hotel bathroom when the guests came in and began to have a full-on row about his lack of fertility. She was desperate for a baby. He couldn't provide one. She was going to leave him. He burst into tears. O'Farrell continued silently cleaning their toothpaste mugs. "It's like that fairy story, The Elves And The Shoemaker," she says. "People want to believe that their room magically tidies itself."

All this leads to a somewhat dark and gloomy conclusion. Throughout the early 1990s, cyclist and motorcycle deaths fell year on year. Then - from 1995 - they began to rise. It isn't that cyclists have stopped wearing high-visibility jackets. The problem, perhaps, is that the opposite is true. Maybe it is time for somebody like Bob Switzer to come along and invent something even more dazzling than fluorescence.

article written by Jon Ronson @ guardian.co.uk

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I'm into looking at these highly visible construction tools at the street thesedays. Since they are at the site where you shouldn't get in, I haven't paying much attention to them before, especially from an aesthetical perspective.

One day, I was walking down the street at NYC, and I found out the form of construction baricades(?) are very interesting- they were designed to manufacture easily with single moulded plastic, and to have simple and clean cuts. However, I was not brave enough to take out my camera and took pictures of those scenes by myself. Thanks to photographer Stephen Gill, I can take his resources for my thought and research processes.

Industrial Design?... What's that?

2008-08-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

I went to Jean Madeline(Aveda institute) to get a hair cut this morning.
I had a light conversation with my 'hair stylist-to-be', who is currently a student of the institution, while she was shampooing my hair.

She: What do you study?
Me: I study Industrial Design.

Probably she was slipping the word 'Industrial' away.

However, she caught the other word 'Design' which was lot more familiar for her thanks to TV shows(i.e. project runway) and media.

So
She: What's that? Is it some kind of making clothes?
Me: No, it's about designing electronics, furniture, home ware or kitchen ware,etc.

She still wasn't sure what I was studying. After a short pause...
She: Do you study buying those products?
-probably she meant by studying business or management.
Me: No, I do and study design, but not buying designed products.

Finally, she said with an exclamation mark,

"Ah, so you can draw!"

Yes, of course I can draw AND I DESIGN THINGS!

But design is not just about drawing, it is more about observing people and their life.

Whew, how ignorant people are about industrial design even though they can't live without the benefits of it and of industrial designers'. We are designing things around people-their everyday life. And that can be invisible and unappreciated by people. Apparently.

I could tell tons of babies of industrial designers' at the salon today; blow dryers, scissors, reception desks, lights, chairs, sofas, tables, mirror-table-drawers, containers of all kinds of hair products, shelves, etc. It was everywhere.

Maybe I should've told her that I design or study about the everyday life of human beings. And we, industrial designers try to improve our daily life, so we can live more conveniently and 'without thought'(Naoto Fukasawa-I'll talk about him later) or hesitation while they're using products.

So, Industrial designers design everyday life of human beings.!

And you know what? It is damn hard to do that just 'right'.

PS. Thanks to my stylist's talent, and help of good products & tools, I've a got a nice new hair cut.

unavoidable nature (plasty-artificiality) of designer

2008-07-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

Making it real, making it simple, making it true, and making it pure might mean only making it look that way.

The strangely familiar might only be strange in its familiarity that is so fundamentally artificial. Jean-Francois Lyotard, the act of presenting the impossibility of faithful representation within representation itself.

p.47
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What is authentic and what is not. Designers are the people who are trying to make plastics seem real. This ungraspable nature of everyday or my momental thought is somehow re-created by those of strangely familiar design. Though, my design creation can't be real and can't be the same as my everyday.

Cutting boards

2008-06-19T08:06:00.001-07:00

I just bought a new cutting board few days ago. It seems like the market does not concern about changing its traditional design, which is rectangular shape and has a handle hole on one end. They had various colors, textures, materials available, but still the same conventional shape- what we are very used to and familiar with.

So, is this design a good design? At least for clumsy cooker, it is not.

I always come up with thousands of prblems while I'm using it.

First, it is too flat that juices from fruit don't flow properly.

Also I always have to pick up some chopped pieces since it doesn't block them to fly out.

And tons of other inconvenience features it has.

Then why don't designers fix this design?

Because it is too hard to change the perception of which people think about cutting(chopping) board. We are so used to use rectangualr cutting boards. Otherwise, we would feel uncomfortable to recognize as a chopping board. So, even though there are some other nice design out there in the market, people won't notice them.

