What do freedom and independence really mean? For many people, it’s about financial security without a nine to five job, which is what “The $100 Startup” is all about. Chris Guillebeau has been on my radar for a while now, for as long as I’ve been interested in traveling and entrepreneurship. When I heard that he had …
I spent this past weekend at Startup Weekend, which was a fantastic experience. The event started on Friday evening, with participants pitching their startup ideas to the whole group. There were around 30 ideas pitched, then everyone used stickers to vote for their favorites. The votes were counted, and the top ten were the ideas we …
Photo by Ernst Brooks, from National Library of Scotland Is good design a moral obligation? How do ethics apply to design?I’m taking a journalism class right now, and ethics is a huge part of journalism, but ethics isn’t emphasized much in design education. In Mike Monteiro’s book, Design is a Job he makes the point that …
The concept of going a day without media, whether it be books, music, tv, movies, or the internet, is unimaginable. Media is a huge part of our lives, and the ways we consume and produce it are changing. “Designing Media” focuses on that changing atmosphere. The book is comprised of interviews, divided into sections based …
Alex Shayler is a young artist who I had the chance to interview a while back. Here’s what he had to say. How would you describe your work?I work in pen and ink and my drawings are straightforward and powerful.What first made you interested in illustration? I started doodling in my school sketchbook and my art …
They come from here. I got to take a look at the Davison Plyforms factory as a part of my model making class this semester. Davison Plyforms is the factory where all the Eames Lounge Chairs are made, which is really exciting! They’re all molded from the same form, then cut into different shapes. This makes …
I recently had the chance to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where I saw their exhibit, ‘Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec: Bivouac’, which was amazing. Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec are brothers who run a design studio together. They’ve done work with companies like Vitra, Kartell, Ligne Roset, and Cappellini. The first part of …
Source The Federal Building at Kendall has recently been certifed to the USGBC’s LEED Gold Level. This is fantastic for the school and for the whole of downtown Grand Rapids, particularly because of the adaptive reuse process applied to the historic Federal Building. The building served as a courthouse in it’s previous life, and will …
Photo by Livy Hoskins Publishing has a Design problem. Big D Design, systems design, design thinking, all of that.We’re at a weird spot in which writers don’t need publishers in the same ways that they always did. Forty years ago, writers needed publishers. Publishers took care of everything, they read through slush piles to find …
I first wanted to create a tool for writers. After researching tools that currently exist for writers, I realized that distraction is a huge problem for writers. Not just writers, either, it’s a problem for a lot of people while doing computer-based tasks. People may be motivated, but they seem to be easily distracted by …