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On blogs, this log, and growth

How can designers be truly sustainable? A question of oceanic proportion, that I am unqualified to answer. Nonetheless, Creative Boom offered me the chance to reflect on things I’ve learned over the past year at Avery Dennison. As per usual, it took a long time to chisel and hammer my thoughts into a coherent form, but when I eventually pulled back from my labour most things held in place.

Writing revealed just how unique an opportunity it has been to learn how to design for sustainability in practice, gaining specialised knowledge directly from my colleagues. It also reiterated the value of this log as a reference to return to. And, plot twist, through conversation a possibility has emerged for me to become more of a specialist in this field. It’s an interesting proposition which could pass by if I don’t take the initiative to carry it forward. The first step is to map out the deficits in my knowledge so I can work toward closing the gap.

Interview posted below for archival purposes.

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The Grandmothers

Art history in particular is often cast as an almost biblical lineage, a long line of begats in which painters descend purely from painters. Just as the purely patri-lineal Old Testament genealogies leave out the mothers and even the fathers of the mothers, so these tidy stories leave out all the sources and inspirations that come from other media and other encounters, from poems, dreams, politics, doubts, a childhood experience, a sense of place, leave out the fact that history is made more of crossroads, branchings, and tangles, than straight lines. These other sources I call the grandmothers.

Rebecca Solnit in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, pg 59

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Nerdburger

So I’ve been thinking about further study for awhile, but I don’t know where to do it. Here’s my tally of interesting graduates and/or institutions they have been associated with:

Sara de Bondt – St Lukas / Jan Van Eyck
Paul Bailey – Central Saint Martins
Fraser Muggeridge – University of Reading
Stuart Bailey – University of Reading / Werkplaats Typografie
James Goggin – RCA / Werkplaats Typografie
Karel Martens – Jan Van Eyck / Werkplaats Typografie
Paulus Dreibholz – Central Saint Martins
Armand Mevis – Gerrit Rietveld / Werkplaats Typografie / Yale
Paul Elliman – Werkplaats Typografie  / Yale
Na Kim – Werkplaats Typografie 
Anthony Froshaug – Central Saint Martins / Royal College of Art

Who wins? Yet to be decided.