designswarm thoughts

Following from what was a weepy post a week ago, I’ve decided to stop using Twitter once I reach 2000 updates (about 150 to go). I remember the evening I started using it, sometime in November 2006 when I was staying at Ben’s on Herengracht in Amsterdam. He sent me an invite and I looked at this thing and huffed and puffed (I would start working for Jaiku a few months later) going “I don’t get it”. He,of course knew better, he always does.

3 years down the line, I’ve had great fun, I’ve kept in touch with people I’d only met once, sometimes not at all. I’ve kept in touch with the latest internet memes, even the ones that only last half a day, I’ve kept in touch with the news, and more importantly I’ve kept in touch with what Matt does during his days at work in lalaland.

But I want more. Living in London, I’ve realised that I need to be much more active about meeting and seeing people in the flesh, remembering that there is a world out there, that I can just pick up the phone and call people and take news, have a coffee, have a great conversation, build real relationships, or at least ones that feel real to me. Twitter has made me lazy about those relationships.

My metaphor for using Facebook was bumping into an old friend in the street and not having anything to say to each other past the first 30 seconds. Twitter feels to me now like walking into a giant party full of people you kinda know, kinda not, some of which you’re only mildly interested in, but all of them speaking really loudly. Matt will tell you I hate those kinds of parties, they intimidate me, and now so does Twitter. So I’m leaving the party behind.

I’m glad the entire world seems to have hopped on the bandwagon, those guys deserve it. It’s just not for me anymore. I’ll try to come back to my blog, to writing and exploring an idea fully.

I won’t close my account, I simply will stop updating it and will only occasionally read it. I think I’ll make a lovely newspaper thing out of these 3 years of my life in a space that has evolved and changed so much, while I’ve been changing too. Maybe I’ll give it to my mom or something.

I’ve been invited to lead a sort of online discussion for the near-graduation 4th year students of the BA in Industrial design in Montreal. I was in their position in 2004 which seems like so ages ago and I remember the feeling. I felt like I was sortof on the brink of an abyss, the maternal warm womb of school finally letting go of me on the cold asphalt of reality, bills, student loans, rent to pay and generally not much hope for an industry that barely exists in Québec.

When I graduated in 2004, our class was 72 students. Most of them never got a job in design, only 2-3 of us went on to graduate school.
This year, the same course will have 12 graduates. I wonder who has adapted?

So I figured I’d post up some topics of discussions here since I’ve been asked to talk about “design and business”.

- We were told in 2004 that only 10% of us will go into design as a career. What do you think your chances are now?
- If you want to start a business, what will it be? What will be your USP?
- How important do you think the internet is to your future career?
- What do you think makes a good business person? Guts or reason?
- How many jobs do you think you’ll have in your career?
- Being your own boss? What do you think are the advantages/disadvantages?
- Working abroad: do you think its essential? what do you think about Québec as a market for your skills?

I look forward to the conversations very much, maybe I’ll get to see a mirror image of myself when I was young and innocent as Massimo says. :)

Russell Davies had the lovely idea of proposing a project around speculative modeling with the Lyddle End series. I received a Lock Side Stores.

This is my response in the form of imagery and conversations taking place in 2050.

1. An afternoon at the Science Museum

- So this is it?
- Yeh
- ….
- Yeh, I know, what a hike for so little.
- So, ok, when is this supposed to be from?
- Hmm, 2006 I think.
- And people lived like this? In such small spaces? With walls? No windows? No doors.
- Yeh…well I think.
- Hmm
- I know, crazy huh?
- Totally, I mean look at those plants.
- Yeh
- Don’t see those anymore.
- I wonder how lucky they thought themselves to be.
- Well, clearly not, look at what happened after.
- Yeh, I know…Fuckwits.

2. Waiting in line

- So…how long have you been waiting here?
- Hmm, 3 days now I think. Hard to tell, I doze off periodically. You?
- A week I think.
- I wonder when those guys will get out?
- Well they’ve been in there for 20 hours or so, the next ones will be up shortly.
- What do you suppose is in there anyway? I mean the rumors are pretty wild.
- Yeh I hear there’s turn of the century cultery in there with, like, real fruits and vegetables. Or, well, what they could artifically make up.
- Yeh pineapple and crumpets… I hear there’s real wooden furniture, and paper books. You can have a lie down and read.
- What’s a lie down?
- Not sure, but I heard that’s what people did back then.
- Crazy.
- I can’t wait.

Is that you forget to build an actual circle of friends around you. Friends that you can get a drink with after work, friends who want to have coffee with you on weekends. I want friends to have a chat with.

Twitter isn’t friends. Facebook isn’t friends. Flickr isn’t friends.

After nearly 2 years in this city, I don’t think London is a very good for friendships, makes it difficult to get up and see and meet people easily. Most of my friends don’t live here.

Matt is gone for 2 weeks to New Zealand to talk about the fabulous things he does , and K is touring Europe showing off her great work. I’m here alone.

I guess I’ll work some more.

After Open Sauces in November, I got interested in food again, especially the way food is presented and communicated in the context of supermarkets. There’s something deeply depressing about the presentation of fruits and veg in the UK and there is also something cultural about that presentation. When I lived in Italy, access to certain vegetables was nearly impossible. In the UK, some of my American friends can never find the right types of chilis. In a way, global is a term more easily referring to people than our food, and I consider that a good thing.

Following on from that, I wanted to get back to the essence of what food was before it reaches our markets or our local corner shop. There used to be a simple understanding not only about where food came from, but how it actually grew and how it was harvested.

2 ideas surfaced: New guerrila food labels and a new way of displaying fruits and vegetables. In a day I managed to make the first one happen, the second one I would need a partner company to try this out. If you own a cool organic fruit and veg store or stall in London please get in touch!

Idea 1:

I thought I’d design a simple food label that would come on top of existing labels, something you could keep if you wanted to that would give you at least 4 pieces of information you didn’t know.

1. What the name of the item is, and its latin name. Why? I thought it was odd we’re quite willing to learn about plants and flowers in this way and not everyday items. Is it because they’re not posh enough?

2. What the item looks like “in nature” or in its more natural environment, with roots, leaves, the whole lot. The idea is to show how it looks before it’s been cleaned up for public display. We often may forget that some thing grow under the earth or on its surface, as a fruit in a tree or hanging from plants. Zuccini for example, is more or less and un-ripened pumpkin that is picked early enough for it to still be soft. Its the same family as the cucumber, but people don’t usually eat it raw.

3. When and where it was discovered. Fruits and vegetables don’t carry history with them, but it’s fascinating what you’ll find out about how Ancient Egyptians treated the onion.

4. Any other piece of random information or history. I wanted to make sure to pique someone’s interest enough that they’d want to know more or keep the label. I found out that the asparagus plant is protected by the tomato plant from insects for example.

All pictures of the project are on Flickr and were professionally executed by Matt Biddulph :)