Design In Society: Share-It-Square

Utopian society may be unattainable and unrealistic, but striving for harmony and peace often has positive results in communities. One neighborhood in Portland, Oregon uses utopian design to create an intersection that brings everyone in the surrounding area together.

The above image is from the intersection called "Share-It-Square" and it is one of several intersections in Portland that has teamed with "City Repair" to take part in the annual Village Building Convergence project where communities "reclaim the crossroads". By coming up with a design and physically painting the street together, inhabitants of the neighborhoods hope to form an atmosphere of harmony and friendship between neighbors. This utopian design is a breath of fresh air when compared with many neighborhoods, mine included, where neighbors rarely bond and sometimes don't converse at all. These communities want to change the intersection from a place of division, to a place of meeting. This video from Streetfilms features many of the people who take art in this project expressing how they feel about it: 

"Intersection Repair"

Share-It-Square has gone even farther and redesigned the whole surrounding area. As its name suggests, this intersection is a place for sharing. It features its own play house with toys for the children, community library, and "watering hole", each of which is supplied by members of the community as they please. Anything seen as "extra" is put somewhere in the intersection and is free for use by any other member. 

The members of these communities have redefined an intersection. No longer simply the crossing of two streets, it is now a place to play, to read, or simply to talk to one's neighbors. They see the forgotten "intersection" as an opportunity to make life a little better, and hope the idea spreads to more intersections over time. This is the type of design I feel every designer should aspire to; design may not be able to make a perfect world, but it can make it better, if only one street at a time.

Color Transforms: Starry Night

One of design's most powerful tools is color; it has the power to decide which emotions a design will evoke, and how well the design will be received. Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night", uses a relatively small number of colors to portray a very broad spectrum of emotions.

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"Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh

The above painting is one of the most recognizable pieces of art ever made and certainly one of Van Gogh's most famous. One could analyze this piece for hours on end for its technique or content; I only have time to focus on one, color.

The first thing I notice when looking at this piece is that it is primarily made up of two colors: blue and yellow. Both are primary colors which lands them too far away from each other on the color wheel to be analogous, but too close to be complementary. This allows for a sense of contrast without the colors clashing. Both colors appear somewhat saturated, yet neither overpowers the other. The yellow stars stand out as small circles against the blue background, and become a focal point of the piece. The other focal point is the black figure in the foreground of the painting. This aspect also stands out, because it is neither blue nor yellow, but a cold black with red highlights. I personally see the figure as a sort of tree, but that is up for debate. The fact that it is painted in black gives the figure a sense of mystery, leaving it to be interpreted however the viewer chooses. 

It is not only the black figure that causes mixed responses from viewers; in my experience viewers have many different interpretations of this painting. Some people view it as a peaceful and mystical night scene while others feel it gives off a creepy, dark atmosphere. The fact that it is made up of mainly two primary colors, one cool, one warm, and that the colors are neither muted nor overly saturated, allows this painting to remain balanced and somewhat neutral. The viewers reaction to this piece depends heavily on how that person is feeling and how he or she feels about the colors blue and yellow.

Van Gogh has created, or designed this piece with color very much in mind. The result is a design that is not only beautiful, but versatile, a quality that takes a design from personal to universal. 

Dangerous Design

Popular clothing brand Ralph Lauren caused a lot of controversy last year when they released this photo of model Filippa Hamilton that has been obviously and unnaturally photoshopped. By digitally slimming this model to grotesque and impossible proportions, the company is sending out a very warped message that is in many ways, dangerous and detrimental to society.

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When designing ads, companies often use photoshop as a tool to smooth edges and fix any small imperfections. When this technology is abused like it was in the image above, the resulting design can warp the viewer's own sense of beauty and perfection. 

This design obviously depicts a woman wearing Ralph Lauren clothes, who has an unbelievably small waist, extremely narrow hips, and super-thin legs. This is a very dangerous image to send into a world of impressionable minds because it proposes the idea that there are women in the world that look like this and that they are the ones that can wear these expensive clothes. 

Unfortunately, this type of message can have a substantial effect on the psyche of this design's target audience, young women. Even those of us who were quick to realize that this picture was fake are left with the sad thought that this company felt this already thin, and beautiful model wasn't good enough to represent them. This type of insensitive marketing leads to the all too common qualities of low self-esteem and negative self-image. Although these effects may not have been the goal of the company, the designers of this advertisement were well aware of its deceiving appearance; they did use a computer to create her body after all.

The fashion world makes its money by showing us beautiful women, but when they show something like this to us they are simply being reckless. Design should aim to better society, not damage it. I feel companies like this have a responsibility to depict women who look naturally beautiful, healthy, and most importantly real.

