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NPR's The Picture Show.

I recently had a blog post published on NPR's The Picture Show. Does this mean I'm officially published now? I'm not sure....

Anyway, you can read it here.

On inspiring and inspiration.

Today I received an email asking for a letter of recommendation for someone in a not so far gone past life. This someone was nominated for an award, and a mutual contact asked me to write a kind word. "But don't mention this," she implored. "He doesn't know he's been nominated."

And so my thoughts turned to this person in particular, and others in general who are worthy of this type of award because they inspire. And then I thought about that word and the verb it represents. I thought about my role as a teacher and how "inspire" is part of my job description. I thought about people in my own life who have inspired and those who have not. I thought about how I've told more than one person who's crossed my path that if I do nothing else in this world, let me first and foremost inspire. Were my legacy to be synonymous with one word, let that word be "inspire." If there is room for only one phrase in my epitaph, let it be "She was an inspiration."

But what does it mean to truly inspire? What qualities must one possess to be an inspiration? Will and I discussed this in depth on our evening walk with the dogs, ruminating philosophically under the silhouette of Baltimore's Washington Monument. Here are our collective thoughts on the matter.

In order to be an inspiration, one must:

1 Be passionate. About something. Anything. Just be passionate. Openly. With abandon. Regardless of what others think.

2 Have self-respect. Know what you believe in. Know what you're good at. Then stand up for it and yourself. If you don't have a backbone, get one. Be selfish sometimes. That's what people with healthy doses of self-respect do.

3 Be intellectually curious. Explore, question, research, challenge. Know what you're talking about. Know what others are talking about. Which is directly tied to number four.

4 Be engaging. Read interesting things so you'll have interesting things to say. Go to fascinating places so you'll have compelling stories to tell. Make yourself uncomfortable so you'll always be challenged. Surround yourself with people of other cultures, disciplines, and perspectives so you'll cultivate varying viewpoints yourself. Never stop learning.

5 Stand for something. Ideally, it will be for the right thing. But even if you're unsure, stand up for something. Tall. Strong. Head up, shoulders back. Don't flinch. People will respect you for it.

6 Possess integrity. If you adhere to number five with sincerity, you will have achieved number six. Have you ever watched The Wire? Even though many of  the show's characters are involved in all manner of questionable, illegal activities, we like them. Omar? My favorite. Stringer Bell? I cried when he died. Bodie? Unequivocably moral.

And yet, they're all drug dealers; how can this be? Because on a certain, unmistakable level, they are true to their own set of morals and values, defined by the culture they inhabit. They have integrity.

7 Persist. To put it simply, in the words of Winston Churchill, never, ever, ever give up. Someone is always watching, and they will notice when you don't. Give up, that is.

8 Model. Be the change you wish to see, embody the values you seek to have emulated. Be honest with and challenge yourself, so you may challenge and be honest with others.

9 Produce. Either alone or by proxy. You can't expect a leader of a large team to have an omnipotent skillset. For example, Steve Jobs probably doesn't have the design skills that Jonathan Ive has. But, by opening doors, removing obstacles, dreaming and articulating lofty visions and creating an environment conducive to innovation and creativity, he creates by proxy through those he leads. 

10 Be optimistic. Make lemonade out of lemons. And when you pour it in a glass to find that it's not as much as you thought, remember, the glass if half-full, not half-empty.

Cities, urban interfaces, and consequential strangers.

I heard a piece on WYPR the other day on consequential strangers and how important they are in our daily lives. I then found this article in Time Magazine:

If you look at the relationship continuum from stranger to soul mate, consequential strangers fall in that vast territory just beyond strangers and just short of friends. When people say they have 765 friends on Facebook, most of them are consequential strangers.

It made me wonder: what can designers and urban planners do to facilitate the cultivation of consequential strangers? How can social media, design, and interactive technologies meld with architecture and the urban space to makes cities more habitable and enjoyable?

