Hasta La Ideas

domekit, by EFFALO

Our next Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club, is right around the corner so we sat down with our speaker, Michael Felix, to give you a little preview of his presentation next week! Felix is a design scientist concerned with the subtle interactions that occur between humans, nature, and technology. His work at EFFALO is grounded in the idea: Think hyperglobally, act microlocally. Michael will be speaking next Tuesday, March 22nd at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland at 6PM.

Curiosity Club: What is a design scientist? How does it differ from being strictly a Designer or Scientist?

Michael Felix: A design scientist is more concerned with the process over the aesthetic outcome. If the process of design is beautiful, then so will the end result. This requires the designer to think in wholes and approach problems empirically, focusing on just one thing at a time. Contrast this with conventional product design, where the emphasis is usually upon rapidly-designed, massively-produced, shiny objects.

Your work focuses on systems and processes, what tools (physical or otherwise) do you find yourself using repeatedly?

I try to document everything as it happens using blogging tools like tumblr or wordpress. I take pictures, record sounds and journal thoughts in the attempt to create an emerging narrative that reflects my process. More often than not, the intended audience for this documentation is myself and I refer to it regularly.

Mental tools are just as important. Maintaining a healthy tolerance for ambiguity will allow things to unfold in a natural way. Embracing both failure and success makes every experiment a worthwhile endeavor. I always aim to pay attention to wholeness and work iteratively, continually moving forward step-by-step.

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In this month’s edition of the Oregon Manifest Constructor’s Design Challenge, our three teams broke out the sketchpads and markers, dug deep into the braintrust of their design companies and scoured every corner of the globe to collect inspiration for re-defining the modern utility bike.

Bookmark the Oregon Manifest Design/Build Chronicles page or read the individual February Diaries below.

>> IDEO x Rock Lobster
>> Ziba x Signal Cycles
>> fuseproject x SyCip

Imagine a new generation of sustainable transportation for city-dwellers — packaged in our favorite two-wheel vehicle, the bicycle. The Oregon Manifest design challenge is a marriage of American craft and global design thinking of the highest degree. A call for collective innovation in bicycle design, the Constructor’s Design Challenge is bringing together three creative collaborations between custom bike builders and global design houses to rethink bicycle design for a new generation. In addition to these three collaborations, there will be 35 open builder entries and five student teams who will answer the call for innovation. Over the next nine months, we’ll be tracking the progress of the three design house collaborations.

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Since we seem to be on a celebrity kick this morning, let’s turn to something a little different than those last couple of posts, in that 1) it’s about something that’s definitely going to happen and 2) it’s not negative news. The American Institute of Architects have named NY Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman as their keynote speaker for this year’s AIA National Convention. Apparently the theme of the annual event this year is to be all about getting more green, a topic Mr. Friedman is familiar with, having just written a book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, all about dwindling resources and the need for a “green revolution.” Here’s a bit:

“Having Mr. Friedman as our keynote speaker is an ideal representation of the theme, ‘Regional Design Evolution: Ecology Matters,’” said AIA President Clark Manus, FAIA. “With unprecedented growth in urban population, we are going to explore the opportunities that cities and their larger regions offer because of their advantages of scale and proximity. The essential fact is, design needs must be looked at not from the viewpoint of an individual building, but rather how buildings factor into a broader examination of community, regional and even global perspectives. Regional character will ultimately define the uniqueness of the place and ensure a sound economic underpinning.”

The convention kicks off on May 12th in New Orleans. You can read up on it here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Tonight, Core77 welcomes Katy Meegan of Em-Space Book Arts Center to our bi-weekly creative speaker series: The Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club hosted at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. Come early and check out our space or check in with us online for the live broadcast! Read our Q+A with Katy here!

Tuesday, March 8th
6PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209

“Letterpress Printing and the Artist Book”
Katy will discuss a brief history of letterpress printing and movable type and how it is evolving in its contemporary applications. She will show and discuss examples of the kind of book art that is made in the Em Space Studios. Everyone will have a hands-on experience printing their very own piece of print ephemera on table top platen press or poster press.

