labor day / may day

from wikipedia, labor day page, the "controversies" section:

"The Knights of Labor organized the original parade on Tuesday, September 5, 1882 in New York City. In 1884 another parade was held, and the Knights passed resolutions to make this an annual event. Other labor organizations (and there were many), but notably the affiliates of the International Workingmen's Association, many of whom were socialists or anarchists, favored a May 1 holiday. In 1886 came the general strike which eventually won the eight-hour workday in the United States. These events are today commemorated as Labor Day in virtually every country in the world, with the notable exceptions being the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. With the Chicago Haymarket riots in early May of 1886, President Grover Cleveland believed that commemorating Labor Day on May 1 could become an opportunity to commemorate the riots. Thus, fearing that it might strengthen the socialist movement, he quickly moved in 1887 to support the position of the Knights of Labor and their date for Labor Day."

i think it's telling that we are one of four countries in the western world that have kept this celebration a safe distance from its actual intent -- to celebrate the advances everyday people have made in improving their lives through fighting for better working conditions that we enjoy today. do you think the same motivations and values might be behind why we don't sign the kyoto treaty or recognize our own wartime atrocities as terrorism?

2 points-of-view project thoughts

i'm interested in the ethical implications of the work you did. comment here on the following questions:
how did you feel when you were assigned the subject matter?
why did you do the work?
did you ever consider not doing the work, or the ramifications of refusing it?
how would you respond in a professional setting to this type of project?

Post Video Links Here

Post your video links for our assignment here

ecologicly friendly advertisments

heres a link to some a list of ads which came out recently from both greenpeace and wwf.

http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22355/48254-green-ad-effect

some of them you may have seen, but it's fairly thorough, unfortunately the author knows nothing about design, and doesn't talk about it at all. look for the chinese car emissions guerrilla piece, it's the best one...

links for two-points-of-view project

here is what i showed in class:
mainstreaming children with disabilities p.s.a.
inconvenient truth trailer
james victore, graphic designer
what barry says and taking liberties [in projects section]
wal-mart info graphic
free range studios - video section
the story of stuff

a new one:
the ronin go to motion > "the truth about food" titles

a greenpeace video about dove here. this story is part of an interesting blog.

This doesn't necessarily have to do with design. But it definitely falls under the category of advocacy of "art". This story has been going around on the net and I just needed to share it somewhere. If you're an animal lover, beware, cuz this story is pretty sick:

In 2007, the 'artist' Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, tied him to a rope in an art gallery, and starved him to death.

For several days, the 'artist' and the visitors of the exhibition have watched emotionless the shameful 'masterpiece' based on the dog's agony, until eventually he died.

Does it look like art to you?

But this is not all... the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American decided that the 'installation' was actually art, so that Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008.

It takes a second to help put a stop to animal abuse. Sign the petetion to stop this asshole by going to http://www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html

What is propaganda?

"While propaganda influences the behavior of individuals, it is important to bear in mind that it is only one of the means by which man’s behavior is influenced. There are other forms of inducement employed in winning assent or compliance. In limited or wholesale degree, depending upon the political organization of a given country, men have used force or violence to control people. They have resorted to boycott, bribery, passive resistance, and other techniques. Bribes, bullets, and bread have been called symbols of some of the actions that men have taken to force people into particular patterns of behavior."

I enjoyed this because it addresses the bad connotations often associated with propaganda. Is propaganda really all that bad, or is just because we often associate it with historical events such as world war?

what is propaganda?

Designer of 2015

I was on the AIGA site and stumbled across this article. It mostly talks about what t-gal brought up in class today, but i thought there were some good incites. Its pretty much insane to think that the end of our careers will be somewhere around 2060. that freaks me out to think that far into the future!

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/initiatives-designer-of-2015

barcodes don't have to be evil?

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/04/japanese-creative-barcodes.html

above is a link to a blog entry somewhere about barcodes. but wait theres more!

apparently certain creative types have taken the package designers worst enemy and juxtaposed it in ways that actually make it an integrated design element. some of these you have seen before, but the list gets much more experimental the farther you go down. maybe next we can set our sights on nutrition facts.

No Logo: No Jobs

Sometimes I really have to rethink what made me want to become a designer in the first place, and readings like this latest one definitely keep me questioning what it is I'm doing. There's a reason why I try very hard to make sure what people think I do is not solely marketing driven. I know that the odds favor that I'll end up working in some design firm or another advertising consumer wants, rather than society's needs, but I still stand by what I said in the earlier post about the Beirut reading. I want to do what I can to get to the point where I can design for things that are meaningful to me. I know this doesn't really say all that much about the reading itself, but if you've read it, you'll probably understand my frustration. So many of today's corporations are falling into that Nike mode of being entirely a branding company, but at what cost?? They spend millions in order to make millions, but to make sure they keep their profits as high as possible, they try to skirt around paying those factory workers in the Cavite zone their $6 a day! Anyway maybe I'll add more if we discuss the reading in class, but I just had to vent some frustrations while it was still fresh in my mind. Thanks T-Gal for assigning a depressing reading! However things like this are important to keep in the back of your mind so you try not to forget what's really going on in the world, design related or otherwise, so it was definitely worth the read.

Design is a dreadful form of expression

That's what Philippe Starck is now saying. But I agree that design should start being focus on more than just fancy, cool looking consumer goods. But those should work well also.

I wonder if he would have said that before making his millions? not just when it's time to retire.

Jerk