Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives archivist, Beth Kleber, and the Pan Am Portugal poster

My research project on Ivan Chermayeff’s posters for Pan Am has just had its fourth incarnation: after presenting my findings in an in-class presentation and on a poster (after the jump) for Steven Heller’s D-Crit course, I later pitched the story (on Heller’s and Alice Twemlow’s reccomendation) to John L. Walters, eye magazine’s editor-in-chief. My article, Flight of the Imagination, came out on issue #73 of the magazine in October. This week, the follow-up post I wrote on the process was published and fully linked on the eye blog. This has been a truly exciting project to work on, and I am looking forward to future incarnations and encounters that may happen.

The poster I designed for my 3000-word essay

Konstantin Grcic’s 360ºC chair for Magis is a product that defies classification. It’s a chair that doesn’t look like anything we have around us these days. It’s a bit like stool, but it has a sort of a small back. It looks hard, but it’s actually much softer to the touch than one would thing. As with other of Grcic’s creations, it doesn’t look pretty, luxurious or particularly comfortable.

After it was launched in Milan this year, the 360º chair received a considerable amount of press, but I would say only got two relevant, considerably different reviews. Sam Jacob’s brilliantly funny and insightful review in the September 2009 issue of icon magazine highlighted the chair’s physical and mental impact on the user: “Sitting here is conceived as an active state – a constant psychological state of agitation.”

Abitare approached it from a very different angle: taking advantage of the chair’s April launch in Milan, it gathered not only the designer and manufacturer to talk about it, but also called other people to the discussion, which it called “design trial”. Placing the 360º chair as the defendant, Abitare design and architecture editor Anniina Koivu called American designer Jonathan Olivares for the prosecution, MoMA’s curator of architecture and design Paola Antonelli as the defense attorney. The chair’s designer Konstantin Grcic and manufacturer Eugenio Perazza (Magis’ charismatic CEO) were called in as witnesses.

The court session can be seen in part on YouTube; its transcript was published in June of 2009 in the printed version of Abitare and can be read in its entirety on the magazine’s website – where there is even the option of downloading a pdf of the article’s pages. This is an extremely entertaining and thought-provoking piece of design criticism. The chair is placed in its historical, use and environmental context; it’s talked about as if it was a real, living being, as it is accused – particularly on the environmental impact of its parts and materials – and defended – the strongest arguments being it’s a new way of sitting and a new interpretation of office furniture. In the end, the defendant is found “Not Guilty”.

Design on trial is a phenomenal, engaging way to observe and critique designed objects – and I assume it would also work for built environments – that goes well beyond the usual test-based review. So far Abitare has not published another design trial, but I look forward to the next court session.

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I wrote this post as an assignment for the ‘New New Media’ D-Crit course, taught by Elizabeth Spiers. This was supposed to be a segment of a larger assignment, called Reading Room, an online venue for discussion and critique of design and architecture magazines. This post and the Metropolis magazine post were examples of content created for different sections of this website. This one is dedicated to innovative magazine sections and writing formats, the other to the design and redesign of magazine. Other sections include “Popular Subjects” (where one subject, product of person that having widespread coverage in magazines around the world would be regularly picked in order to analyze/discuss the way it has been talked about offline and online) and Editors, dedicated to the figure of the magazine (something I’m quite obsessed about) and how a publication can become a mirror of its editor’s personality and preoccupations, or completely  change from one editor’s tenure to the next. This section would be made up of a series of interviews with living editors on how they do what they do, and discover the people, the work and the legacy of historic and influential past editors. Reading Room would actually be something I’d like to actually turn into a reality, but maybe when I’m done with my thesis…

Metropolis magazine, September 2009

The printed version of Metropolis magazine has shrunk as of last September. The result of a publishing crisis-induced redesign (in corner-cutting times, every inch counts), the magazine’s new size did not resolve its two other most pressing ills: an unclear international ambition and an art direction that doesn’t seem to know its place.

