Hasta La Ideas

The website has been updated since it launched last summer

We were certainly curious to hear about the Brooklyn CSA+D when it first launched last summer, based on the community-supported agriculture model in which producers provide goods to local buyers on a subscription basis. Founded by Dianne Debicella and Jill Allyn Peterson, the program is now accepting submissions for its second season. Here, they share some of their learnings and exactly how they’re iterating on their inaugural offering.

Submission Deadline Extended for Second Season of Brooklyn Community Supported Art + Design. Accepting proposals from artists and designers through April 3rd, 2014.

As we begin the second season of Brooklyn CSA+D (Community Supported Art + Design), we take a look back on the inaugural season of Brooklyn’s first CSA for art and design – an experiment in translating the model of Community Supported Agriculture to the realm of aesthetic and creative production.

Throughout the summer and fall of 2013, the launch of CSA+D was met with loads of enthusiasm from the press as well as the community of artists, designers and collectors here in Brooklyn, who welcomed the possibility of a new marketplace that fosters a direct connection between makers and collectors. We were thrilled to receive hundreds of applications to our very first open call last summer, which yielded a range of offerings for shareholders, including painting, photography, ceramics, sculpture, poster art, wallpaper, installation and printmaking. The jury ranked the submissions and with those selections we then created balanced groups for half-shares and full-shares to ensure an even selection of unique pieces and editions, as well as 2D and 3D works.

Clockwise from top: Hannah June Lueptow, Katerina Usvitsky, Julia Gualtieri

Based on conversations with shareholders and survey results, it’s clear they had various reasons for joining. Some were ready to start collecting art but didn’t know how to start, while others felt that the mission of supporting emerging artists was an important enough reason on its own to become a shareholder. Some had new apartments to decorate while others wanted to join simply based on the element of surprise and delight. The idea that an expert panel would be selecting the work was reassuring for many shareholders, while others simply liked the artists’ previous work and knew that joining would be a safe bet.

The selected artists and designers, on the other hand, were slightly more unified in their reasons for getting involved: Most of them were drawn to CSA+D by the prospect of connecting to the community directly and getting to meet the people who would own their work. While we received some feedback from potential applicants who thought the $3,000 commission for 50 works was too low, the participants expressed satisfaction with the commission, explaining that they worked backward from that number to make decisions about the material costs, size and time commitment to determine their own compensation. This model is certainly not for every artist or designer, especially those creating large-scale or time- and resource-intensive works. But, as we saw with the results of the first season, there is much desirable work being created at the scale where the commission makes sense to the artists and the quality of the work is pleasing to the shareholders.

Clockwise from top: Evan Venegas, Chandra Bocci, Beth Bolgla

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Simon Enever is the head designer of New York based agency ECCO Design and the founder of byDEFAULT. Formerly a designer at fuseproject, Enever has focused on bringing iconic design to overlooked everyday products. byDEFAULT’s first product, TOOTHBRUSH, is a truly customizable modular toothbrush that’s as unique as the person who’s using it. But the main focus of this daily essential was to choose simplicity over complicated features we may see with other toothbrushes. Enever takes some time to step us through the design process.

After taking my first trip to a dentist after moving to the U.S. from London, I was told that I was damaging my gums by brushing too hard. Among various other tips, I was recommended to try out a simple vibrating brush. On the way home, I popped into the pharmacy to pick up a brush—somewhat excited about this new, slightly “techy” sounding product I was about to pick up. I was presented with this familiar sight:

Sifting through shelf after shelf, it didn’t matter if I was looking at manual, vibrating or full electric models, store brands or high-end brands; everything had that same gaudy look and cheap feel. Each brush was packed with gimmicky features and slogans in an attempt to lure me in. I gave up in the store and decided to look online. I had the exact same experience.

“Surely someone out there must have put some effort toward creating a well-designed, intelligent brush,” I thought. Despite a few nice attempts in the eco-friendly manual brush market, I couldn’t find a version that was reasonably priced (read: not $280 like some I came across) without the showy tendencies.

As a designer, these are the moments you wait for. I immediately got in touch with—what was to later become—the byDEFAULT team.

