:: ( CRIT ) :: DESIGN BLOG ::

Super Snazzy Supermarket

We are thrilled to see the launch of Supermarket, a retail web site which allows buyers to purchase directly from designers. SVA MFA Design Alumni Randy J. Hunt is on the team at Supercorp which developed the site. (GO RANDY!) The items for sale on the site are pretty darn snazzy, good thing there is this whole holiday season thing going on soon that's so conducive to lots of shopping! What you should also know is that there's a special promotion going on with Design Within Reach right now, so if you sign up at Supermarket by December 5th, you'll have a chance to win something really cool from ModernMart3.

New is the New Museum

The New Museum of Contemporary Art reopens its doors this Saturday, with Target sponsoring 30-hours of free admission.* The building itself is a spectacle on the Bowery, designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (known as SANAA). The stacked white boxes give a clear suggestion of the raw interior galleries, though details abound inside.

The opening also reaffirms The New Museum's status as a global and educational resource, most notably with its Museum as Hub partnership, which connects the museum with four other arts organizations in South Korea, Egypt, the Netherlands, and Mexico. On a simpler level, they also align themselves with students by offering half-off tickets (with a valid school ID).

New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212.219.1222

* As of this posting advanced tickets for the Target 30 Free Hours are sold out, but the website states "it may be possible for visitors to show up during the course of the marathon event and get a ticket on the spur of the moment; but there is absolutely no guarantee!"

One Laptop Per Child

You are probably aware of Nicholas Negroponte's (he started the Media Lab at MIT) initiative to make a lap top for children in developing countries — "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC). The $100 laptop that uses solar power? Well, it actually costs $200 through donation to get one in the hands of a child they are trying to reach. For a limited time (9 days) the laptop is being made available to the general public (at least if you are in the US or Canada) through a "Give One Get One" deal. For $399 you can get one for a child in your life, and for each one that is purchased, one will be sent to a child in a developing nation.

If you are not familiar with this project, you may be wondering what the hype is all about. Essentially, this is not so much about the dissemination of technology as it is a robust education initiative (though of course, in this case the two are tied together). For more information, you can read about the five principles behind OLPC here.

Life Imitates Video Games

I am happy to see yet more proof that design can touch someone's heart, as evidenced by this little sculpture. Creators of the Katamari video game series will be pleased to see their work painstakingly recreated in the real world by Jennie Maneri using items found in dollhouse supply stores, hobby shops, and other items she hand made. For those that don't know, the Katamari series is based around a little alien prince that gets sent to earth by his demanding father to collect things using a small sticky ball. During game play, you are the prince, and you roll your sticky ball around collecting things that range from small thumbtacks to entire planets. It's incredibly fun, and incredibly cute, spawning many Katamari fanatics across the globe. In terms of video game culture, this game has definitely made a huge mark. One of the key features to Katamari's widespread success is that it's very easy to learn — yielding a relatively wide fan base— yet it takes much skill and practice to master. Jennie's "real-fake katamari" is testament to the creators' success in creating a cultural moment that goes beyond game play itself.

P.S. The little prince you see poking out in the first shot was made by our own Josh Hester!

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Beautifully Typeset Intentions

As a first year MFA student at SVA, my studiomates and I recently passed the halfway point of "Design and Intentions," a class taught by Milton Glaser. Each week, we collectively focus on analyzing why designers make certain aesthetic decisions, how those decisions will impact the eventual outcome and in which ways the design process can be tailored to produce greater success. Discussions of personal intent have occasionally veered into moral and ethical territory, but we don't usually linger.

Last Wednesday, at the conclusion of class, Milton asked the group to take a moral inventory tailored to our chosen profession. The results, where each individual stood ground in the moral gray areas of graphic design, were fascinating. The ambiguity of an exercise like this only adds to the inventory's necessity. I believe it is fundamental as a working designer to chart out a set of personal standards and then be vigilant in defending them.

Our house will be open!

If you are interested in attending the SVA MFA Design program, then come to our open house this weekend!

SVA MFA Design

Post Expose: Grand Opening

Post Expose, a community screen printing and design center based in Long Island City, Queens, will be opening its doors this Friday for a celebration & exhibition. Post Expose was founded by our classmate Sarah Mead, who also made a splash at the AIGA last year with her work in the design/creative/awesome poster collaborative Urban Inks.

POST EXPOSE Grand Opening
Friday November 2, 2007
7-10 PM
21-36 44th Road, Long Island City, NY