Don’t Litter!

Why is it that people have to be told not to litter?

A CCA grad student created a small set of installation pieces, evidently as a statement against cigarette-butt litterbugs. In this scene, a series of little clay men carry inappropriately discarded butts from the base of a tree, across the concrete, up a ladder, finally depositing them in an ash tray on a bench. In another scene, the red figures have erected a fence around a storm drain, drawing attention to the “No Dumping” signs.

Farmers Markets

I’m constantly amazed at how incredible California produce is and I am glad to see small-scale farming and artisan food is making a comeback.

For my Innovation Studio class, my team is researching people, food, and how they come together. As I created a “deconstruction” of the food domain, I realized how much food creates meaning in our lives. There is a deep social and community component to food (see: Slow Food) and the resurgence of buying straight from farmers expands this relationship beyond our families and neighbors to include a connection to the land and to the people who toil to feed us. I’m thrilled to live in a place and time fighting so hard to bring back biodiversity and support sustainable family farms. It will mean higher prices, in a time when we many can least afford them, but the environmental and societal cost of our current corporate farming system is even higher.

All about the O

obama2I’m in awe of Barack Obama’s campaign identity. I have never seen a political identity this sophisticated — it’s simple, well-rendered, and somehow it manages to turn an American political cliché of a sun rising over farmland into good design! That’s remarkable on its own, but the flexibility this one little mark has provided is astonishing. There are versions for every state and every group and they have plastered it on every available surface on the official site, and somehow it all works together cohesively and attractively. I think it’s a great idea to let the mark itself morph substantially for the iterations; the payoff of individuality overcomes any risk of lack of consistency.

Do the Right Thing

I believe in supporting companies that make a commitment to doing good, both as a designer and a customer. Whether or not they always succeed, understanding that business should also be socially and environmentally responsible is a big step towards where we need to be. Although the real trick is you have to mean it.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been working on a great project for Levi Strauss & Co. While I have always avoided retail fashion, especially the mass-market kind, I’m pleased to be working with a company that embraces values. The photo above is from their lobby, and it is great to see what they stand for plastered up, bigger than life.

I was also very impressed at their attitude towards their customers; we discussed how important it was to talk to and about all of their customers in a respectful and positive way. It’s easy in this business to look down on those who are unfashionable, poor, or overweight, and I appreciate their desire to be inclusive.

As I look to move up in brand management (the purpose of getting the MBA), it would benefit me to work for larger organizations for a few years to gain credibility and learn more about the challenges of a large, multi-national company. However, I still want to work for a company I can believe. Levi’s is just the kind of company that could fit both bills, and now I’m motivated to push aside my assumptions and look more closely for other opportunities I might be overlooking.

Barcelona

After 5 long years, I’m finally getting around to organizing my Europe photos. I’m starting with Barcelona, a city that stole my heart.

Gaudi has a lot to do with why I loved Barcelona so much — his work is whimsical, colorful, and imaginative in a way that makes me wonder if hallucinogens were in vogue at the time. Every inch of this town is covered with textures and patterns and it was incredible to be enveloped so completely by detail. Even when it was too much (as Gaudi often is) it made me giddy to be in a city that lives and breathes design this much.

What I loved most was how the mundane — chimneys, attic ceilings, benches, vents — was transformed into the exotic. Form follows function, of course, but I see no reason why everything practical can’t also be whimsical or elegant.

Defining Art

Last weekend there was a highly critical article about the Chihuly exhibit at the De Young that really got my back up. The money quote:

“The history of art is a history of ideas, not just of valuable property. Chihuly has no place in it, and the de Young disserves its public by pretending that he does.”

I have my own criticisms of Chihuly — primarily that his work can be overly gilded and that commercial success has led to excessive repetition — but there are ways to critique an artist without declaring his work isn’t art. The author’s main arguments seemed to be that the exhibit is a spectacle and not serious enough, and that Chihuly’s work is too flamboyant and decorative to be considered “art”.

The former is more than a little puzzling. Yes, the exhibit is a spectacle and the gift shop is indeed “barnacled” on. But this criticism could easily be made of much modern culture and art, and it is unfair to single Chihuly out. His work is flamboyant and showy, but that just makes a theatrical exhibit seem all the more authentic. On the other hand, despite the spectacle the author claims “educated viewers” will get bored because is not enough intellectual content to hold their interest. That must mean I’m not educated, because there were plenty of beautiful visuals to keep my attention.

It’s also seriously misguided to claim that art must be high-concept. We do have rough categories of fine art, decorative art, craft, and the like, but the lines are blurry at best. Going by the author’s yardstick, we’d have to disregard half of the “history of art”! Dutch and Flemish masters are a good example — the technique is remarkable, but in the end it’s often just a painting of of a dead rabbit, a rich patron, or a vase of flowers. Where’s the intellectual statement there? And yet we don’t question those paintings as art.