Ergonomics: Ease of use

In my last blog I analyzed a design (my chair) by using the five areas of ergonomics. For this post I'd like to focus on just one of those areas, ease of use, and analyze a different (but equally disappointing) design: my cell phone.

As our technology becomes more and more advanced, so do our cell phones; but one trait that phone designers must keep intact in order to ensure that everyday people can use and enjoy this technology, is the ease of use. My cell phone, the LG Neon, is very disappointing in that regard. 

Let me start off by saying, the phone currently sitting next to my laptop is the third physical phone of this model that I have had. Not because I simply love this phone, not because I broke the last two, simply because the last two were both dysfunctional. My dad, who has the same model phone, is also on his third. This phone utilizes technological advances in its slide out keyboard, digital interface, and (some) use of touch screen, but its design and malfunctions diminish much of its ease of use. 

The keyboard is not quite wide enough and the keys are not quite big enough to make it easy for the user to type on. This could be solved with a touch screen option but the only application of a touch pad is when entering a number to call. During a call however, one must slide open the keyboard to enter a number. So whenever I call an automated service that asks me to enter a "4 for more info", I must open the phone and find the "four" among the variety of lettered keys. 

Then there is the fact that this phone has a habit of  powering itself off. Often, I've noticed, this happens right when I press "send" after writing a lengthy text. As you can probably imagine, this doesn't exactly please me. 

My last complaint is about the menu interface. Sometimes the phone won't respond at all to a command I make by pressing a key, and other times it will simply "freeze-up" when I control it too quickly. I have also noticed that the phone will sometimes mistake one command for another, and open the wrong app. This often results in the "browser" opening and the phone (unsurprisingly) takes a while to react to my command to close it. 

This phone attracted me with is mastery of ergonomics mainly in the area of aesthetics, but it has become clear to me that it fails miserably in the area of ease of use.

5 Areas of Ergonomics: Dorm Room Desk Chair

There are 5 main areas of ergonomics used to critique a design: safety, comfort, ease of use, performance, and aesthetics. Failing to address all five of these, or focusing too much on one and not enough on others, often leads to an unsuccessful design. The designer of the following product has committed the latter offense. Although the design is successful in some aspects of ergonomics, it is equally unsuccessful in all the others.

I give you, my dorm room desk chair:

Since you as the reader can only see the chair, I will start with the area of ergonomics that is most apparent in the photo: aesthetics. This chair appears very ordinary. It simply looks like a platform, backrest, and legs, almost identical any other chair ever designed. This description is already one strike against the chair; designers should aim to produce products that are innovative and creative, not average or boring. With a product as common as the chair, it would be much more helpful to add something new and exciting to the design, something that will surprise and intrigue viewers. The wood frame has a yellowy tinge that just makes it look cheap and (for lack of a better word) tacky. Similarly, the upholstery is an uninviting washed-out shade of green featuring an extremely boring (and tiny) textured pattern. Even the angles of the chair are uninspired; the chair features almost exclusively 90 degree angles which at first glance, do not appear to be very compatible with the human figure. The sum of its unattractive parts is no better than each individual eye-sore, making the chair very aesthetically displeasing.

Working backwards on the list I will move next to performance, an area that seems to have been much more important to the designer than looks. As far as chairs go, this ones performs quite adequately. It produces a space for me to sit down, and feels very stable as I do so while writing this blog. Because the only necessary function for a chair is to stand, and provide a seat for a single person, I assert that this product performs very well. It does exactly as it should, no more and no less.

The ease of use of this product is however, not so satisfactory. I'll admit it, as far as the action of sitting in the chair goes, this product is very easy to use. The height of the seat is neither to high or too low, so that it is easy for average sized people to lower themselves onto it. The stability of the design also make it easy to sit on, because one must not worry about whether it is going to tip over. However, one action that is not easy to perform with this chair is moving it while sitting in it. Most office/desk chairs feature wheels on the bottom that make it easy to maneuver the chair in and around the desk. This chair however, stands on planks of wood connecting the two legs at each side which makes it very difficult to slide around or scoot closer to the desk, while someone is occupying it. With a different lower half, I feel this design could be much easier to use.

This next category is again, rather disappointing: comfort. The only aspect of this chair that even attempts to be comfortable is the actual seat, adequately cushioned and not completely unpleasant to sit one's behind upon. The other half of design that should be considered comfortable however, the backrest, is not. As you can see, the backrest has no cushion on it. For someone like me, whose spine tends to protrude when my back is not perfectly straight, direct contact with the hard wood is very unpleasant. I realize not everyone has this problem, but that is also not the only issue with the backrest. The rest only supports a small portion of an occupant's back, and stands so vertically that it is only comfortable when the person using it sits with flawless posture. Perhaps this design aims to encourage good posture, but considering the amount of time college students spend sitting in these chairs doing homework (or writing blogs), a backrest that wouldn't jab into a person's back when he/she attempted to scoot down into a more comfortable position, would have been a smart move.