Metropolis was founded in 1981 as a large format, black and white tabloid newspaper with an ambitious subtitle: The Architecture and Design Magazine of New York. In 1999 both size and subtitle changed: following Paula Scher’s redesign, the magazine lost a few millimeters off the top and off the side, a trim deemed necessary for its newsstand success, but gained the Bodoni Book and News Gothic Condensed look that lasted for several years. By then Metropolis was about “Architecture, Design and a Changing World”, but it tough the world kept changing its subtitle remained the same from 2000 until this year: “Architecture < Culture > Design.”

Under the title “What is Good Design now?”, the March 2009 issue was one of the magazine’s best yet. The collection of essays from writers such as Deyan Sudjic, Peter Hall, John Hockenberry, Bruce Sterling, Niels Diffrient and Karrie Jacobs made it worth reading, not to mention contributions from the magazine’s editors and writers. This issue showed how Metropolis could instigate a broad, timely debate over the state of design six months after the global financial crisis started. It was an example of how a magazine can influence law makers, inspire professionals and educators, nurture students. It was also a good initiation on what design is for the common man. It was something you save from the bookshelf in case of a fire.

Metropolis, March 2009

Regardless of its content, this issue was also the epitome of Metropolis’ growing graphic mess. From Gail Anderson’s crazy busy cover to the magazine’s interior spreads, it seemed there were no graphic gimmicks left unused, no visual tricks left in the bag. There were tons of illustrations, color bars everywhere, oversized photos, (Philippe Starck’s Juicy Salif coming out of the page!). There is hardly any publication that does not go through a slow and destructive process when it comes to its design; like anything else on Earth, magazines—but also newspapers and websites—are also victims of entropy. By this issue there was hardly anything left of Paula Scher’s design, apart from the Bodoni Book typeface used in most of its text. Until last month.

March 2009 was also the month Metropolis started calling itself “The Magazine of Architecture and Design”, a title it has carried through the September redesign. A rather pompous, if ambiguous title at that: is it New York’s, USA’s, the World’s magazine? Where does this ambition or quest for authority come from? Despite covering subjects from all over the world, there is an undoubtedly American (not to say New York-centric) tone to Metropolis. A clear example of that is Suzanne LaBarre’s (excellent) cover article on Emilio Ambasz, where one reads: “The green-building movement has enjoyed a meteoric rise, evidenced by government subsidies and LEED’s dizzy growth, but it lost an art component around the time green ceased to be a color and instead became a metaphor.” LEED, an US environmental standard for buildings, is not contextualized in a piece about an Argentinian architect and his most recent building in Italy. So what is Metropolis talking about, or talking to?

Emilio Ambasz story. Notice the byline placement

Also, in her September editorial editor-in-chief Susan Szenasy’s mentions the several virtues of the redesign, which include increased white space and an integrated approach to sidebar design. She says, “We think it works particularly well with this [Ambasz] piece, which goes deeply into the reclusive designer’s poetic aesthetics. You’ll also note that the outside margins—the seventh column—are sometimes used for factoids related to the story.” In the case of this article, some of the factoids include thumbnail photos of 1960s Italian furniture, whose connection to the story is esoteric at best.

Emilio Ambasz story. Why the chair and the lamp?

Granted, Metropolis does look a bit cleaner and “tamed”, but creative director Criswell Lappin still seems to be allowed the occasional graphic folly and typographic gimmick. He seems to have most fun in placing the article’s byline; it surfaces in the most unexpected, usually absurd places, ruining photographs and type treatments. Another example is found in the six spreads containing Julie Taraska’s article “Is the Death of American Design Greatly Exaggerated?.” Again, a great text accompanied by photos of images of chairs, lamps and tables arranged in pathetic, starry kaleidoscopic patterns. For a piece of writing that attempts to find some kind of future for US design, a more dignified treatment of its outcome would be expected…

The star-studded death of American Design.

I have to say I’m a big fan of Metropolis. I was a subscriber for several years, and am a frequent reader of its insightful writing, highly researched features on iconic designers and architects, not to mention Karrie Jacob’s excellent America column. I acknowledge its role as a champion of sustainable architecture and design practices, and find it a great source to understand American design.

But Metropolis is not an international magazine; it’s not made by an international team, and is not even aimed at an international readership. That is made clear also by the magazine’s advertising, largely made up of ads for American contract furniture and lighting companies and other architectural suppliers. These ads, (in their vast majority, far from attractive), which the magazine’s publishers have not been able to deter advertisers from placing on most desirable, right-hand pages, make for a choppy reading, made worse in the front of the magazine as editorial content shares space with half-page ads.

