One Plus One Equals Three

Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City

by William J Mitchell.
The MIT Press, 2005.

Experiencing real, populated urban space is never quite the same as an architect's 3D rendering of that space. Airless, clutter-free spaces dotted with strangely unsociable humanoid figures in poses reminiscent of modern dance are not similar to any cities that I know. The contemporary urban space is an extraordinarily complex organism: probably far more congested, compelling and layered with communications and information than urban environments of preceding eras. And more and more of us are choosing to live in urban areas too. This book helps explain how and where we fit in the mix of all the above in a bustling city-organism.

William J. Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts at MIT, in Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City reports back from urban (and information) spaces from around the globe on how they connect with, and relate to, their users. He reflects upon the interesting and sometimes complex cultural trends and phenomena that emerge in todays networked society.

The 33 diary-like essays in 'Placing Words' were originally published in Mitchell's monthly column in the Royal Institute of British Architects Journal. A key aspect of these essays is that they focus on the users of designed spaces. Mitchell doesn't really dwell on a bricks and mortar, physical description of buildings so much but describes and analyses how human beings live, learn, work and play within our cities. 'Placing Words' is very people and culture-centric.

Everything Yet Nothing

From: THE 2006 MELBOURNE COMMONWEALTH GAMES ORGANISING COMMITTEE
To: OPENING CEREMONY ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Hi guys,

Thanks for getting your request in ahead of schedule. We've gone through your proposal and I feel we're almost ready to sign off on your purchase order. I'll just run through the items to make sure we're on the same page, and in the same stadium! (joke). As you know we on the 'big committee' are involved in the staging of quite a few significant events around Melbourne, with my own pet project being the Melbourne Grand Prix, so please heed my advice when offered—we're dab hands at organising such large-scale public events. We know what knocks people's socks off! (or sandals as the case may be with some of our friends from the more tropical reaches of our Commonwealth or those athletes unfortunately suffering from training-induced foot-based fungal infections).

In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World

by John Thackara.
The MIT Press, 2005.

Many people will be familiar with John Thackara from the Doors of Perception conferences. 'In the Bubble' refers to the state of mind experienced by air traffic controllers when they are in complete control of their task at hand – they're in 'the zone'. A zone that's a seamless integration of humankind and technology. According to Thackara we've got a way to go before we experience such an effortless synergy. Technology's rampant pace of development and its endless production for consumer culture at all costs doesn't prioritize people. It should and it could. Thackara's idea is to radically rethink the design process (in particular the Industrial Age's 'point to mass' distribution model) to enable us to truly empower ourselves and to lessen our load on the planet.

Thackara doesn't supply any answers here. He asks a multitude of pertinent questions and provides as examples a truly dazzling range of successful design innovations from around the globe that certainly make you stop and think about how we design and what we design. A big question from Thackara is: how can we best design things with people – not merely for people?

Drawing from Life: The Journal As Art

by Jennifer New 
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.

I never used to keep journals. As a student I was never a great drawer in the classical, figurative, realistic sense of drawing and thought 'why bother?'. I usually got good marks for my design projects, but my life drawings always drew snickers and snippets of muffled laughter from other students as we would wander around the drawing studio admiring our drawing efforts after class. My life drawings were vaguely anthropomorphic and somewhat reminiscent of the human form but the subtle sweeps of line and texture that help make a good drawing always seemed to elude me. My drawings always looked like thick stick figures with sinewy flesh embellishments. Or as a classmate put it: sticks'n tits or sticks'n dicks.

I now do keep journals, but they're not really what you would call drawing-based. They're more an amalgam of 'stuff': doodles, notes, scribbles, phone numbers, addresses, urls, photocopies and bits and pieces gathered from here and there. I find I often refer to them at the start of a new project, to get the creative 'juices' flowing. If there was ever a fire at my studio, they may not be the first thing I grab, but I would run the risk of singeing my rear-end to make sure they didn't go up in smoke.

Robert Brownjohn: Sex and Typography

by Emily King
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.

