Visit: The relatively small town of Columbus, Indiana is the home of buildings by almost every major architect building since the mid-twentieth century. We roamed the streets marveling at the juxtaposition of buildings by Pei, Saarinen, Pelli, Meier - the list goes on and on...
“To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to transform prose into poetry.”
Paul Rand
“To design is to plan and to organize, to order, to relate and to control. In short it embraces all means of opposing disorder and accident. Therefore it signifies a human need and qualifies man’s thinking and doing.”
Josef Albers
“For design is about the making of things: things that are memorable and have presence in the world of the mind. It makes demands upon our ability both to consolidate information as knowledge and to deploy it imaginatively to creative purpose in the pursuit of fresh information.”
Krome Barratt
“The essential function of our profession [design] in our society is to enhance and cultivate communications toward an easier understanding of ideas and complex problems, in the shortest possible time for higher visual and auditory retention of data.”
Will Burtin
Visits and Discoveries
Indianapolis, IN: Indianapolis Museum of Art
Visit: We met with R. Craig Miller, Curator of Design. Craig came to Indianappolis four years ago from the Denver Art Museum, which is where we first met him.
He was involved in working with the Museum's addition of the Miller House...
Rochester, NY: Vignelli Center for Design Studies, RIT
Visit: We met with Roger Remington, long time colleague, and a member of our Advisory Board
RIT acquired the Vignelli Archive a few years ago (although it was not a formal gift until quite recently). Massimo Vignelli...
Rochester, NY: RIT Carey Collection Design Archives
Visit: We met with Kari Horowicz, Archivist, and Stephen Galbraith, Assoc. Archivist.
The Cary collection is a rare book collection which tracks the history and development of typography. From cuneiform to present day. Books arranged on the shelf by type designer....
Folkwang Universty of the Arts
We arrived just in time to view the opening of the end-of-year exhibition of student work. Folkwang was founded on the principle of cross-disciplinary arts eduction. They have a particulary good interdisciplinary design program, as stated on their website:
"Well-trained designers make...
Essen: Red Dot Museum
We had visited the Red Dot Museum 10 years ago, on a tour with our son (who was studying industrial design).Set within a renovated factory, with amazing visual juxtopositions.
The red dot design museum is unique. It displays the world's largest and surely also the most unusual...
Esssen: Zollverein Industrial Park
The Zollverein Industrial Complex is the city's most famous landmark. For decades, the coal mine (current form mainly from 1932, closed in 1986) and the coking plant (closed in 1993) ranked among the largest of their kinds in Europe. Shaft XII...