GOOD

And the Winner for Best Film About Design Is...

Alissa Walker — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:00:11 -0800

Even if you don't care a Spanx about the Academy Awards, Oscar-winning films can serve as a kind of visual barometer of our cultural values. The last few years have seen the issues of winning documentaries tie directly into the issues of the day: When An Inconvenient Truth won in 2006 or The Fog of War won in 2003, it almost seemed like the Academy was voting against climate change or yet another Middle Eastern military engagement. This year, it seems that our gastronomical zeitgeist is behind Food, Inc., which is nominated for best documentary. It's a pretty compelling and well-executed film that I think should probably win. But it makes me think about what an issues-oriented design film would look like—how could a documentary help convey the value and meaning of great design to a wider audience? Can great design films educate even as they entertain? More importantly, are they actually interesting to non-designers? Last year, I saw more films about design than I ever had before, which leads me to believe that we're inside a movement that will bring even more design films to the screen. So I've chosen five from last year that I love in the hopes that more filmmakers—and designers—are inspired to make the next great design film. Here are my picks. I mean, and the nominees are... Objectified. This is the middle film in what could loosely be described as a design trilogy: Director Gary Hustwit made another design-focused film in 2007, Helvetica, and is supposedly working on another design-focused film right now . Objectified works hard—and beautifully—to tell...

Fallen Fruit's Tree-planting Dreams Are Uprooted In Madrid

Alissa Walker — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:00:56 -0800

At the Spanish contemporary art fair, ARCOmadrid—the highest-attended European art fair—Los Angeles was chosen as this year's featured city. This meant many things, but especially it meant that on the Saturday night of the fair last week, hundreds of artists, curators, and gallerists could be found all over the city, clinking flutes of cava and tossing back pinchos in celebration. But in south Madrid, at a former slaughterhouse slowly being converted into the city's—and maybe the world's—largest municipally-funded art complex, the L.A.-based collective named Fallen Fruit held an event where the tone was slightly bittersweet. The trio—Austin Young, Matias Viegener, and David Burns, above—was invited to participate in a large-scale urban intervention that included the planting of 60 public fruit trees. But on the day before the trees were supposed to be distributed in the mostly working-class neighborhood, they received a message from the city that they hadn't expected to hear: No. An email late Thursday telling Fallen Fruit to cease and desist had been followed by a reprimanding call from the wife of the former president. "They told us that she's the Margaret Thatcher of Spain," said Burns, with a bit of a bemused smile. Although she held no public office, she was supposedly an authoritative member of a city beautification group, which was even more telling, said Young. "Here, trees are used like architecture, they're decoration," he said. "We asked, 'Can they be used for more?'" Viegener thought the whole situation was pretty ironic, seeing as the city had...

Designing a New Way to Interact With Your City

Alissa Walker — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:30:19 -0800

Colleen Miller's See Spot Run NYC finds off-leash areas for dogs and their owners

Last October, I happened to be visiting the new MFA in Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York where I overheard a group of students who were talking more like urban planners than interaction designers. They were tossing out factoids about public transportation and park acreage, comparing stats on traffic and recycling. They were discussing their new assignment: Chris Fahey's Interaction Design Fundamentals class had been tasked with creating applications—what we all now call "apps"—for handheld mobile devices. The excitement was stemming from the fact that their tools had bubbled up right from below their feet: They were taking the city's raw data and manufacturing it into usable information for its residents and visitors.

Derek Chan's NYC Landmark Hunt turns sightseeing into a game; Kristin Gräfe's MillionTreesNYC used a New York City Parks social events calendar

The assignment, it turned out, was inspired by a real-life opportunity: NYC BigApps, a competition initiated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office, whose winners were announced last Friday. More than $20,000 in prizes were awarded to the creators of apps that range from grand prize winner WayFinder NYC, which gives directions to the nearest subway station, to Big Apple Ed, which helps educate parents about local schools. For Fahey, the assignment was the perfect way to tie together several in-school concepts into a real-world project. "In class we had already been discussing...

Steal This Design: The Power of Sharing Best Practices in Moments of Disaster

Alissa Walker — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:30:05 -0800

How the open-source movement in design is helping in places like Haiti.