The last aspect of ergonomics, safety, prevails in this design. As I said before, this chair is very stable. When used correctly, it is very hard to tip over. Even when my vertically-challenged roommate uses it as a stool to reach the top of our closet, it remains a very solid structure. This may explain the absence of wheels on the bottom of the chair; having tried to use wheeled office chairs as stools in the past, I know first hand that they are not stable or safe when stood upon. Perhaps the designer when creating this chair, or the school when choosing this product, realized that college-aged persons would be very likely to stand on them. Although it may not be the most efficient platform, wood-plank supports make this chair notably safe to use.

As a whole, this chair is an ugly, uncomfortable, awkward design. It seems obvious to me that the designer and school had two main areas of ergonomics in mind when creating/selecting this product: performance, and safety. The chair is a stable, solid platform for any college student's backside. The areas that seem to have been neglected though, are equally important in any design: comfort, ease of use, and aesthetics. If the school had chosen a product that served not only their ergonomic desires, but all five, I think we could all be a lot more satisfied with it.

Word+Image: Advertising

In my last blog I discussed the interaction of word and image in comics, and mentioned the fact that the pairing is a common occurrence in the world of design. Today I will analyzing a very different form of design, but one that still very often utilizes the pairing of word and image, advertising.

Advertising is very different from comics in that it (in most cases) does not ask very much of us other than to understand what it is showcasing and hopefully want to buy it. This pairing of pictures and text is less of an intellectual stimulation, and more of a simple, straightforward passage of information. The main goal in an advertisement is to appeal to as many people as possible, and the combination of image and word is often how they do this. Take a film poster for example, such as this one for one of my personal favorites, "Garden State".

In this type of advertisement, the text primarily exists to display information to the viewer. It informs us that the movie being advertised is in fact called "Garden State". This may seem like a somewhat unimportant part of the advertisement in that it holds no appeal, but it may very well be the most important. No matter how visually appealing an advertisement is, it holds no worth unless the viewer walks away with the product in mind. That is the only way companies can hope that we will buy their product, the sign of a good advertisement. The image in this example adds to the appeal of the ad. Having already seen this movie I understand the scene that is shown in the context of the whole film, but I remember seeing this posting when this film first came out and the image really boggled my mind. "Who are they? Why are they standing on top of that? What is that? Why are they yelling? And why are they wearing trash bags??" The content of this image is very intriguing, and for a movie poster that is the perfect type of appeal. These posters serve primarily to produce an interest in the movie, to make the viewer so intrigued that he or she simply must come back and see the film to solve the mystery his or herself. The vibrancy of the colors are also part of what appealed to me with this poster. The combination of such fun, bright colors with seemingly angry, disheveled people intrigued me even further about the nature of this film.

Not all advertisements aim to cause a mystery for the viewer. Many times, the appeal comes from a sense of exclusiveness or luxury that the ad evokes. Take this Prada advertisement:

Like most Prada ads, it features a model who looks like she "just doesn't care" dressed in expensive-looking clothes, jewelry and the product being advertised, eyewear. It gives of a sense of luxury and allure, but the model's apparent attitude also makes it seem effortless. It seems the pictured woman has to do nothing more than lean against a wall, expressionless, to look rich and beautiful. The company might want us to think "If I have those glasses maybe I will be as effortlessly alluring as this woman is." The text is also very understated. The text in this ad is limited strictly to the company name and the product being advertised, no tagline or comment. It is as if the company is asserting that it is so good, it doesn't need anything more than its name to attract customers. This advertising tactic may seem pretentious to some people, but that probably doesn't matter; considering the price of Prada items, it is clear they are aiming for a very specific group of people. 

So whether an ad aims to intrigue, or impress, the bottom line is always a need to be attractive and recognizable. This is almost always achieved by two staples of design, the word, and the image.

Word+Image: Comics

I used to be one of those people who picked up a newspaper only to turn to the "funnies", and although I've since grown to enjoy other parts of the paper too, the comics are still my safe haven in the sometimes depressing world of news. I know this is true for many people and although I haven't yet delved into the equally popular world of comic books and graphic novels, they certainly intrigue me too.

So what exactly is a comic? Scott McCloud defines comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence" in his book "Understanding Comics". Simplifying this to a very generic classification, I would describe comics as just one form of the fusion of word and image.

It's a simple concept, the pairing of text and pictures, yet this is a very important technique in the world of design. One might argue the reason comics are so successful is that they are reminiscent of the books we read as children, pictures paired with few words, and easy to understand. After reading McCloud's book, I have a newfound respect for comics, and I find this idea very misleading. It may very well be true that the pairing of pictures and words is inherently attractive to us, so we can appreciate the combo at almost any age; however, comics and graphic novels use this pair in a way that is much more complex than your average children's book.

