Topic

White Space

A collection of 150 issues

Urban interaction.

In my ongoing thinking about the city as an interface – as an operating system, if you will, of this thing we call Earth – I picked up a book I bought while in grad school: Universal Principles of Design. It lists a multitude of various design elements and principles to consider

I want new letters.

The fact that graduate design programs bestow upon their students the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree is antiquated and irrelevant. Instead, the design discipline should have its own standardized classification of academic distinction, as programs at IIT, Cincinnati, and Carnegie Mellon do: a Master's of Design. And

For the laid-off designer.

Luckily, my job has not yet been affected by this nightmare that is our current economy; I count myself very fortunate to be among the still-employed (knock on wood, or fake wood stickers, as the case may be). But for those of you who have been shit-canned, here’s something

The Secret Life of My Passwords

In 2012, it dawned on me that I had lived on the East Coast for four years. My promise to myself was that I would return to Seattle after five years. We had a beautiful house in Baltimore and life was very comfortable, even though I had a love/hate

Here comes trouble. Her name is Ada.

“Good designers make trouble.” – Tibor Kalman Ada Louise Huxtable wasn’t a designer, but she made trouble. About design. For designers. Sometimes, I’m ashamed by how much I don’t know. I think I’ve heard of Ada Louise Huxtable, but would never have been able to place her

Square one.

I have no idea what I’m doing. But that’s the fun part. One of the main reasons I took this new teaching gig was because of the opportunity I have to start a design lab. I worked for about 10 years as a visual/interaction designer in industry

Time and aesthetics.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the eye of the beholder has a biological preference based on mathematical proportions. Within the context of the man-made environment and the natural world, there is a documented human cognitive preference for golden section proportions throughout recorded history. Some of

If NPR were a typeface....

Today we had another presentation of design iterations for the new NPR.org. Well, it was actually just for the new NPR.org homepage. The rest of the site templates will be worked out later. We're working on getting the homepage nailed down first. And trust me when

On guarding your innermost.

Wet torrential. Flashing light. Cozy in a coffeehouse. Justin, MacKenzie, Melissa and I, designers and artists we, reflecting on how important it is to turn technology off – violently, regularly exorcise it if you must – so that one might carry on the unadulterated work one is meant to do. Then, I