Katy Meegan is a letterpress printer, bookbinder, teacher and artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. She got her start in the field of book and paper arts at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts in Minneapolis and graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Arts Management, Studio Arts and Gender Studies. She teaches workshops regularly at both Em Space Book Arts Center and the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC). She is the co-owner of Keeganmeegan & Co. and a member/co-founder of Em Space Book Arts Center.

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In anticipation of our next Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club, we’ve asked our speaker, Katy Meegan, to share some insight with us on her work. Katy Meegan is a letterpress printer, bookbinder, teacher and artist. She is the co-owner of Keeganmeegan & Co. and a member/co-founder of Em Space Book Arts Center. Meegan will be speaking next Tuesday, March 8th at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland at 6PM.

Curiosity Club: What is Book Art and Letterpress?

Katy Meegan: They are two of my favorite things (next to smoothies). They are also seemingly infinite and filled with possibilities. In the most literal sense, Book Art is a book created by an artist and Letterpress is a printing method used for relief printing. What separates letterpress from other relief printing methods is it’s use of a raised surface (or form), that gets inked up and pressed onto paper to deliver a right reading image. True book art supposedly started with William Blake in 1800s and letterpress as we know it today began with Gutenberg in the 1455.

What specific tools or rare equipment do you use? What do these tools do?

I use a plethora of tools to get jobs done, ranging from tabletop lead cutters, a paper drill, an exacto knife, to a 1700 lb proofing press. I don’t know if I would call this equipment rare… it’s more so highly sought after due to our generation’s interest in letterpress printing. Being that letterpress was the main printing application for 400+ years, there is a bounty of equipment and supplies, people just don’t generally sell it unless they have to.

These tools are magic. And there are way to many to count, name, and describe individually.

My favorite tools are a printer’s ruler and an exacto knife.

How do you integrate traditional and new technologies in your process? In what way do new technologies affect the final products?

I will use a computer to produce printing plates for commercial work, being that sometimes designs will be composed, typeset and illustrated on the computer. Primarily for personal work I use handset type and cuts, annexing modern technology from the process when possible.

Plates struggle to compare to the experience and printing quality of lead type, our modern ways although efficient can lack the high quality and craftsmanship that was once more valuable to the industry than cost efficiency.

Can you speak about the evolution of your process as a designer mentioning specific milestones (past and forthcoming)?

In the past all designers were really printers composing forms, making flourishes, logos, etc…only Illustrators would be involved in making custom headers and spot illustration, the graphic designer as we know it today is a really recent phenomenon.

If anything, I’ve been learning and growing my knowledge of how good design used to be achieved, by constraints and availability of materials.

Please share with us five things you never leave home without and why.

-Ruler, everything is in the details
-Music, it makes me dance
-Comfy shoes, flat out very important
-Exacto knife, lots of trimming and slicing always
-Warm tea, because Portland is cold sometimes

Are there any resources or links you’d like to share?

Em Space Book Arts Center
Minnesota Center for Book Arts
briar press
Vandercook Press
Independent Publishing Resource Center
Oregon College of Art and Craft
Keeganmeegan & Co.

About the Curiosity Club
Ex Curiositas, Scientia. We pledge to learn with out prejudice in pursuit of our mutual goal; perpetual noviceship. We admit that it is impossible to know everything about anything and thus we remain perpetually curious and perpetually novice.

Each meeting of the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club will contain a 18-28 minute lecture from a speaker who has an area of knowledge that appeals to the curiosity club. The presentation will be videocast on the Core77 blog along with any presentation materials. The series highlights an eclectic group of speakers across a broad range of subjects dictated by our curatorial interests in the areas of Culture, Design, Science, Technology, Art, Fabrication and Design Techniques and Lost Common Knowledge.

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