Graphic novelist Brian Fies (author of "Mom's Cancer" and "Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?") recently came to speak to our design class and one of the points he emphasized was the fact that in comics, the words and the pictures are dependent of each other. One cannot exist, at least coherently, without the other. If an adult were to read a book aimed at a very small child, he or she could understand where the story is going by reading only the words, or only looking at the pictures. This redundancy is perfect for a child learning to read and write, but for a more mature person it seems pointless. This explains why we slowly gravitate toward books with less and less pictures as we grow up. However, this combination need not be redundant; comics prove that.

Comics differ from most stories in that they refuse to be only a frame by frame movie-like story or a line by line novel. They are able to remove some of these lines and some of these frames and instead use the words and images to fill in each other's gaps. In many ways this is more advanced than the other formats; comics engage the reader both visually and textually, asking more from the reader than many traditional novels. Readers must be able to make inferences about the story, using the clues from both the images and words. Comics ask us to fill the gap between panels, using the words as clues, and infer the unspoken by way of the visual representation.

I find this mastery of word and image to be very interesting, and feel this type of literature and art is quite underrated. Looking at how comics use the pairing of word and image makes it obvious that they are much more than an adult's version of a children's picture book.

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Consumers as Co-designers

A few weeks ago I wrote about Rhett and Link's "Mystical Shoe" and the fact that they asked for input from the future consumer during the design process. This week I read this article that explained that Metro is asking for input from its own passengers on their newest rail car design. It seems customer input and involvement are being regular aspects of the design process for many companies.


Apparently, Metro will be asking riders about how to better design "wall and floor covering materials, sign displays, lighting and hand-held bar styles" (source). Considering the fact that the success of Metro is very heavily affected by the comfort of its passengers, the idea of asking them directly about what they want to see is a very smart move. I think more and more companies should, and will be using this strategy and level of customer involvement of design in the near future.


This marks a transition in the world of design, where the role of designer becomes less exclusive, extending to nearly any consumer of the product. Being a design student myself, I am hoping this doesn't mark the beginning of the end of the job title "designer", but I'm confident that the world will never be completely rid of this occupation. As we discussed in design class, even if the world of design is reduced to a series of customizable templates, we will still need designers to design the templates. Then there is the argument that not every person has that same touch of creativity and inventiveness that natural creators, designers, possess. That is a theory with which I can agree; I feel that the truly creative individuals will always become somewhat separated from your average joe, especially when it comes to designing. We, as artists, as designers have a certain way of looking at things, and although I believe in the sharing of the ability to create and the incorporation of consumer interest in the act of designing, I firmly believe that artists and designers will always have a special "job" in society.

Product Analysis: The CD Case

I give you, the CD case:

This design may not be one of classical beauty, however its form and function combine in a balanced way that creates a functional product.

What exactly is the idea behind a CD case? Obviously the most important aspect of the content is a way to carry the CD, but what are the other characteristics that need to be expressed in the case's form? Considering the fragility of CDs, a way to carry the disc that will ensure it does not escape the design's hold is a must. Thus, security is one aspect of the CD case's content. And what about the fact that the product this content concerns, is called a compact disc? The content also carries the idea of being tiny, and easy to transport.

The form of the CD case certainly does a satisfactory job in expressing these aspects of content. The case is certainly compact, and the composition of the design allows for this quality; the plastic in the base is molded to hold the CD in a way that allows it to lay flush with the rest of the base. Then, the door of the case attaches beside the edge of the disc rather than on top of it, but still in close proximity, adding no additional thickness to the case. This form creates a design that is barely larger than the CD itself in height, width, and especially width. This allows easy storage of the CD almost anywhere with a sliver of available space. The texture on the edges of the CD and the self-expanding ring in the middle of the disc express the quality of security for the disc. The texture gives the person holding the case a better grip on it, and the ring of tiny prongs that contract to allow the disc to be "clicked" into place, also expand to hold it (somewhat) securely in place. This decreases the chances of the disc falling out of the case, expressing the design's simplest element of content, an enclosure for the disc. 

There are variations of this vernacular content, some of which I prefer. For example, some cases are cardboard, rather than plastic enclosures. This form is both better for the environment and, in my opinion, more comfortable. The edges of these cases are less pronounced and gentler to the touch, and the case usually has a uniformly smooth texture that is very pleasing to the hand. These cases are also much more durable than the plastic, which tend to break.

Of course preference of one case over the other is purely a subjective assertion, but the differences in the form of these two designs show that similar ideas or content often leads to many diverse interpretations of these ideas through different forms.