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Here’s a thing I recently wrote about design thinking. “Design Thinking” has become the word of the moment in academic, government, and business communities. Before we can address how we’ll utilize Design Thinking in our program, we must define Design. When we introduce these topics, we are very clear with our students that Design is not Art. Often “Art” is confused with “Craft”. While similar in most people’s minds, our working definition, directly attributed to A.O. Scott in the book *Better Living Through Criticism*, is that art is criticism while craft is skill in making something. In this way, a craftsperson may be highly skilled but may not be making a statement while an artist may make a statement with limited technical skills. ...

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I have been named the Parsons Professor of Digital Innovation at the University of Baltimore! I’m very excited about this opportunity and have some big ideas on how we can continue to make UBalt be the one of the best Universities in the region (especially for Design but I digress). After being appointed, I was asked to do a Q&A with our University communications group and have posted it, unedited, here. ...

I asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What can interface designers can learn from fashion designers?” This is its response: Interface designers and fashion designers both play an important role in creating visual and functional designs that are intended to be used by people. There are several things that interface designers can learn from fashion designers that can help them create better designs. Firstly, fashion designers are experts at creating designs that are visually appealing and aesthetically pleasing. They understand the principles of color, composition, and proportion, and how to use them to create a cohesive and attractive design. Interface designers can learn from this by paying attention to the visual design of their interfaces and making sure that they are pleasing to the eye and easy to use. ...

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Over the summer, a former student “interviewed” me over e-mail about placebo buttons. If you’re unaware, placebo buttons are buttons that don’t actually do anything and are instead used to make a person feel in control of the situation. The most commonly referenced buttons are elevator close buttons (they just close on their own) and pedestrian press-to-cross buttons at intersections. Patrick did a small, informal study that he wrote about at EXBERLINER entitled Idiot buttons: The brutal truth about Berlin’s pedestrian crossings. He found this: ...

One of the lost papers that never got published was our work on a co-design technique we called “Story Walk”. After tweeting about it, we were contacted by a very angry librarian who said she owned the name “Story Walk” and we either owed her money or we needed to change our name…hence, Saga Walk. If I remember correctly, this was Craig Donanhue’s idea and I’m so glad he came up with it. We were having some problems with overly excited kids “WE LOVE DESIGN!!!” who needed to move. By having the kids walk around and make notes and ideas, we kept their bodies and brains moving. ...

The future of fashion looks green…not like the emerald, but in environmental sustainability. The use of reclaimed materials, reduction in seasonality, the adoption of a slower cycle will all contribute to the fashion trends over the next five years. According to the article “Trend forecasters predict a more trendless future”, consumers have adopted the concept as a core component of their fashion interests at a quicker rate during the pandemic. Sustainability can be measured in multiple ways: impact on the environment, treatment of workers, or generation of waste material. Some manufacturers, such as H&M, have begun to focus on utilizing waste material in the production process to reduce environmental impact. Their new line, H&M Edition by John Boyega, focuses on clothes made of organic materials, materials discarded in other productions, or recycled artificial fibers. The line also focuses on the ability of clothing to be repaired as a way to be more sustainable as highlighted in the fact that “it’s estimated that the average garment is worn only ten times before being disposed of, according to a leading clothes waste charity.” ...

ARTH201: Summer 2021 Final Group Project from Greg Walsh on Vimeo. Our final project for ARTH201 done in the style of/parodying SmartHistory.

James Ensor Meet James Ensor Belgium’s famous painter Dig him up and shake his hand Appreciate the man Before there were junk stores Before there was junk He lived with his mother and the torments of Christ They Might Be Giants, 1994 In the song “Meet James Ensor”, the band They Might Be Giants (1994) discuss one aspect of the late 19th Century that we see in Barkin’s essay “The Crisis of Modernity”. Until this time of industrialization, purchased belongings were precious. Textiles and materials were purchased, fabricated into something, and disassembled then re-used when their usefulness was finished…there was no junk. This move towards the inevitable “junk stores” is an excellent framework for some of the themes present in the essay that go beyond a nostalgia for the past: industrialization, urbanization, and the affect on humans. ...