Tom Dolle was invited by the Taiwan Ministry of Education to give a lecture and workshop for 30 of the best design students from schools across Taiwan. The workshop was part of a scholarship program to award graduate scholarships at partner institutions around the world including Pratt Institute, where Tom Dolle is an adjunct professor. The 2-week event took place June 28-July 10 at Yunlin University in Douliou City, Yunlin county in south-central Taiwan.
The 2-day workshop resulted in some amazing work. Students created letterforms out of common materials, photographed them and then created layouts including a famous quote on design. A complete sampling of the work can be seen here.
As a guest of the Taiwan MOE, Tom was taken on side trips around Taiwan with visits to Sun Moon Lake, Taipei, and Kaohsiung. He was joined by colleagues from USC, Art Center, Sheridan and Parsons.
As Ben Paynter writes in Fast Company, major consumer brands still have a lot to learn as social tools continue to proliferate. He examines user data and makes 5 major conclusions (nicely illustrated in the included graphic): Advocates trump followers, Context matters, Social tools are a means not an end, and Gimmicks marginalize trust.
As Ken Carbone describes in Fast Company, the new $100 bill, although a laudable effort at security encoding, is a missed opportunity for good government design. If you’re offended by cheesy corporate motivational-type films, don’t watch the official video release.
As featured here in Fast Company, adapted from his book Engage, Brian Solis presents his list of suggestions to help businesses learn how to engage customers on Twitter through the examples of those companies, from Dell to Zappos, already successfully building online communities.
Ok, this is scary but shows why the iPad (and Apple’s general design philosophy) works so well. A 2.5 year old interacting with an iPad for the first time (from a Laughing Squid post):
Found a recent mention of Dieter Rams and his venerable Ten Principles for Good Design (“The Ten Commandments”):
• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is consequent to the last detail.
• Good design is concerned with the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.
Rams designed the cravable Braun electronics of the 60s and 70s, along with furniture and other industrial design goods. They are among the most beautiful and timeless items ever made (most in the collection of MoMA and other museums). In a recent Gizmodo review, Rams is the man whose products are at the heart of Jonathan Ive’s design philosophy for Apple, an influence that permeates every single product at Apple, from hardware to user-interface design.
Vitsoe is a great furniture company with many of Rams’ items, and a great synopsis of his design philosophy.
I saw this video and thought it felt a lot like the past year–hold on! (courtesy the new Intimidator at Carowinds, the tallest, fastest and longest roller coaster in the Southeast)
Our holiday card and blog art by Chris Riely, staff designer and ace illustrator, won a runner-up in Creative Quarterly 19. You can see the winners here, and it will be published on-line and print in June.
The “Yule Blog” theme was used for the art and tied our printed holiday card into the blog entry, where some staff revealed their most memorable holiday moments. Congratulations Chris, you deserve it!
Michael Paul Smith creates realistic miniature sets with just enough obsession to make him wonderfully nuts in my book. As this article in a recent NY Times explains, he’s created a fictitious town, Elgin Park, and populated it with his collection of die cast car models of 50s-60s vehicles and custom-made houses, buildings and common small-town elements that look right out of Mayberry (or the small towns around Ohio where I grew up). The attention to period detail and his skill as a set designer, photographer and model-maker make these un-Photoshopped images so real you wouldn’t know they were sets. His photos are on flickr (he really needs to print and sell these–I’d buy some). I love when people have hobbies that become passionate obsessions, and they take them to the highest level–especially when they gel with my love of cars, car models, doll houses and miniatures. Hats off!
For some reason, robots come in and out of popular culture. Within a block of my office, there are 2 great displays of creative robots from different ends of the spectrum.
Across the street in the Paul Smith windows are the high version (of course). They are made by Bennett Robot Works (www.bennettrobotworks.com) out of old scraps of industrial design history. They are incredible combinations of oddball parts with a wit and sensibility that shows this guy knows his equipment, and he knows his robots (if only I could get my 90 year old tinkerer dad with all this junk in his basement busy).