But then again, you don’t even need to buy Metropolis and be troubled by its printed advertising. You can find both full articles and ugly ads online at metropolismag.com. The magazine’s website, where virtually the whole issue’s contents can be found, read and shared, offers little else than the visual chaos of its printed version.

All in all, the renewed (not new) Metropolis is an improvement. Julie Taraska, one of the magazine’s contributors, summed it up nicely on a recent tweet: “Metropolis magazine’s redesign: Small trim size, clearer font, more white space, fits better in the tote bag.” But despite the therapeutic nature of its redesign it still seems to be suffering from chronic grandness and horror vacui. Publishing may be a tight business these days, but we all can use a little more space to breathe and think. If less paper and more white space prove to be good for Metropolis, further constraint and humility can be a lot better.

—

I wrote this post as an assignment for the ‘New New Media’ D-Crit course, taught by Elizabeth Spiers. This was supposed to be a segment of a larger assignment, called Reading Room, an online venue for discussion and critique of design and architecture magazines. This post and the 360ºChair post were examples of content created for different sections of this website. This one dedicated to the design and redesign of magazine, the other to innovative magazine sections and writing formats. Other sections include “Popular Subjects” (where one subject, product of person that having widespread coverage in magazines around the world would be regularly picked in order to analyze/discuss the way it has been talked about offline and online) and Editors, dedicated to the figure of the magazine (something I’m quite obsessed about) and how a publication can become a mirror of its editor’s personality and preoccupations, or completely  change from one editor’s tenure to the next. This section would be made up of a series of interviews with living editors on how they do what they do, and discover the people, the work and the legacy of historic and influential past editors. Reading Room would actually be something I’d like to actually turn into a reality, but maybe when I’m done with my thesis…

From today, and for a month, follow me at Alvorada. Até já!

Committee of the Regions’ Plenary Session, European Parliament Hemicycle © Katja Ilner

Creativity, innovation, regions, clusters, mobility, funding, education, risk, opportunity, competitiveness, sustainability, networks, integration, culture, fertile grounds, Europe, America. This simultaneously-translated, multilingual bureaucratic litany, this Powerpoint-generated “tag cloud” of policy buzzwords shaped my two-day visit to Brussels last month. But I did manage to find creative, innovative life beyond the “eurospeak” of the European Union and its institutions.

I visited the Belgian capital on Monday, 20th and Tuesday, 21st of April to attend a forum dedicated to Europe’s Creative Regions and Cities. The event, promoted by EU’s Committee of the Regions, brought together experts, region leaders, entrepreneurs, policy makers and a selection of 100 young creative talents from all over Europe. Inside conference and assembly halls, the forum’s program and activities consisted of formal talks and panels dedicated to the nature, present and future of creativity in Europe. Monday morning’s session at the Committee of the Regions headquarters was called “What makes regions and cities creative?”: it was a rather structured and participatory debate, where practical cases were presented and many of the 100 talents got to speak their mind. However, that afternoon’s “Making Europe more creative” and the next day’s “Discovering Creative Belgium” discussions were borderline soporiferous.

Monday Morning Panel © Katja Ilner

In these panels, regional network members, planning professionals and directors of various sorts sat on stage with EU officials with long job titles, but short time to spend and actually take part in the conversation. The two top European representatives who came to the Forum’s sessions – Ján Figel, European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth and Odile Quintin, European Director General of the same Commission – proved to be very busy people and had to leave soon after giving their “spiel” of well-intentioned words. I had the similar “talk and go” feeling inside the European Parliament Hemicycle, during the Committee of the Regions’ Plenary Session on Tuesday. Four of the talents, including myself, got to speak before the members of the Committee – state and municipality leaders from EU member countries. As I looked around the half-empty room before, during and after my speech, I thought most of the people there sat only as they waited their turn to speak and be translated into 23 languages. Few seemed to be willing to listen or even acknowledge the speaker’s presence.

Creative Villages © Jakob Østergaard Jensen

Outside the halls and corridors of European law and power we, “the talents”, were encouraged to “mingle”, or rather network, almost as kids in summer camp or on a first day of school are expected to do. And that’s exactly what we did. There was even a – somewhat haphazard – themed “village” session on Monday afternoon for it, when we showed our projects to each other and talked about our achievements. The networking continued during the various coffee and lunch breaks and on the evening reception at the BOZAR Center for Fine Arts, but I would say it mainly took place in the streets of Brussels.

We made for an extremely disparate group of 18 to 30 year olds. Among us were a Maltese chef, a Spanish harpist, a Polish street activist, a Finnish animation director, an Austrian short film curator, a French synchronized swimmer, a Swedish playwright, a Turkish industrial designer and a Portuguese design critic. Our nationalities however were only expressed by our name cards – some of which inaccurately, as in the case of Italian, but Südtiroler composer Manuela Kerer, who due of her German-speaking region was “labeled” Austrian. Country labels quickly became redundant: by deliberately focusing on cities and regions, rather than nations, the debate around creativity in Europe bypassed our nation states. This started in the selection process: most of the talents were nominated by their city or region – while others, such as myself, applied directly to the Commission.

We were there not as citizens of Bulgaria, Germany, Slovakia or Ireland, but as coming from the Azores archipelago, Lodz, Flanders, Cornwall, Turku or Baden Württemberg. This supranational dimension of the event reminded me of the inspiring essay Europe’s true stories by British Oxford University professor of European studies Timothy Garton Ash. In this essay, Garton Ash champions the future of Europe as something found beyond the borders of its nations: “… our identity will not be constructed in the fashion of the historic European nation, once humorously defined as a group of people united by a common hatred of their neighbors and a shared misunderstanding of their past.” He calls for new story, a new narrative of Europe to be told, one that defines the continent not as opposed to a foreign other (as so often happened in history), but defined only by its own previous self “more specifically, the unhappy, self-destructive, at times downright barbaric chapters in the history of European civilization.”

Rosa Stourac McCreery, British Circus and Theatre Performer, Facilitator and Director, addressing the Committee members © Katja Ilner

It may sound hyperbolic, but what I experienced in this Forum was not a celebration of European bureaucracy applied to creativity and innovation (two very abstract, almost intangible concepts) or the individual successes of 100 young Europeans. I like to think it was a possible start to a new European narrative. Like Garton Ash, I love Europe. I believe in this ambitious human endeavor, and in the people who, like the officials and the talents around me, shape its present and future everyday. I use the word “shape” as I write this during the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, when the term gains a new meaning. A lengthy title for a list of various initiatives throughout the continent, 2009’s European year – 2008 was dedicated to intercultural dialogue, 2010 will be about combating poverty and social exclusion – highlights and promotes the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of Europeans. In a time when the Union is coming to grips with the shaky path of the Lisbon Treaty, soaring unemployment brought by widespread recession or the forthcoming European Parliament elections (next June), Europe’s one-year, continent-wide excitement with creativity and innovation seems jolly, even frivolous.

But it isn’t, and it shouldn’t be seen as such. In our post-industrial, globalized world, the EU needs creativity and innovation more than ever (this was perhaps the forum’s most recurrent observation). But how does that affect us Europeans? It may be unfair to say the EU is an important preoccupation of its citizens’ lives, because it’s not. Much like design – a substantial area within Europe’s creative and innovation industries – the EU is often only noticed when it fails. In instances such as “no” votes in referenda, too strict controls and regulations or its defense policy (which is seen from contradictory to non-existent), the EU only seems to be talked about when something goes wrong. Nevertheless, its citizens have so much to celebrate, everyday – for so much of our success as individuals has been made possible by EU’s structures, laws and benefits.