The issues of the design world seem both too big and too small to tackle in an essay since last week's earthquake in Haiti. As I pored over the heart-wrenching photos it was impossible not to feel the frustrations of my job: Here I am, writing every day about so many intelligent products designed for this very situation but they all seemed so far away from where they were actually needed. How could design really help right now? A few of those intelligent products will be in the Airstream of Emily Pilloton as she embarks upon a 25-school traveling exhibition tour featuring products from her book, Design Revolution. But after lecturing for the past few months, Pilloton realized just showing the designed products wouldn't be enough. So Pilloton worked with her team to create a Design Revolution Toolkit which brings to life many of the methodologies employed both in the work of her non-profit—Project H Design—and in the products she's showcasing. It's the perfect example of increasing impact through a culture of sharing: She could simply talk about the products in her trailer, or she could pass along the tools to young designers who could improve upon them. Offering up proprietary information seems like a radical departure for companies involved in research and development, but it's becoming standard for many creative and technology firms to share. Designers, with a flair for making complex information visible and understandable, are especially skilled in this area. Transparency is one...

The Fake Freeway Sign that Became a Real Public Service

Alissa Walker — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 06:00:41 -0800

An artist uses a freeway as his canvas, all in the name of public good.

The freeway sign arrived in Los Angeles five days after I did. It appeared out of nowhere, a valiant attempt by one of its citizens to help drivers make sense of their city, just as I appeared in a silver Subaru, valiantly attempting to make sense of what were apparently not called "highways" but "freeways." Not that you should ever refer to them that way, I was constantly reminded. "Just say the number," a friend sighed—the route number, which I kept forgetting should always be prefaced with a "the," a colloquialism my plain-speaking Midwestern brain couldn't register. Nor could I comprehend being strapped into a car for hours a day, the sheer inhumanity of a Sigalert, a sweeping six-lane interchange as vast and impossible to navigate as the Pacific Ocean. I remember, for example, the first time I tried to head north on "The 5" from downtown, when I missed the exit completely, sailing obliviously towards Pasadena. The second time I found myself frantically crossing dashed line after dashed line, more like Frogger than in a car myself, in a last-minute attempt to relocate from one end of the 110 to the other. Even once I reached the exit, I was still in danger: The 5's onramp twirls violently to the left like an unfurling banana peel; without knowing exactly where it is, it sneaks up far too fast for anyone operating an automobile, and especially a non-local. I sped uncontrollably up the 5's incline, panting all the way to Burbank. An artist named Richard Ankrom had the same experience, and...

GOOD Design NYC: The Big Apple, Better

Alissa Walker — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:00:34 -0800

Earlier this month, we hosted a double header of events in New York City, GOOD Design NYC I and II. In partnership with our friends at Nau, who hosted us at their incredible Soho storefront—which was part community center, part sustainability showcase—we put together two evenings that celebrated the unique ways that designers can serve New York. On the first night, Design and the City, we had presentations from six teams that had designed solutions to improve the urban experience. We heard from Robert Sherman and Gideon D’Arcangelo on their collaboration for MercyCorps' Action Center for World Hunger; Allan Chochinov, School of Visual Arts professor who talked about the Prosthetics Project; Mark Galbraith from Nau, who held a sustainability fashion show; Karin Fong of Imaginary Forces about a new Times Square visitors' center opening any day now; John Mangin of Center for Urban Pedagogy and Glen Cummings from MTWTF, who worked on CUP's Affordable Housing Toolkit; and Michelle Mullineaux, who previewed some exciting designer-nonprofit partnerships happening at DesigNYC. Check any of the links for more information about these exciting initiatives that designers are making happen in the city. The second night, New Ideas for New York, required some additional work from the design teams, who were paired with urban leaders who had proposed city problems they'd come across in their work. After working several weeks to tackle the problems, the design teams each had 10 minutes to present their solutions. Jake Barton of Local Projects was paired with a request from...

The Decade in Design

Alissa Walker — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:00:04 -0800

Ten years of Apple, starchitects, and design for change.

Being a designer means being able to not only predict the future, but to have a hand in shaping it as well. In the last 10 years, however, designers also had to dramatically change the way they worked: What other industry got to weather the dot-com crash, a real estate bubble, and the death of print? But it was not all boom and bust. The design field redesigned itself during this decade, transforming from an industry that created better objects to one that created better experiences—and endeavored to deliver them to everyone, not just the people who could afford them. Design was the place for big thinkers to cultivate new technology, and it's where the sustainability movement found its most trusted partners. Here's a look back on the design decade that was. 2000 No Logo, Naomi Klein’s treatise on anti-globalization, sets the tone for the decade's debates about consumerism and branding. Tech stocks plummet, signaling the official burst of the dot-com bubble. Thousands of newly-minted web designers are laid off. San Francisco's cafes swell with unemployed creatives paying inflated rents. Dwell publishes its first issue, transforming the way that people understand—and purchase—modern design. The Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum launches the annual National Design Awards, giving nods to Frank Gehry and Apple. American Apparel moves into its current factory in downtown Los Angeles. Under the leadership of Dov Charney, it becomes an incongruous champion of locally-produced fair-labor clothing,...

