Hasta La Ideas

Just in time for the release of Gloria Vanderbilt‘s steamy novel about the widow of a Frank Lloyd Wright-like architect (warning: it involves a discovered cache of letters wrapped with a magenta ribbon), the Guggenheim today launched an online forum that will address the subject of how design can enhance or detract from everyday life. “Between the Over- and Underdesigned,” which runs through July 2 on the museum’s website, is the first in a series of moderated online discussions on the arts, architecture, and design. Leading the inaugural forum is journalist and critic Aric Chen, who is virtually joined by panelists Sarah Herda, executive director of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; Arjo Klamer, professor of the economics of art and culture at Erasmus University in Rotterdam; Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; and David van der Leer, assistant curator of architecture and design at the Guggenheim. The forum encourages visitors from around the world to submit comments and questions for consideration by the panelists and to participate in two live chat sessions scheduled for this Thursday (with Chen) and next Tuesday (with van der Leer). Lupton has already gotten things off to a rousing start:

Imagine walking into a brand-new public building—let’s say it’s a museum, a campus student center, or a mental-health clinic. Every detail has been designed, from the drop ceiling to the polished floors. But taped to the security desk is a paper sign, printed out in all-caps Times Roman, that says Restrooms Are Downstairs in the Basement Behind the Boiler Room or Don’t Even Think About Asking Me Where the Elevator Is. These homemade signs boil over with irritation, directed at a clueless public who don’t know how the building works. What’s happening here is not a failure of the public, however, but a failure of design.

Are we overdesigning our homes, our cities, ourselves? Or are we not designing them enough? How do we now define “good design”? Would you ever band together a stack of racy letters with a magenta ribbon? Join the conversation here.

If you have missed any of this season’s Layer Tennis matches, then we just don’t know what to do with you anymore. But fortunately for you, we have an opportunity for you to redeem yourself in the faces of us. That solution? Cancel all of your plans for the day and catch not one but two matches today, with the playoff season just now kicking off. First up today, at 10am Central, it’s a David and Goliath battle as the venerable Chris Glass faces off against the voter-selected winner of one of the qualifying matches, Gregory Hubacek. Will it be a moping of the floor or an incredible defeat for the ages? Second, it’s something of the main event, with mega-designer Sam Potts waring against the also-a-mega-designer, Aaron Draplin. That match kicks off at 2pm. So there’s your day, all planned out for you. You’re welcome.

When it comes to web design, is the customer always right? [Cut to Jenny Holzer‘s “Protect Me From What I Want“] It depends on who you ask. Google is a believer in crowdsourcing, constantly tweaking its interface based on user behavior. The company’s allegiance to this model was a key factor in designer Douglas Bowman‘s decision to leave Google earlier this year for Twitter, where he is now creative director. Miguel Helft sized up the data-driven design debate in a recent New York Times piece that also highlights a hybrid approach that aims to go deeper: “It is more from engaging with users, watching what they do, understanding their pain points, that you get big leaps in design,” Debra Dunn, an associate professor at the Stanford Institute of Design, told Helft.

That approach informed a redesign at Cooliris, a start-up whose software offers a way to view pictures and videos on a three-dimensional virtual wall of thumbnail images. In the new version, which Ms. Dunn helped design, the company includes headlines and other text next to images.

“Even though it changes the visual impact, it is critical that people have access to that information as they are scanning the wall,” Ms. Dunn said. “Now that it is out there, we can do the kind of micro-testing that Google talks about. But the broad design decision was not made that way.”

Previously on UnBeige:

Photojournalism is the focus of Lens, the newest addition to The New York Times‘ gaggle of blogs. “Lens will be a showcase for the work of Times photographers, but it will also highlight the best images from other newspapers, magazines, news organizations and picture agencies, and from around the Web,” wrote David W. Dunlap in a post introducing the blog. Also look for Lens to highlight photography books, exhibitions, and work from the Times‘ vast pictorial archive while building a community of readers (or viewers, as the case may be) that will occasionally be tapped to submit their own photos. The fun starts with Fred R. Conrad‘s ode to slow photography, which includes his Hiroshi Sugimoto-flavored black-and-white shot of an old-school Jersey City movie theater, and Stephen Crowley on the strange ritual that is a White House photo op. Yesterday, Todd Heisler posted a series of photos that all contained his four-legged nemesis: plastic chairs. “They come in different colors but they are all variations of the same design,” writes Heisler. “Not unlike the humans who rest upon them.”

“What I Wish for the World” is the theme of this year’s “Doodle 4 Google” contest, in which kids from around the country compete to have their Google logo redesign featured, for one glorious day, on the search giant’s homepage. The judges selected 400 state finalists (100 in each of four grade-level groups) and then narrowed the field to 40 regional winners. Now it’s up to you, the Google-going public, to vote for your favorites. The online voting is open through Monday, May 18.

Given the global wish theme, the doodles are heavy on world peace, endangered species (particularly polar bears), trees, and energy motifs (one 12-year-old West Virginian with the delightful name of Austin Gage Druid adorned the Google logo with colorful wind turbines). The entries from the students in grades 10-12 tend to be more abstract, including 17-year-old Antony Martinez‘s Google grafitti, created to represent his wish: “for public art to be more accepted.” But we’re suckers for simplicity and so are throwing our support behind 12-year-old Abigail Kois of Wolworth, New York, who put down her pencil and picked up some paperclips. “What I wish for the world is unity,” wrote Kois in her entry (pictured above). “The theme is represented by connected paper clips in my doodle….Each clip is interconnected much the way people are.”

Previously on UnBeige: