A couple of weeks ago, I found myself head deep in design books while doing research for a potential interior re-design of a local private club. I love being head deep in design books, and the one that continues to blow me away is Fingerprint: The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design , by Chen Design Associates out of San Francisco.
Josh Chen is a bad-ass designer, with 20 years of experience in design, broadcasting, journalism, and music. I love renaissance men and women. Within the school of renaissance thinking comes humanism and self-awareness, and it seems much of the design work Chen has compiled and highlighted here is lacking neither.
Take, for instance, the Futurefarmersgroup, also from San Francisco, that fertile ground which nourishes SO MUCH talent. Futurefarmers collaboration includes creating prototypes of an urban planning tool which allows users to visualize The Great Park’s health and creating a “lunchbox laboratory” which will encourage students to screen various algae strains, ultimately helping to find the strains that are optimal as a renewable energy resource. Basically, design used as a superpower for the forces of good and not evil. Think of a modern day Leonardo or Galileo.
Futurefarmers website describes the group as:
practitioners aligned through an open practice of making work that is relevant to the time and space surrounding us. Futurefarmers work across many media. We enjoy creating platforms for sociability, play and culitvating consciousness.
One of my favorite pieces is this sundial watch, by Futurefarmers Amy Franceschini. I don’t wear a watch, but I would wear this one:
Described as:
a reaction to the ubiquity of technological devices in our lives today. Sundial watch reminds us to depend on our own devices. It is an interface with nature…
The sun will always rise in the morning and set in the evening, and the length of the winter days will be shorter than the summer days. This portable sundial physically illustrates the wonders of the sun and its motion through the sky providing a stage for the suns’ shadow to dance upon.
This book is FULL of inspiration and genius creativity from some of the best designers today. And although I am working on becoming a full-fledged interior designer, cultivating ideas from many disciplines, be it graphic design, architecture, music, science, literature, philosophy, film, graffiti, fine art, or nature is what this cross-platform, renaissance thinking is all about. Count me in and on the bus.