Todd McLellan: Things Come Apart: A Teardown Manual for Modern Living
(****)
Meredith Davis: Graphic Design Theory (Graphic Design in Context)
Don Koberg: The Universal Traveler
Early thoughts and primers on the creative process and design thinking.
William Lidwell: Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design
A good reminder of 100 things to check when designing. (****)
Christopher Alexander: The Timeless Way of Building
Revisiting the themes put forward in this first of three books in a series by Christopher Alexander.
Thomas L. Friedman: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
NEIL POSTMAN: Technopoly : The Surrender of Culture to Technology
A classic gut check for those enamored with the technology pervading our lives. (****)
Barry Schwartz: The Paradox of Choice : Why More Is Less
Trying to choose wisely.
Architectural inspirations are on the rise at the bivouac due to SimCity becoming available for the Mac on August 29th, 2013 and a fresh Lego Architecture Studio arriving at the bivouac. Shoreline City (pictured below) is on the rise too. Lego's Architecture Studio kit, while expensive, is as good as anything they have offered in terms of getting one thinking about patterns, the scale of buildings, the inter-relationships of forms, volumes, linear elements and everything else that goes in to making our cities the best they can be. My fingers are sore, but in a good way.
Future User Interfaces (or FUIs) have been all the buzz here lately at the bivouac. This got me thinking about how my interest in FUIs and things like "science faction" were initially sparked. For clarification, "science faction" refers to things that were once represented in science fiction works as fiction actually come into being. I am a firm believer in the power of science fiction. At its best, it provides us with design inspiration and a powerful means of looking ahead at possible futures. One of any number of moments in our future when today's science fiction becomes tomorrow's matter of fact or "science faction". For more on the power of "science faction", feel free to watch a recent TEDx talk I gave on how "science faction" might inspire us collectively as we design for the future of education.
As to that original spark of interest, it was Christmas 1979. At the age of 12, I was still reeling from my exposure to "Star Wars" two years earlier. Looking back now, realize just how fortunate I was to have caring parents who encouraged my creative endeavors. That year, I received a particularly precious gift. It was a book entitled "Great Space Battles". A Terran Trade Authority Handbook, the publication chronicled futuristic space exploration and conflicts retrospectively. Written by Stewart Cowley and Charles Herridge with the authority of all the history textbooks I had read to that time, the stories captured my imagination.
Moreover, I studied the exquisitely detailed illustrations of Peter Elson and others for hours on end. Through attempting to replicate their various masterpieces, I was learning about light sources, shadow play, proportions, shading, perspective, implied materiality, physics in some cases, and last but certainly not least...”greebles”. The later of which I was later to learn, came quite naturally to me. I certainly enjoyed adding details to my creations. So much so that my local hero artist named David Morris made note of it. At the time his praise meant so much to me.
That early praise drove my creative confidence and It has been continually reinforced through the years as David has proven out his own talents by working at such notable places like Industrial Light and Magic. In fact, in a further twist of the space time continuum, some two decades on from our time together spent working on our visualization skills in a tiny appalachian town, David would come to find himself appearing, even if just for a fleeting moment, in the very same "Star Wars" film we were so in awe of when it was re-released in 1997 as a special edition.
Looking back, I gained so much from all of those hours spent pouring over Elson’s masterpieces. More often that not, those illustrations that moved me most powerfully to a new place bore the initials “PE” bounded by a rounded rectangle somewhere in the composition. Sure enough...there they were...in the corner, or along the panel of some epically scaled starship. I feel fortunate for having been exposed to Elson at just the right time.
But by far and away what I feel most fortunate to have learned from all that time spent with Elson’s creations was that the power of the imagination can take us to special places. Peter Elson and David Morris, I thank you for bringing me ultimately to such a special place as IDEO. And I thank David Kelley for creating this place called IDEO, where, everyday we have a hand in imagining and building the future together.
Below are a few specific pieces that were my early inspirations from Peter Elson:
To take a closer look at Peter Elson's work visit: www.peterelson.co.uk/gallery/category.php?cat=11
Whether a fan of George Luca's Star Wars saga or not, one can only take in the image of this extra large Star Wars collection with awe. It is it laid out in a creative fashion, strangely evoking the impression of some sort of modern Bayeux Tapestry. And someone also laid out an impressive figure for the collection as it recently sold for over $11,000. That's an impressive amount for an equally impressive collection. Looking it over, it appears to be made up of the latest round of action figures, not the originals that launched in 1977. The tooling and detail on this latest generation of figures is superior the original series to be sure, but I am so thankful to have had some of the originals to lift the horizons of my imagination through countless hours of creative play. I can't help but think that those hours spent re-enacting Luca's masterpiece also taught me a thing or two about filming and storytelling. Thanks again for that and so much more George!
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of contributing some thoughts that informed Alexis Madrigal's Atlantic article "iPhone 5? Yawn. What Will the 'Phone' of 2022 Look Like?"
While so many are understandably appreciating the latest offering from Apple in the "phone-on-glass'" category, the article does a nice job of encouraging us to think beyond today's prevailing interaction paradigms and from factors toward a future with a greater variety of form factors as well as richer, more seamless interactions. Who knows, while displays are getting bigger this week, in 2022 the next big thing might be pretty small.
"Comfort Zone" image from work done as part of a future technology forecasting project I contributed to in 2000 at IDEO.
With rolling weekly releases, BMW has invited a rich mix of personalities to discuss the future of mobility. As cited in the first film, with every car having an average of five parking spaces dedicated to it, and considering that everything that is rigid seems to fail while things that can adapt and grow tend to succeed, it is refreshing to see themes like this taken on and folks talking responcibly and optimistically about redesigning the way we live on earth. It is nice also to see the views of those that would like to drive around in bubbles or original Hemi-powered Daytona's all figuring in the mix. Take a look at the first film "The New City" which is viewable now on BMW's Activate the Future site. Thanks to Scott P for the heads up on this one.