“Europe is an intricate, multicolored patchwork”, says Garton Ash in his aforementioned essay. Not only I agree, but I would also say this is our continent’s greatest advantage. Europe’s geographical, cultural, linguistic and human diversity is what makes it special and unique. And this forum proved our generation is not just unique and diverse by geographical and cultural circumstance: it is also the most mobile, well-travelled, active, informed and connected to ever have lived on this continent. Take Briton Peter Symonds, who designs yachts in Vienna, or Rafael Toledo, who studied for his PhD in Poland, researched in France for his post-doc, and is now an assistant professor in Electronic Design and Signal Processing in his native Spain. Or Ewa Murawska, flutist and doctor of music, who was born in the Polish city of Pozna?, studied in Paris and was awarded over 20 international music awards and scholarships from several European countries. I could list many more examples of our peripatetic academic and professional careers, of people who studied, researched or worked in another country – or rather, in another city or region – throughout their lives. But you get the overall picture: all of us have been taken our diverse origins and experiences and intertwining them with others, creating an integrated Europe that overflows the borders of our nations – not by decree, but by the reach and breath of our interests and curiosities. The results of that intertwining were evident in this Forum, and were in my opinion its most successful and inspirational facets.

Committee of the Regions balcony

In order to thrive, EU’s cities and regions should not only promote their terms of creativity and innovation by embarking in complex studies or coming up with categories and definitions. They should also promote a sort of “live and let live” agenda: pour life back into our (some more welfare than others) states; support student and young professional mobility (through the academic exchange and internship funding programs Socrates/Erasmus and Leonardo da Vinci, in my opinion the most efficient tools of European integration since the Treaty of Rome in 1957); create mechanisms that improve urban living and working conditions (rent control, infrastructure, transportation, healthcare) for all. If these circumstances are met, we, the young, talented “creative class” will come to (or stay in) our cities and regions, and flourish. As Lotta Lekvall, Director of ‘Nätverkstan’ in Sweden and Vice-President of the European Network ENCATC said in one the most illuminated moments of all panel sessions, we should “build less roads and more cafés”, for they have been, and should still be, the meeting places, the fora, the agoras of Europe.

Luc Van den Brande @ Katja Ilner

Luc Van den Brande, President of the Committee of the Regions, was our official host and a remarkably insightful, eloquent and humorous presence throughout the 2-day event. Nonchalantly quoting Brel and Einstein in his speeches, Van den Brande told us “proximity matters”. Indeed, monsieur Président: proximity was why this Forum made sense, for we did not – really – come to Brussels to hear how creativity and innovation happen. We came here to meet and learn from each other, share our similar goals and frustrations, celebrate our diversity. But most of all we came to come together. Isn’t that what a Forum should be about?

This essay was written for Michael Bierut’s 5-class Short-form Essay and Blog Post Workshop. It was part of D-Crit’s Print Meets the Web second semester course.

Countering the one-way street of mechanical and structural determinism, [Raymond Loewy] declared that ‘there is as much [to be gained] working backward from optical form to mechanics’; offering Betty Grable as an example, he observed that, although her ‘liver and kidneys are no doubt adorable’ I would rather have her with skin than without’”.

C. Edson Armi, quoting Raymond Loewy in “Car Design Theory, Commercial Arts After the Second World War”, The Art of American Car Design

I overslept again this morning. I showered, dressed, had breakfast, put on scarf, hat, gloves, left home. I walked to the bus stop, where the 26 stopped only a few minutes later. I got off at Fulton and Flushing Avenues, went down Dekalb Avenue subway station, boarded the B. I could have taken the Q, but this train came first, so I mentally adjusted my route: I would get off at 47th Avenue/Rockefeller Center and walk the rest of the way to 59th Street and 3rd Avenue. I was running late, so I couldn’t afford an alternative. This had to work.

I surfaced on 6th Avenue. I had only 18 minutes to get there, so I walked fast through Rockefeller Center, stopping only for much-needed coffee. I made up for the stop by walking even faster. Shop windows, Christmas decorations, a woman in a fur coat with a hood, Saks, a jogger, the Tiffany store I had never seen “in stone” before, the girl in sunglasses and high heels – a model? – with whom I shared a crosswalk and part of the street. “I’m not going to make it, I’m not going to make it” I thought. But I didn’t slow down, I couldn’t slow down. I had a few more blocks to go – up and east, up and east. Two More Years from Bloc Party on my headphones helped to set the pace.

I arrived too late. Two and a half minutes too late. As I stood on 59th Street – arms slightly open from wearing a thick pea coat, fingers apart inside Thinsulate™ gloves – I felt hopeless, disappointed, clumsy in the 31-degree cold. I had missed the 11am tram to Roosevelt Island. Forever.