Insights 7.02

 Design:

• Examining the graphic design of democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign posters. 
• While 'sustainable' materials are a perennial element in design school thesis exhibitions, those solutions typically stay frozen in portfolios or within gallery walls. The reasons for the limited reach of those proposed materials are many: higher raw input costs than existing options, labor-intensive techniques, and perhaps most of all, almost no one understanding how to work with those new materials. An online database called Materiom is looking to change that, by putting together a comprehensive, living how-to guide.  

Engineering Communities: 

• About a plan to build a densely populated techno-religious utopia for Mormons in Vermont. Historically, attempts of minority groups (whether religious, ethnic, or political) to build their own self-sufficient communities has been met with hostility by surrounding populations belonging to the majority. That majority frequently leverages state power via bureaucratic hurdles like permitting, zoning, and preservation initiatives, which can be broadly interpreted and so are prone to weaponization by those seeking to maintain the status quo. 

Building Things: 

• Producing small batch garments quickly and cost effectively. 

Data Logging: 

• Amazon uses a credit-score style point rating system to cajole or coerce sellers that use their platform into behaving much like the e-commerce giant itself: pushing toward razor thin margins and goods that stay moving as constantly, quickly, and fluidly as possible. 

 

Automatons: 

• New(ish) training methodologies for robotic grippers and arms is helping expand the range of cost-effective applications for those technologies. Maybe someday soon we will have affordable robots that can unload the dishwasher, fold laundry, and other domestic tasks that have evaded easy automation via single-purpose appliances. 
• Disney's R&D program has led to the development of a robotic stunt double .

Material Culture:

• Every object found in a drained canal in Amsterdam, photographed, logged, and put online in a massive, beautiful representation of material culture over time. The collection is full of the common and concerning alike: coins, guns, transit passes, human bones, electronics, thread spools. The object timeline also reveals when manufacturing techniques and materials become widely available and inexpensive enough that they could be carelessly lost to the waters or intentionally discarded. 
• A fascinating story on the origins of aquariums and how bringing a slice of the oceanic world into the home became a brief Victorian era craze, with saltwater peddlers, best-selling guides to marine life, and some real damage done to coastal habitats by the reckless harvesting of specimens.  

More next week. 

Insights 6.25

 Design:

• “Young people don’t own houses, they don’t have 401(k)s, and they don’t have health insurance. There is anxiety about what the future holds, so having this cute, adorable anthropomorphic furniture in our homes gives us a sense of comfort. In times of economic and political turmoil, people turn to cute": the trend in furniture and home furnishings toward thick, almost cartoonishly constructed objects. This aesthetic seems to be a different form of the same escapism-via-materialism of IKEA's recent vaguely spiritual line we've discussed in the past. In both cases, the objects are an indication of a desire to regress or retreat away from the troubling, terrifying events going on in the world beyond the constructed realities of our domestic spaces.
• During World War II, U.S. consumer classes were in the depths of rationing, focused on basic survival rather than social signaling. Following the war, advertisers sought to capitalize on pent up demand, not just for goods, but for a better, peaceful, high-tech future. Many of the visual tropes and promises of a better tomorrow through consumption that are still with us today have their origins in those more jubilant decades.

Feeding the Future: 

• TechCrunch has a typically glowingly write-up about a startup called Creator (formerly Momentum Machines) that makes an automated burger machine where each burger can be custom configured and made to order. If Creator's equipment works as claimed, it represents a significant increase in complexity and capabilities beyond other automated food startups like Spyce, which we have written about in the past. From appearances Creator's burger machine goes beyond simple assembly of ingredients, with a nontrivial amount of prep work being done by the device (slicing, metering of ingredients, mixing, etc.). Among the value propositions claimed by the company, is that such a system allows for more affordable meals made with superior ingredients, in light of the labor savings. 

Upgrading Ourselves: 

• A great long read on the development of surgical techniques behind the first successful transplants of wombs. For now, practitioners are focused on replacing organs that were either missing at birth or removed for medical reasons, but there is interest in extending the procedure to transgender patients as well. 

Virtually There: 

• Other than Pokémon GO, Snapchat appears to be the largest, most frequent exposure users have to augmented reality. The company says that over 50% of their users in the age range 13-34 are using their AR 'lenses' every week, and they are investing heavily in increasing AR functionality by building an internal team of animators and designers. It seems likely that the company is hoping to have their hardware and AR software technologies converge at some point in the not-distant future, where their Snap Spectacles enable a more real-time method of deploying and consuming AR experiences. 

Communication: 

• Mapping the spread of an immensely popular twitter meme.

More next week. 

Insights 6.18

Design:

• A critique of Google's attempt to create a pervasive design language across the internet, and how such universalist approaches can quash the smaller, weirder, aesthetic subcultures and trends that bubble up from the micro-community level.
• High fashion seems to be moving on from casually slick, dandy-like styles of recent years to more baroque, indulgent, and arguably garish forms and patterns. Call it the rise of the fugly. 

Body/Image:  

• Using data visualization to demonstrate the shortcomings of representative skin tones by cosmetic companies, with Rihanna's Fenty line as a reference point.

On Screen: 

• Filmmakers are returning to the practice of using "practical effects" or physical props and puppets for movie magic, finding that computer generated graphics (in certain scenarios, at least) fail to capture the same feeling of fluid physicality that old-fashioned techniques are capable of.

Mapping Markets: 

• The Trump administration is planning to roll out new tariffs up to 25% on certain goods from China come early July. The plan is ratcheting up the stakes in a rapidly deteriorating trade relationship, with China suggesting their own counter tariffs on goods imported from U.S. producers. There's a real possibility that gigantic multinational corporations will find ways to slip through loopholes, while smaller enterprises and startups are likely to be pushed to even greater disadvantage. 

Archiving:  

• Digital communication (texts, voicemails, video clips) allows us to carry around a pocket archive of communications with those we've lost. Never before has the average person had such a dense, high-fidelity collection of memories almost always within arm's reach. Even if we choose not to actively peruse those personal archives (due to sadness, anger, or something else) many social media platforms are designed so sloppily when it comes to death that we are pushed to remember by their crude mechanisms to maximize engagement. 

Material Culture: 

• Deb Chachra on the ritual of wrapping the body, whether via saris or boxer's hand wraps.

More next week.