I must have been around fifteen or so when I saw the James Bond film Goldfinger* on TV. I'm not sure if it was the title sequence's voluptuous young, bikini-clad woman painted head to toe in gold that attracted me to the film (it certainly may have been involved in the attraction process for a young teenager) but I have to confess it was probably the projected, moving images gliding over the aforementioned gold flesh that totally captivated me. I had never seen anything like it. It totally blew my mind. I didn't know at the time that a graphic designer was responsible for this (with the help of the gold-painted Margaret Nolan). In fact I didn't even really know what a graphic designer was. All I knew was that I had experienced something that had seriously affected my senses. Little did I know that this sequence of images would continue to impact upon me years later – moreso from a design perspective than a 'male' perspective (I think).

Review: Character 2

The bigger picture and the bigger, bigger picture.
RMIT University's Character 2 Forum on October 1 featured many design-related events exploring "the cultural and social aspects of graphic design". This review will focus on the main event of the night: 'Right, Left or Just Centred', a forum addressing political engagement in contemporary Australian graphic design.

The three speakers were: Steven Cornwell of Cornwell Design, Stephen Banham of Letterbox and RMIT and Jason Grant of Brisbane's Inkahoots. Three designers of note of relatively diverse backgrounds: Cornwell, director of a large design and branding consultancy; Banham, designer, publisher and design educator; Grant, director of a design company dedicated to promoting and participating in social activism. These three also define quite different interpretations of what a professional, practising Australian designer is.

Review: The Projects of All Australian Graffiti (1975-78)

'We're a Weird Mob: Designing a cultural identity'
Australia Post, Post Master Gallery
11 June – 9 September 2005

All Australian Graffiti are very much part of the 'urban design folklore' of Australia. Of their output, much has been said, discussed and admired over the years. But not much has been written of them. The studio existed between 1975 and 1978 when design in Australia was barely even considered a professional practice amongst the general public and design was not discussed or critiqued outside of design schools.

Younger Australian designers will be familiar with the ouput of Mambo. But around ten years before Dare Jennings' surfware label was but a twinkle in his eye, a Melbourne-based collective of illustrators and designers were exploring imagery unique to our culture: Australia's visual vernacular. Mambo certainly developed this celebration of 'Australianness' more fully, but it was All Australian Graffiti, who were only in existence for a few years, that got there first. (Plus, Mambo's output was certainly more Sydney-centric).

Review: 'A Vision Unfurled'

Russell Kennedy's 'A Vision Unfurled' is the second component of the 'We're a Weird Mob' exhibition reviewed in part above.

Kennedy's idea presented here is to design a new Australian flag. One inclusive of all Australians, including indigenous peoples. A noble and fine idea – but an extraordinarily complex, multifaceted task. Personally I think it's high time the design of the current Australian flag was revisited, and hopefully replaced with something more meaningful to contemporary Australia than the existing flag with its reference to the outmoded notion of 'the British Empire'. But that may just be my cry in the wilderness (although I suspect not). Then again, the idea of Australia being a republic was dismissed by Australian voters a little while back. A new flag design may suffer the same fate.

Review: Train of Thoughts

Train of Thoughts: Designing the Effective Web Experience
by John C Lenker Jr
Indianapolis: New Riders, 2002.

My copy of John C Lenker's 'Train of Thoughts: Designing the Effective Web Experience' came with a stickered endorsement by the AIGA saying 'Stimulating Thinking about Design'—and indeed it is. It's a big broad-shouldered book that tackles Web design, psychology, information architecture, usability and... trains. The content of the book is timely, most interesting and is essential reading for designers of Web sites. But the form of the book (which has attracted its fair dose of criticism) seems to ignore many of the 'effective design' recommendations espoused by Lenker in the book.

The Cross-section Welenmelon Effect in 'The Life Aquatic'

Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is a remarkable and deliciously quirky film. Inspired by the work of underwater documentarian and oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, the film traverses the human emotional terrain of creativity, love and family with the oddball protaganists often all at sea – both literally and metaphorically.

A noteworthy piece of cinema made all the more memorable with its art direction and production design. As with Pixar's The Incredibles, the attention to detail within the mise en scène is dazzling – this film demands a second viewing just to take in 'the incidental stuff in the background'.

One particular element of the film is the fantastic cut-away, cross-sectioned set of the team's boat, the 'Belafonte'. Here, the boat's crew walk from room to room and trained camera-toting dolphins frolic in the sea beneath. It's a dramatic and engaging way of presenting context and its clear that Anderson knows his cinema history. The set is clearly an acknowledgement of another (and perhaps the first) example of a cross-sectioned set: The Welenmelon Home from Jerry Lewis's wonderful The Ladies Man.