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Field report: 6 stillframes from New York City

For the longest time, Akira’s post on graffiti in New York City was the most popular one on this blog.

I had the digital camera with me on my October trip, but I was drawn more to the feel of the streetscape than the coloring on its walls. Resigned to documenting what I knew could never top the graffiti post, I snapped these in a streak on a walk by NYU.

This is New York as I see it.

Blades in Helvetica.
Of course we are going to notice typefaces, logo designs, color schemes. That’s just what we see first. Like in Mito, Japan. Or in Venice.

Superdry あさひ。
I liked seeing some Japanese on the street, and not having to be in Tokyo to see it.

New Ownership sign in a very typical New York style typeface
This reminds me of all the type you see if you spend more than a week in New York.

Madam Geneva in New York by NYU
They have their own unique sense of humor up there. It’s markedly different from the ironic humor you find in Seattle. It’s more about… quirkiness. Isn’t it?

Last Newspaper show at New Museum
The only museum I went to was the SANAA-designed New Museum. The building was super cool. The programming for the show called the Last Newspaper was really quite dull. It was so disappointing, in fact, I had to let somebody know.

So when the guy in the elevator, wearing an official-looking tag, pressed a button and we started moving, I go, “Disappointing curation, isn’t it?”

He agreed, he said. And then, “You should see the top floor. Wait, here.” And the elevator switched directions. Up we went to the balcony floor, where you could really appreciate the work the architects did to think through this exact view. Standing there for five minutes was worth the admission ticket. Had I missed it, I would have been kind of annoyed.

Fame in New York
Who remembers the 80s? Fame! I wanna live forever!…

We gather periodically via email to share tips, news and stories about designing our legacies.

Field Report: Palo Alto sun vibes

To get out of the gray for a bit, Design Kompany headed to Palo Alto, California on a recent last-minute deal.

Here are some pics:

Waiting for the Caltrain in the Bay Area

I love taking trains, so of course we had to go up to San Francisco by the ol’ Caltrain. It’s changed so much since the days of the early 1990s, when I was last there. No more little tickets to put above your seat, no more clunky dusty yellowing compartments. Although I have to admit, I liked the clunky dusty yellowing compartments. Very different from the superclean bullet trains of Japan, they felt more home to me. Rough around the edges Americana. Like wearing plaid.

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We gather periodically via email to share tips, news and stories about designing our legacies.

Field report: Design Kompany hits Boston, um, this past March

Glass plant sculpture

Earlier this spring Design Kompany went to Boston to be on the East Coast for a bit to get some inspiration.

You might remember my lament about Dunkin’ Donuts.

Wanted to share some other things from that same trip. Like this picture. We wandered into a museum on the Harvard campus that features a lot of really intricate glass representations of the reproductive parts of many kinds of plants.

And other things, like this sculpture, and also a bazillion butterflies and beetles.

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We gather periodically via email to share tips, news and stories about designing our legacies.

Field Report: DK gets Up Close at Tacoma Art Museum

Design Kompany took its second field trip to Tacoma ever to check out the Tacoma Art Museum’s exhibit of Chuck Close… um, tapestries.

We’re working on a total rebrand for a company that’s 110% open to our creative input (dream job!). So we’ve been investigating a million typefaces to see what could be a good match.

So it’s no surprise that half the time we were at Tacoma Art Museum, Akira, a groupie of Helvetica the movie, was conspicuously scrutinizing this one:

Tacoma Art Museum

I noticed one of the museum people noticing him checking out all angles of the gallery wall’s raised letterforms and mumbling something to himself.

“He’s really into typefaces,” I said.

Leaving Akira to muse over this, I zoomed ahead to Renoir and some woodblock prints and on to the section of large (these are big pieces of artwork for anyone who’s not familiar) Chuck Close stuff.

Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something

And I loved it.

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We gather periodically via email to share tips, news and stories about designing our legacies.

Short field report: Lars Gemzøe and Jeffrey Ochsner architecture lecture doubleheader at UW

Just back from two not-quite-back-to-back but double-booked lectures on architecture at University of Washington’s Kane Hall.

The first was Copenhagen-based public space designer Lars Gemzøe of GehlArchitects.dk. He’s a partner at Gehl, a Danish firm that consults with cities across the globe on how to make better public spaces.