Perhaps more importantly than how he defines art is the arrogance of claiming to define art for others. As the resident creative in my family I spend a lot of time defending art, and I think it’s important to take a broad view of it. If it expresses something, even if I don’t like or understand it, it can still be considered art. You don’t have to like it or agree with it, but it’s generally not appropriate to define someone else’s experience. That’s not to say you can’t ever draw a line, but you should draw it as generously as possible.

The entire article felt like a thinly veiled assertion that if the masses like it, it can’t be art-with-a-capital-A. Enough people already question and dismiss art without elitism like this to alienate them further. It occurs to me artists complain art isn’t appreciated, but often they seem to work very hard at preserving image of the starving, misunderstood artist. After all, if the plebeians get it, it can’t be any good.

Michelle Bachelet

Recently Michelle Bachelet, the first female president of Chile, visited California to sign an alternative energy pact and afterwards she spoke at UC Berkeley.

I was disappointed that we heard very little about the renewable energy agreement at the speech. Evidently that discussion happened up at the Berkeley Labs and not on campus as advertised. However, it was still exciting to hear her vision for Chile — despite my cynicism, I have to admit she said all the right things about equitable growth and social justice. There were a few times in the speech when I wondered if she might be persuaded to run our country, too! Her vision sounded more honest and insightful than anything I’ve heard from an American president in my lifetime. She may not be able to accomplish it all, but at least she is acknowledging some hard truths.

The ever-present crew of Berkeley protesters was outside, and they highlighted a particularly thorny issue: Bachelet is committed to pursuing clean, sustainable energy but she skirted around directly stating that developing energy independence may require unpleasant compromises. One of the more viable options for Chile involves building dams in Patagonia. While hydroelectric power is relatively clean and plentiful, damming destroys ecosystems and swallows up untold acres of land. In this case, the stakes are even higher: it will irreparably change a national environmental treasure.

Mad Men

muse_madmen

Mad Men will soon be back on AMC for its 2nd season. The setting, a Madison Avenue ad agency in 1960, is so interesting to me because it represents a turning point in advertising. Around this time advertisers started embracing conceptual ideas and humor instead of straight pitches, and watching the Sterling Cooper creative team dismiss these newfangled ideas is amusing. In the pilot, they debate the famous DDB Lemon ad for Volkswagen, and most of them don’t get it. That sets up the whole show — this is a group of old white guys about to be hit by a cultural revolution, and they aren’t going to be able to keep up.

Mad Men can be hard to watch at times, as many plot points center around a sexist, racist society that I am thankful not to live in. That’s not to say racism and sexism don’t still exist (see: Election 2008) but at least I don’t live in a time when it’s practically laughable to hire a woman as a writer. Rumor has it the show will resume two years in the future, which I think will be a good move. It allows the characters to experience cultural shifts and to grow emotionally more quickly.

But setting the serious stuff aside, the art direction alone is worth watching this show for: Sharp suits, perfectly tailored dresses, sleek mid-century furniture, intriguing vintage baubles, you name it. Nothing is overlooked.  (Of course, there are times it’s hard to see all this greatness through great clouds of cigarette smoke!)

Great Moments in Advertising

The best part of having a DVR is skipping commercials, but once in a great while something is intriguing enough to make me to stop and rewind. Most reliably I stop for VW, Apple, and the celebrity Geico ads. My favorite Geico spokesperson was Peter Frampton — a little sad for him, but funny for us — until I saw the Mrs. Butterworth spot, which stole my heart. She turns every comment into something about pancakes, syrup, or glass bottles, and the very best moment comes at the end: when the Geico logo comes up on the screen she says “Oh dear, someone has put a logo over my face.” Blatant product cross-promotion aside, it’s hysterically funny.

I don’t know how effective these ads are in terms of generating sales. On the plus side, I’d guess they’ve created major, durable name recognition. I never forget who the advertiser is, which is certainly something funny ads struggle with. (We all remember herding cats, but do you know what the company was?) On the negative side, they have several entirely different advertising campaigns running simultaneously, which makes them look schizophrenic. Also, while the style of the ads skews young, I am not sure if anyone under 30 even gets the jokes. Do they know who Charo, Frampton, or Little Richard even are?

That said, I stop my Tivo to watch their ads and now I’m blogging about one of them. I’d say that qualifies as effective.

Gardening Ethic

There’s an article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle discussing Stanford professor Robert Pogue Harrison’s new book, Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition. From the article:

“This gardening ethic is very much in danger these days, where the emphasis on cultivation has given way to an emphasis on consumption,” says Harrison, asserting that a Stanford student would be more inclined to inspect another’s backyard on HGTV than to investigate one of the many campus gardens.

“We live in a kind of frenzy of consumerism which forgets that the true source of human happiness is not in the consuming but in the cultivation, in seeing something grow, or caring for something that is not yourself. And I don’t know how much we teach the young this ethic of caring for something that is not yourself. Or even caring for things such as an object or a plant. Consumption and cultivation are at war with each other.”

The idea of a “gardening ethic” is interesting. It’s true that lately I’ve been noticing gardens and plants more, and in turn this is making me feel more connected to my neighborhood and the natural world around me. There’s something to be said for literally taking time to stop and smell the roses.