This is the second section in Part 2 of my recent grad school design paper in which I explore two contemporary, post-capitalist movements that have much to offer our creative endeavor to imagine a new, ecologically sensitive design story. Degrowth and solarpunk are neither finished experiments nor cautionary tales but living, still-unfolding proposals, argued over…
Category
Economics
Designing for Beauty, Sufficiency, and Collective Care – Part 1d: The Design Institutes of China
This is the fourth section in Part 1 of my recent grad school design paper in which I explore four laboratories of non-capitalist and postsocialist design. Please find the preceding sections below if you’d like to catch up: Introduction Part 1a: The Designed Object as Comrade in Constructivist Russia Part 1b: Advertising as Cultural Strategy…
Designing for Beauty, Sufficiency, and Collective Care – Part 1c: Design in Cuba: Sufficiency and Resourcefulness in Action
This is the third section in Part 1 of my recent grad school design paper in which I explore four laboratories of non-capitalist and postsocialist design. Please find the preceding sections below if you’d like to catch up: Introduction Part 1a: The Designed Object as Comrade in Constructivist Russia Part 1b: Advertising as Cultural Strategy…
Designing for Beauty, Sufficiency, and Collective Care – Part 1b: Advertising as Cultural Strategy in Socialist Yugoslavia
This is Part 1b of my recent grad school design paper, the introduction can be read here. and Part 1a can be read here. … From 1918 to 1992 Yugoslavia improvised their very own “third way” type of economy. In 1948 Josip Broz Tito broke with Stalin and pulled Yugoslavia (which today is comprised of…
Use-Value Score Calculator: Notes On A Recent Grad School Project
I recently turned in two projects for a grad school class called Emerging Media, which is a graduate seminar that focuses on emerging technological advancements as they relate to the Communication Design industry and design-related fields. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the “emerging technologies” the instructor introduced the class to was generative AI and for…
Sustainable Design & Telling A New Story
“When we disentangle our identities from the civilization’s dominant story, we can begin imagining, embodying, and telling a new story, a story that gives us a deeper sense of meaning, belonging, and purpose, one that helps heal the Earth, our fellow humans, and our fellow creatures rather than destroying them.” –Brian McLaren1 Stories have a…
Nobody is spared from the logic of a mode of production built on exploitation: Tad Delay and the Future of Denial
“Nobody is spared from the logic of a mode of production built on exploitation. As Lacan put it, capitalism is the discourse or algorithm in which, instead of communicating to another person as a person, we are forced to negotiate through cloudy signifiers. We are workers relating to other workers in an environment mediated by…
Too Many Unnecessary Things Everywhere: Brian McLaren, Kohei Saito, Dieter Rams and Use-Value
“As people who have been shaped by the current empire–first the European, and then Euro-American, and then the global economic empire that we’re a part of now–we have to realize our survival now depends on disentangling our identities from the values and assumptions of this empire.“ –Brian McLaren The above quote comes from an interview…
You can’t start with 1949 if you want to understand China: Martin Jacques and When China Rules the World
“Emmanuel Daniel (ED): Now, how would you apply your book, when you open the newspaper in the morning, and you read some of these issues coming out? What would you like to see China do? What would you like to see the West do? It shouldn’t be just capitulating that China owns the South China…
Attempts at originality will set you drifting off course: process-relational thoughts on AI and copyright
“At issue is a new effort by the US Copyright Office to consider how to apply US copyright law to the nascent AI industry. The matter has triggered impassioned pushback from powerful tech interests who say they must have access to people’s hard work for free, or the future of their industry will be jeopardized….