Around the corner at Beads of Paradise are handmade robots from Thailand. Made from scraps of wood and bright colors, they are fun and childlike. Although these would be the “low” ones (under $100 versus $1500 and up for the Bennett ones), who wouldn’t want five of them to greet you when you come home?
Is this too cool, twisted and perfect to be real? Mad Men, one of my favorite shows of the last few years, is licensing a line of Barbie dolls. As if there is any doubt, we are truly at the apex of full-circle cultural achievement. Check out the NYTimes article.
Now think about it. Barbie, born in 1959 (during a period of extreme sexual repression), and Mad Men, about Madison Avenue ad agencies of the early 60s (made in a period of extreme sexual expression). Beautiful airhead blonde wife and handsome dog of a husband. Sidekicks: buxom redhead bombshell and older grey fox. Glam clothes (complete with undergarments), flip and beehive hairdos, and sultry facial expressions. One made for wholesome girls, the other very much for adults. But the difference is only in the smallest of details.
Now I have to look through ebay to see if the original Barbies may have included packs of cigarettes and martini glasses somewhere. I’m almost sure they did….
I’ve always been a fan of film and television title sequences. You can see some favorites here on my YouTube page, and I have some great collections I show to my students. The NYTimes this week ran a story (New Honor for the Designs That Get Movies Moving) about the South by Southwest Festival, which is the first known film-oriented awards program to finally recognize title sequences as a distinct form. From the early days of Saul Bass and the Hitchcock films, to Kyle Cooper and the late-90′s motion-grunge style, to today’s mixed media and captivating TV intros, title sequences are often the best part of a movie or show.
Several of my students this semester are very interested in graffiti (aren’t all art students?), and coincidentally I spotted this truck yesterday on 15th Street. There seems to re a resurgence of arty graffiti, but thankfully we aren’t seeing the wholesale tagging of the city we saw in the bad ’70s and ’80s. What’s next–are tube tops and hot pants in the air for Spring?
Having designed the 26 year old print publication The Hill for many years now, TDD has designed and launched a new feature-rich web version. The all volunteer publication is a journal of the Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Wallabout neighborhoods of Brooklyn, with great articles and stories chronicling the people, the businesses, the organizations and the changes that have made this one of New York’s most dynamic regions. The site uses the WordPress CMS platform and is WooTheme-template-based, allowing for ease of uploading and editing as well as movie, image and sound file uploads. Added to a strong Facebook presence, ecard promotion campaign and buzz among other Brooklyn organizations, The Hill is now enjoying huge jumps in readership–far outpacing the 7500 print run. Congratulations to the team!
Just a quick observation–isn’t it odd that we still have a superstitious notion about the number 13? Many buildings in NYC don’t have a 13th floor, but a 12A. I think we should make 13 the new lucky number (although the fact that teenage starts at 13 may be reason enough to leave it unlucky!)
Tom Dolle Design is one of New York’s finest strategic design, marketing and branding firms.
A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, Dolle is also an adjunct professor in Pratt's Graduate Communications Design program. Key members of the Tom Dolle Design creative team include senior designers Chris Riely and Mary Hall, both graduates of Pratt Institute.
The company’s current focus is branding, communications and packaging, as well as design consultation directing strategy, staffing, long-range planning and product development.
Over the years Tom Dolle Design has garnered every major design award and Dolle has been quoted on design issues in publications such as The New York Times, Crain’s New York Business and Communication Arts.
Tom Dolle was invited by the Taiwan Ministry of Education to give a lecture and workshop for 30 of the best design students from schools across Taiwan. The workshop was part of a scholarship program to award graduate scholarships at partner institutions around the world including Pratt Institute, where Tom Dolle is an adjunct professor. The 2-week event took place June 28-July 10 at Yunlin University in Douliou City, Yunlin county in south-central Taiwan.
The 2-day workshop resulted in some amazing work. Students created letterforms out of common materials, photographed them and then created layouts including a famous quote on design. A complete sampling of the work can be seen here.