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How To (How To): The AIGA Research Project by Ziba
Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4 · Part 5 · Part 6

What Ziba had learned thus far let us explore possibilities for AIGA‘s future by projecting qualified concepts out into the real world. Early-stage design is necessarily focused on what can be, and design research is the fuel that powers educated guesses. Applying well-informed extrapolation to design early on increases the plausibility of whatever you set out to create, be it a product or an experience. Design research leads to outcomes that are not only new, but better.

Doing Crowdsourcing Right

Ziba socialized Project Medusa’s findings with AIGA’s leadership through another highly participatory workshop, including chapter presidents and assorted board members from 67 nationwide chapters. (We do so love workshops.) Once everyone had a good look at the curated information reflecting the current state of affairs, we took advantage of all those designers and asked them to propose new ways forward for the organization. It was a big group, so we call this research tool “crowdsourced ideation.” Here’s the question that needed answering, ultimately: What should AIGA look like in 100 years?

We knew what we hoped to get out of the meeting: an explosion of good, relevant hypotheses. It’s important to understand that crowdsourcing works in some situations, but it’s not a panacea. Counting on crowdsourcing to yield a silver bullet of an idea is setting yourself up for disappointment. The composition of your crowd and the questions you ask are both vital considerations before proceeding. Because we had a number of hypotheses about what might be right for AIGA already, our crowd of AIGA leaders served as a testing ground. Their replies to our questions let us see where our ideas were echoed or contradicted.

The key here, remember, would be to crystalize AIGA leaders’ reactions to the aggregated community perspective. Some leaders had participated in their local chapter’s Medusa events, allowing them to bring even deeper perspective to the table. There were two critical issues: the cost of membership, both upfront and ongoing, and what makes up the AIGA experience, from the moment of sign-up onward. What do they get for their investment of money, energy and time?

Making Collaboration Work

Three different activities each carried the tagline “The future of AIGA is in your hands.” The first elicited thoughts on the organization’s existing membership structure, and the second was a group discussion, with each table prompted by a different ‘hot topic’—horizontal communication between chapters, vertical relationships within the national organization, the relationship of design to business, and design for education and government. The third was a fun one, meant to expose people’s personal agendas, with the prompt, “If you were king/queen of AIGA for a day, of all the thing’s you’d do, which one would you be best remembered for, in the distant future?”

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Professor Kevin Shankwiler of GeorgiaTech has been teaching a third-year bicycle studio for the past four years. The focus of the 8-week project is primarily on understanding product systems design and exploring opportunities for innovation in commuter bike design. David Hotard was among the 12 students in the SRAM-sponsored fall studio, which culminated with four teams (of three students each) developing very different bikes. He worked with Matthew Campbell and Edwin Collier on reimagining the hubless wheel as a cargo space; here Hotard shares how they arrived at the final product.

“Transport” is a commuter bike design project sponsored by SRAM. Although panniers and saddle bags are on the market to make commuting easier, we found that many cyclists prefer to ride with a traditional backpack. This doesn’t mean that a backpack is comfortable; it’s just more practical than the panniers that clip to a rack. We discovered that many commuters didn’t want a bag that felt like a dedicated commuting bag but rather a bag that would work in any scenario. We started to look at what we do with bags when we’re traveling by car, plane, train, and other means and realized that there is almost always a compartment for them. We realized that what commuters wanted was that compartment… on their bike. Research on futuristic bike concepts inspired us to use the negative space of the much-debated hubless wheel for our trunk. The result shows that a trunk in the wheel could easily accommodate various backpacks and might well be very feasible solution. We were also happy to see that Yale mechanical engineering students built a bike with a hubless wheel while we were in the midst of our project.

We researched the hubless wheel to the extent that we could validate that it is technologically feasible; besides the Yale project, the Lunartic was an inspiration to us. Although it may be more expensive to produce and currently less structurally sound than a traditional wheel, we know that in many cases people are willing to pay more for a design that satisfies their needs. We did a lot of research looking at concept bikes, current products and observing users. The hubless wheel storage system brought those three areas of research together by giving commuters the ability to travel with any bag, not just a rack-able bag, and also showed a practical purpose for a hubless wheel concept.

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Text & Images by Joey Cofone

There a few greater joys in life than the creative process. From an unexpected spark of inspiration to refining an idea, starting the process to applying the final touches—creating is the peak of human excellence. After searching for a notebook that would be the ultimate tool for the ultimate activity, and falling up short, we decided to make it ourselves.

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