Extinction Timeline

The Extinction Timeline.

Via the always wonderful SwissMiss.

How Now

I will be at the HOW Conference in the great city of Boston for the next few days! I will be interviewing the masterful Michael Bierut for a very special Design Matters Live. This is a bit more about our session:



In addition, I will doing a book signing of "How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer" Sunday night and Tuesday morning, and reviewing student portfolios Tuesday evening. Please come by to say hello if you are at the conference!

Design Matters Today with Lawrence Weiner

One of the central figures of Conceptual art, Lawrence Weiner’s work is the currently the subject of a major retrospective at MOCA in Los Angeles entitled As Far As The Eye Can See. Other recent solo exhibitions of his work have been mounted at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1990), Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1991), Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1991), Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux (1991 and 1992), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1992), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1994), Philadelphia Museum of Art (1994), and Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1995). In addition to publishing numerous books, Weiner has produced various films and videos, including Beached (1970), Do You Believe in Water? (1976), and Plowman’s Lunch (1982).

Today's episode of Design Matters is a very special treat: rather than a radio interview, the interview is conducted in-person, filmed earlier this month in Mr. Weiner's studio in Greenwich Village. And I am truly thrilled to announce that the extraordinary and brilliant Hillman Curtis directed and co-produced the film. I hope you enjoy it.



For behind the scenes photographs of the shoot, please go here.

For more of Hillman's luminous films, please go here.

UPDATED: On The Radio With John Hockenberry, Friday At 6am

The Takeaway is the new national morning news program that delivers news and analysis on WNYC, National Pubic Radio. Hosts John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji, along with the BBC World Service, The New York Times, and WGBH BostonInvite listeners every morning to learn more and be part of the American conversation on-air and online at thetakeaway.org.

Friday's show is all about OFFICE CUBICLES! In case you didn't know, it is the 40th anniversary of this egalitarian design travesty. Some history:

In 1968, an entrepreneur named Bob Propst was the first person to sell cubicles to American businesses. Now 40 years later, Propst's inventions are seemingly everywhere. Cubicles are the fences within which we daydream, the walls on which we hang pictures, and incidentally, the desks where we work. To mark the anniversary, John Hockenberry and his team at WNYC are showcasing pictures of the cubicles where you work. Send them a photo of how you've made a cubicle your own. Make sure it's a photo that you've taken and send it, along with your name and a description of the photo to mytake@thetakeaway.org. If you're a Flickr user, you can simply tag a photo or two with both the "takeaway" and "cubicle" tags, and they will find them from there. Then come back Friday to view a slideshow of cubicle life in 2008.

I will be on the air with Host John Hockenberry at 6am (it repeats at 8am for the late risers) to talk about Cubicles, Cube Farms, Workstations, Systems Furniture and Action Offices. Please tune in!

You can listen to the entire show here.

You can listen to just the segment here.

You can see a collection of real-life cubicles with our commentary here.

The Big Ask

Typography by Tina Roth Eisenberg, SwissMiss

I will be interviewing Michael Bierut at the HOW Conference next week in Boston and he came up with an idea that I would like to undertake. He thought it might be fun to solicit questions from people *before* the interview via the design community blogs. I have interviewed Michael on Design Matters, and in my book (wherein he waxes sentimental about his passion for folding laundry), so the more inventive the questions, the better! (and the more personal!!!)

So please post any questions you are dying to know the answers to here, or you can send them to me at designmatters@sterlingbrands.com.

Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008

From the New York Times obituary by Michael Kimmelman: Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died on Monday night at his home on Captiva Island, Fla. He was 82. A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he helped obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged, during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal role.

No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg.

The Giant Pool of Money

Painting by Jean Michel Basquiat

One of my superstar students pointed me to a special broadcast on This American Life about the housing crisis. Ira Glass and team explain it all to you: What the housing crisis has to do with the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns, why banks made half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income and why everyone is talking so much about the 1930s. It all comes back to what Glass refers to as the Giant Pool of Money. The show is amazing and I highly recommend listening and then putting whatever money you might have securely under your mattress.