I was coming out of a restaurant in DC the other day and stopped for a moment to check-in via the Gowalla app on my iPhone. I asked the person next to me if she was on Gowalla and wanted to check in, too. Gowalla, by the way, is a social media platform that basically turns whole cities into a game board. Not a virtual one, either. Participation is based on your physical GPS location at any given moment. You have to be there to play. Out in the real world.

She said no, she didn't really engage with Twitter and other social media technologies because she was "out in the real world, actually doing stuff with real people." I didn't respond, but I've thought about it a lot since. Thought a lot about how some people don't get social media. How it's not something that takes the place of your physical interactions with other people, but rather, enhances and enriches those interactions. I've known this for a long time, based on my own personal experiences, but research is now starting to bear this out.

What does the future hold for us as more of the physical environments we inhabit become interactive? What will it mean, for real, when buildings and streets and lights and cars evolve in their ability to communicate and interact with us, when physical objects and buildings and environments actually become actors with us on the stage, rather than just the stage itself?

My circle of consequential strangers is much richer and more engaging due to my participation in social media, my most socially lucrative thus far being Flickr, where I met Michael Surtees, based on our shared interests of design and Weimaraners, and one of my colleagues at NPR, another Flickr contact who has a Weimaraner and read via a link back to my blog while I was still in Seattle that I was moving to DC. And, before either of us were employed at NPR. Our employment within months of each other was totally unrelated and quite the surprise. Ask me more sometime. It's a very interesting story.

Oh, not to mention the fact that Will and I met in June 2001 on the now defunct kiss.com.

Anyway, these and other interactive technologies keep me in the loop with people thousands of miles away. So that every time I do go back to Seattle, I'm up-to-date not just on my friends lives, but also on what's new in the city. When I get off the plane, it's as if I never left. That's a nice feeling.

The eldest.

 

My sister Megan, 1970-something. Purgatory ski resort, just north of Durango, CO.

This morning, when I liberally applied my new Lush conditioner, the smell reminded me of my sister, Megan.

I don't know what it was. Maybe the chalky orangeness of it. Maybe the woodsy sweetness in it. Whatever it was, it was as if she'd walked past the room and I could smell her.
My sister Megan, for those who don't know, is really the closest thing I ever had to a mother. She's thirteen and a half years older than me and took care of me when I was little, both before and after my mother died.
If I could paint a picture of Megan with words, first I would brush her face with a stroke of dignity, followed by a sigh of stately grace. For her hair, I would layer burnt umber with a swash of heated passion. Her skin with muted eggshells and her eyes, mossy olive and emerald.
I remember these things when I think of my sister:

Snow
Mountains
Colorado
Cold
Sun
Skiing
Durango
Orange Volkswagen Beetle
Siberian husky
Norwegian meatballs
Nutmeg
Macaroni and cheese
Auburn
Royal Albert teacups
Madame Alexander dolls
Margaret
Stern
Strong
Integrity
Respect
Peanut Butter
Sewing machine
Yarn needle
Cowboy hats boots shirts western
The Bar-D Ranch

Write, then.

I am inspired by Orangette. I want to write. I really do. And what this means is that I need to start writing every day. Even if it's just a paragraph. But speaking of paragraphs, I now hate how the ones on this blog look. Thanks to Ellen Lupton, who gave a type workshop to our design group at NPR last week. She mentioned things like paragraph, white space, and ugly. She made us notice things we hadn't noticed before, at least not in a web context. We were fascinated and then ashamed. We all vowed to be better designers, especially of paragraphs.

Now, onto the serious writing. Today was a warm one in the mid-Atlantic. For January at least. It was 60-degrees in Baltimore and I had the day off, so I took the dogs for a run on Poplar Hill Road. As we were walking through the lovely poplar groves, I wondered if the forests of Germany are like the woods of Baltimore. Because these beautiful German hounds of mine blended in, chameleon-like.

