Inspiration

How Style Differs From Design

How Style Differs From Design

Eames Demetrios, the grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, arguably the 20th century's most famous furniture designers, is the principal of the Eames Office, which sells merchandise related to the family's namesake line of chairs and promotes their legacy. He answers a few questions in this edited interview with Kristiano Ang.

My grandmother said that what works good is better than what looks good. That's because what looks good can change.

Newspaper put design stories in the style section, but style is different from design. Design is about problem-solving, addressing needs and working with constraints. I talk to a lot of young designers and say, "don't worry about your style." Take care of problems, and everything will take care of itself.

What inspires me is the richness and complexity of the world. It's a completely magical phenomenon that includes humans, the built environment and the natural world.

My grandparents said the role of the designer is that of a good host and anticipating the needs of guests. This is a really beautiful idea. It puts the human being and their experience at the center of attention in a very pragmatic way. We've gotten into this habit that says design is different from function.

How Style Differs From Design

I Believe I can Fly

No better way to usher in the new year.

RT @janchip: Feeling gravity's pull and smiling all the way down: http://vimeo.com/31240369 {video, beautiful

See also: What Are You Doing New Years Eve? by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

"You'll never be the same again"

When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.

These are such wonderful words that even though you may have heard or read them before, they are worth seeing again. Jonathan Ive's tribute is wonderful too. Via Brainpickings.

Nose & Ban Dang's Story

Follow the story of two deaf brothers growing up in a remote hill tribe in Thailand whose lives were forever changed after moving to the Children's Shelter Foundation in Chiang Mai. Beautiful heart wrenching story.

For the kids growing up in the hill tribes of Northern Thailand, home can be a tough place. Poor health conditions have left many vulnerable as orphans, and for those growing up with a disability a lack of understanding can lead to a life of total isolation. But at the Children's Shelter Foundation a tough past is a rule rather than exception, and its also part of the reason these kids just can't stop smiling in their new home.

More here.

My Friend Jason

"Live simply so others people can simply live." Beautiful short film.

Artisan's at work: shoe & shirt

I appreciate the ironing video far more as it's a practiced skill I can appreciate.

Power poses to win in the boardroom

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy's pioneering research shows that subtle manipulations in posture can actually change our hormone levels and dramatically alter the way we feel and are perceived by the people around us. Just two minutes in one of Cuddy's power poses lowered cortisol levels and actually changed the performance of research participants in stressful situations. She channeled these findings into empowerment training tips. Check out her PopTech presentation to find out how you can use your body language to win in the boardroom, your next job, interview or public performance.

Information Is Cheap, Meaning Is Expensive

Information is cheap

A wonderful interview with George Dyson who grew up around the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, built kayaks in Canada and began to think about the internet before personal computers were a household staple. He talked with Martin Eiermann about the definition of life, human progress and the importance of cognitive autarchy. Quotes from the article in The European:

"it is always easier to find answers than to ask the right questions"

Finding answers is easy. The hard part is creating the map that matches specific answers to the right question. That's what Google did: They used the power of computing - which is cheap and really does not have any limits - to crawl the entire internet and collected and index all the answers. And then,by letting human beings spend their precious time asking the right questions, they created a map between the two. That is a clever way of approaching a problem that would otherwise be incomprehensibly difficult.

"The challenge is not to gather information, but to make sense of the information we have?"

Right. We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning? Only human beings can tell you where it is. We're extracting meaning from our minds and our own lives.

"It is hard to see how computers could emerge as creative and imaginative entities in the near future."

We have to wait and see. But I am not sure whether computers are just tools. When you look at your iPhone to get directions, are you asking the phone where to go or is the phone telling you where to go? You cannot draw a strict line between active and passive information exchange. If some alien form of life came to earth, they might be convinced that there is a bodiless form of intelligence that is telling its constituent parts to turn left or right. So there is a symbiosis that works both ways.

"Information Is Cheap, Meaning Is Expensive" by George Dyson

George Clooney on what he's learned from failure

It's hard when you get thumped. I've been proficient at failure. But the only thing you can do is say, "Here's what I won't do next time."

I was a baseball player in school. I had a good arm, I could catch anything, but I was having trouble hitting. I would be like, "I wonder if I'll hit it; just let me hit the ball." And then I went away for the fall, learned how to hit, and by my sophomore year I'd come to the plate and think, "I wonder where I want to hit the ball, to the left or right?" Just that little bit of skill and confidence changed everything. Well, I had to treat acting like that. I had to stop going to auditions thinking, "Oh, I hope they like me." I had to go in thinking I was the answer to their problem. You could feel the difference in the room immediately.

The greatest lesson I learned was that sometimes you have to fake it. And you have to be willing to fail.

From: What Drives George Clooney

Why We Desire But Reject Creative Ideas

According to a paper by researchers from Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina, creative ideas make people uncomfortable.

People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal. To explain this paradox, we propose that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt, and which is activated when people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty. In two studies, we measure and manipulate uncertainty using different methods including: discrete uncertainty feelings, and an uncertainty reduction prime. The results of both studies demonstrated a negative bias toward creativity (relative to practicality) when participants experienced uncertainty. Furthermore, the bias against creativity interfered with participants' ability to recognize a creative idea. These results reveal a concealed barrier that creative actors may face as they attempt to gain acceptance for their novel ideas.

Revealing the existence and nature of a bias against creativity can help explain why people might reject creative ideas and stifle scientific advancements, even in the face of strong intentions to the contrary. ... The field of creativity may need to shift its current focus from identifying how to generate more creative ideas to identify how to help innovative institutions recognize and accept creativity.

The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas

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