Other thing is the price. Not that many people want to spend their money on buying chopping board. It should be cheap, hygiene, and simple.

Then how can designers change this common traditional perception on this daily cooking object? Maybe I have to start from observing people's behavior and interaction with the object.

Then, we'll talk more.

repetition kills uniqueness

2008-05-12T19:16:00.000-07:00

It is obvious, sad to say, that repetition has everywhere defeated uniqueness, that the artificial and contrieved have driven all spontaneity and naturalness from the field, and, in short, that products have vanquished works. Repetitious spaces are the outcome of repetitve gestures (those of workers) associated with instruments which are both duplicable and designed to duplicate: machines, bulldozers, concrete-mixers, crances, pneumatic drills, and so one.

The everyday and unexpected familiarity in design

2008-05-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

What is everyday? We live in everyday but it is hard to define what it actually is. People easily regard it as ordinary and daily habits. And this habitual familiarity makes us feel safe and comfortable. We are afraid of things that are out-of-custom. Nevertheless, we also seek the world anew. What is the reasoning behind this double standard? Is refresh unfamiliarity some kind of seasoning to keep us away from boredom of routines?

The cultural art movement, such as Dada, started to experiment “the everyday” as its main element in the early 20th century. Dada was an anti-art movement that ignored standard aesthetic of art. Duchamp’s “Fountain”[1] is one of the famous examples of this movement. It shocked the public when it was first shown, because of its familiarity as an everyday object and unfamiliarity as an art form to the people.

In 1993, Droog design came up with unconventional, but very simple and direct design showing the concept of everydayness. They used milk bottles to make a chandelier. Droog design engages the ordinary people and release the idea of design that it breathes and grows within real life.

Everyday is the site of actual use of designer’s creation. A French Sociologist Lefebvre argued, “Why wouldn’t the concept of everydayness reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary?”[2] I will continuously question this throughout my finding.

[1] He made use of an already existing object readymades—in this case a urinal, which he titled Fountain and signed "R. Mutt".
[2] Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith(Oxford:Blackwell,1991)

2008-04-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking of a word, experience from last week.
Well, more specifically about people's habits, behavior, intuition, something...irrational.

When I think about everyday, the boundary of a word is too big and abstract that I can't take the meaning in my brain and just get lost.

I read it from strangely familiar that 'everyday' does not exist-in philosophical term. Everyday is the present, but at the same time, the present is the past and the future becomes present!

When 'everyday' becomes the life, routine, quotidian, habits, and mundane, it starts to gain a meaning as a design element. Because then we want to challenge that boredom...

I will explore, first, about me-thinking, acting and interacting with the surrounding. Let's see what bores me most/a lot. See what happens.

Then, change my everyday, make it anew!

The answer for all(?)

2008-04-29T20:23:00.001-07:00

Hey, where would I end my life,

where are all the answers for my endless questions.

Let's not confuse myself anymore,

and seek an answer/s from an illustrator "Maira Kalman".

도대체 내 삶의 종착점은 어디이며,
이 모든 의문의 해답은 어디에 있을까.
더이상 방황하지 말자.
그리고 그 답은 일러스트레이터 "Maira Kalman"에게서.

+오랜만에 소장하고픈 동화책이 생겼다

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/182

그녀의 눈으로 세상을 더 훔쳐보고싶다면, 뉴욕타임즈로 고고고!
http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/index.php?cat=10

the problem of designing everyday

2008-04-29T20:14:00.000-07:00

the problem of designing or studying the everyday is precisely
the tension between its reality and its inevitable artificiality.

In other words,when the concreteness or realness of everyday life is the subject of study or the intention of design,it becomes instead a kind of second nature
-a reference to the real, a depiction of the ordinary,
an allusion to the commonplace.

Thinking about the Everyday

2008-04-29T20:12:00.001-07:00

How should we take account of,
question, describe what happens every day
and recurs every day:

the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infraordinary, the background noise, the habitual?

Georges Perec "Approaches to What

theme; Design and everyday life

2008-04-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

extraordinary designs that reference and transtorm
otherwise ordinary objects and spaces, drawing our attention to
everyday conditions

polemical objects that force us to reconsider our relationship
to products and dictate new rituals of use
and expectations of performance