They blend into the woods of the Pacific Northwest, too. But not as seemlessly as they do here. It made me think of softness, and ethereal, and emphemeral, and gray. It made me want to write a poem.

Branches bare
Breath skims the surface
Powdered hush

No design is good design.

 

Last semester, I taught a course on visualizing information at MICA. I used Tufte's first book, The Visual Display of Quantitative information. I love Tufte. I love his simple, Swiss modern approach to design. His strict belief in form following function. His unwavering defense of content and firm assertion that data presented must be understandable above all else.

However, not all my students agreed with his principles. Many of them were enthralled by all the infographics that GOOD magazine produces. Because face it, they're visually beautiful, right? I mean, the colors, the typography, the eye candy. To me, however, most infographics that fit into that genre are more art than design. Why? Because through superfluous ornamentation, they dumb the data down. And because they don't function well. Functionality is the single most important thing separating design from art. 

Good design must function and function well. These criteria do not apply to art.

One student even went so far as to say that "Tufte is anti-design." I couldn't disagree more, and here are my reasons, cloaked in Dieter Rams 10 principles for good design:

Good design is innovative

Maybe you couldn't really call an infographic innovative in and of itself, but you definitely could if the information was tied to a database and represented digitally. iPhone apps, anyone?

Good design makes a product useful

There's that function requirement again. Good design functions. If it doesn't, it's bad design. Or maybe good art. 

Good design is aesthetic

Anyone who's studied the International Typographic Style and the Bauhaus knows that good aesthetics in design don't mean loud and meaningless and flashy. White space is a beautiful thing and God/Allah/Yoda/insert-your-diety-here knows the world needs more of it.

Good design helps a product to be understood

See? It has to work! If those extra textures, lines, and 3-D effects don't help an infographic clearly explain the data, then LEAVE IT OUT.

Good design is unobtrusive

If those extra textures, lines, and 3-D effects overwhelm the data and impede the user's understanding, what you have is an illustration, not good information design. 

Good design is honest

Yes, honest. Which is especially tricky where data is considered. Who didn't learn in Statistics 101 that numbers lie? Well, they can be down right pathological about lying if visually interpreted in the hands of an incompetent designer. Or a very competent illustrator.

Good design is durable

Durable and classic. Like the infographic that is now synonymous with Tufte's name by Charles Joseph Minard: Napoleon's March. This piece, designed in 1869, is timeless. 

Good design is consistent to the last detail

I would say this is especially relevant to information design. When you're dealing with reams of data, you'd better be paying attention to detail.

Good design is concerned with the environment

In this regard, it seems to me that most information design these days is done digitally; large quantities of data lend themselves well to interactive technologies. So, not much paper is wasted. However, you can't forget about the server space it takes to host databases. Server farms are a huge energy suck. Then again, Tufte recommends using only as much ink is necessary to adequately interpret your data. Nothing more, nothing less. Which probably equates to fewer pixels, too.

Good design is as little design as possible

And this is why I love Tufte. This is exactly what he means when he damns things like chart junk and data ink.  If a large portion of the ink in your piece is used to create illustrations void of data, then it's bad design. 

Remember that article by Beatrice Ward, The Crystal Goblet? Well, it applies to information design, too. A crystal goblet exists to support its contents, not overpower them. Honestly, this is where I think much information design fails. The goblet isn't crystal, but more like opaque plastic.

Lastly, my own assertion: Good design is smart.

One of my students felt that Tufte's work was geared toward a highly educated audience, i.e., doctors and research scientists, and therefore, not practical for someone of average intelligence. But if you look through his books, you'll see lots of designs that are geared toward the average person. Like the train schedule (p 31). And Dr Snow's cholera map of central London (p 24). The New York City Weather Map (p 30), and the beautiful time-based relational graphics on pages 42-43. 

Designers should never dumb things down, but rather, challenge, inspire, and raise the bar a little higher.