Empowering Teens to Green the Food Desert

Alissa Walker — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:00:39 -0800

How students in Los Angeles are helping foment a healthy eating revolution in their own neighborhoods.

This Thanksgiving, when you dashed into your local convenience store Thursday morning to buy the inevitable forgotten ingredient in your annual feast, you probably wondered how you ever missed them before. The Great Wall of Doritos. The Leaning Tower of Snickers. The Mountain of Dew. My favorite is the Hostess Blockade, a hulking mass of Twinkies that stands at a 45-degree angle to the entrance of the convenience store on my corner, making my walk to anything else inside the store less than convenient. Sure, I live in a corner of Los Angeles with an artisanal cheese shop and there's farmers' market nearby once a week. But most of the stores—and many of the restaurants—in my neighborhood suffer from a severe lack of nutritional value. It's called a food desert. Food deserts are found throughout many urban areas , bringing with them higher rates of obesity and diabetes, according to Mike Blockstein and Reanne Estrada, founders of the initiative Market Makeovers. For the last three years, Blockstein and Estrada have been working with communities in Los Angeles where, thanks to the help of some dedicated local schools, they've successfully converted several corner stores into healthy-food purveyors. And now, Market Makeovers is sharing the tricks of their trade, as it were: Last week, they launched a new website containing a fun, user-friendly toolkit with amazingly creative ways for teenagers to green the food deserts around them. In 2006, the South Los Angeles...

A School That Deserves Extra Credit

Alissa Walker — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:08:53 -0800

What the educational outpost on the site of the old Ambassador Hotel can teach Los Angeles about learning, public space, and community.

Schools in Los Angeles are getting lots of attention lately. You might have heard of Steve Barr, a sort of educational desperado, whose Green Dot Schools wrested away several poorly-performing schools from the Los Angeles Unified School District and transformed them into educational powerhouses. But what Barr did for these communities is far more than that. He brought these schools back to life inside extremely well-designed buildings, often in empty warehouses and abandoned lots that sat like black holes in low-income neighborhoods. Barr has proved what educators and architects consistently try to demonstrate: Creating a safe, sustainable environment for students in a building that becomes a landmark in their own neighborhood is critical to learning. There are other smart examples in Los Angeles. Inner-City Arts , designed by Michael Maltzan, is like a lighthouse in L.A.'s Skid Row, its angled walls as white as an eggshell in a rough neighborhood. The Camino Nuevo schools, a series of charter properties sprinkled around a neighborhood west of downtown, used the skills of architects Daly Genik to gracefully squeeze classrooms into whatever spaces were available—including, remarkably, a wasted sliver of space between two major thoroughfares. Of course, the reaction to a new, architecturally-significant school is not always positive: A performing arts school in downtown Los Angeles designed by Coop Himmelblau with what looks like...

Welcome to the (Recently-rebranded) Neighborhood

Alissa Walker — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:05:30 -0700

I just spent a week in New York spitting out the portmanteau poetry of urban branding. SoHo! NoHo! TriBeCa! NoLiTa!—all innocuous neighborhood names picked to boost property values and spur development. Of course, some names don't stick as well. The neighborhood north of Madison Square Park is aching to be known as NoMad . The area everyone still calls Hell's Kitchen was supposedly deemed the less-fire-and-brimstone Clinton . But can a new name, with some spiffy branding and nice signage, really make a new neighborhood? Can an area's stakeholders up and decide what will make people want to come for a visit, stay for dinner—or live for a few years? And what if, instead of the neighborhood being defined by what it was, it was defined by what it could be? That's exactly the question being asked by one New York neighborhood-to-be: What if? The neighborhood in question is Greenwich South. Never heard of it? That's because it doesn't really exist—yet. Greenwich South is a campaign mounted by the Alliance for Downtown New York, re-claiming 41 acres of land between Battery Park City and the Financial District. At its center is Greenwich Street, severed by construction of the World Trade Center in the 1960s. With the plan for the new World Trade Center site development, Greenwich will again run uninterrupted through the quickly-changing area, with a chance to be the spine of a high-density, highly-desirable center for living and working. A September study revealed "Lower Manhattan is emerging as a model for the 21st century business district, and ... Greenwich South can...