Gehl Architects consult with cities on how to make better public spaces

The second was UW professor Jeffrey Ochsner. His information-packed slideshow lecture ‘History of Seattle Architecture and Urbanism: 1880 – present’ was dense and yet intriguing. [Significant note: Power point was not used!]

One person asked Ochsner if Seattle design had somehow influenced architecture in other places. “I hate to puncture balloons,” the professor replied. “But yes. The shopping center.” Northgate shopping center—the first design to set buildings close together with a thin arcade between them and parking spaces all around—set an example for shopping malls across America, he said. See Northgate design essay at Historylink.org

I learned in Gemzøe’s lecture just upstairs half an hour before that shopping malls really took the wind out of the sails of public spaces. Malls replaced public squares. Yet they administered private rules. Shirts and shoes required. No playing radios. No sitting on the lawn, planters or sidewalks. “If you go to a city, these are the places people sit,” Gemzøe said.

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We gather periodically via email to share tips, news and stories about designing our legacies.

‘Flourish:’ DK hosts roundtable Friday 4/25 on sustaining local arts

We’ve invited five guest panelists to be a part of a roundtable discussion on Friday evening at the offices of Design Kompany on this topic:

Sustaining the arts in Capitol Hill

Design Kompany will host Flourish on Friday, April 25

Design Kompany has been intrigued by the number of people in government, real estate, and arts advocacy attending public forums on keeping the arts thriving in dense Seattle neighborhoods like Capitol Hill. The first of these was in January, the second more recently at City Hall, called ‘Make Room for Art: cultural overlay districts for Seattle’ .

In listening to a lot of people from nonprofits and government groups talk about this topic, DK recognizes one important voice is missing from the table.

The artist’s.

And who are artists, anyway? What do they do with grants that are already distributed? What is art? Why does it matter? The great existential questions applied to a rather ambiguous segment. Are artists looking for support? If so, in what way?

To find out, we’re hosting ‘Flourish:’ a roundtable discussion on how to keep sustainable communities going from the artists’ point of view. Join us if you have an opinion about how to best keep arts and culture alive in Capitol Hill.

Guest panelists include:

Moderated by Akira Morita and hosted by Dipika Kohli of Design Kompany.

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We gather periodically via email to share tips, news and stories about designing our legacies.

Mandelbrot: ‘The idea that perfection is a cube is over.’

UPDATE: October 18, 2010

A very great mathematician has recently passed away. Read Benoit Mandelbrot’s obituary in the New York Times. (Link via KEF)

Below is our original post on some of his writings and work that inspire our own.

'Perfection is not a cube' by Design Kompany 2008

New York Museum of Modern Art’s architecture curator Paola Antonelli interviews mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in this month’s Seed Magazine, a science publication that titles its current volume “The Design Issue.”

In response to a question about his life’s work’s influence on contemporary architecture, the discoverer of fractal geometry Mandelbrot says most modern architecture was “cheap.”

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We gather periodically via email to share tips, news and stories about designing our legacies.

Arts & condos(2): City Hall talk on $$real estate vs. the arts

Arts and Condos by Design Kompany 2008Does it necessarily follow that as real estate prices increase, the quality of arts programs in an area declines in proportion?

People seemed to think so at a January forum at Capitol Hill Arts Center. (See DK’s writeup, Field Report: Can arts and condos co-exist in Capitol Hill?)

Out of that talk came a call for Seattle city government officials to really hear out more on this topic. So they’ve marked Wednesday, April 2 for a City Hall meeting on how arts can flourish even as real estate prices escalate.

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We gather periodically via email to share tips, news and stories about designing our legacies.

Field Report: Can arts and condos co-exist in Capitol Hill?

'Design Kompany Says Yes:'That's the question a panel of government folks and community arts advocates started to tackle earlier this evening.

Tonight’s meeting called out the problem of rising real estate prices that are forcing out lower income residents from Capitol Hill.

Like artists.

It was partly sponsored by a subgroup of 4Culture, partly by Capitol Hill Arts Center, and partly by the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce.

Here’s what came out of the discussion…

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We gather periodically via email to share tips, news and stories about designing our legacies.