PROCESS : design :: tell : story

When you think back about your life, do you have any good stories to tell? I would like to think that I make a solid effort to make sure I experience enough stuff to have some good stories to tell, in fact I may have too many. (not possible.) Story is important to me because in a lot of ways, the story of your life and the stories that people tell about you is the only way you will be remembered (or forgotten) when your days are done. So paralleling the word DESIGN to STORY makes a lot of sense to me. It is an undeniable fact that designers are in essence some of the greatest and most important story tellers in history. Whether intentional or not, the language of design is what shapes the world in which everyone lives. My guess is that the guys on the floor of the NY Stock exchange don't spend much time thinking about design. But the guy that headed the design team for IBM that made the hand held computers they use to control the world all day deffintely does. And thus we are all interconnected. In my mind the word PROCESS is to design as TELL is to story. All designers share in common some type of thought process no matter what it is that they are designing. In the same way that all story tellers share some of the same type of thought process in order to tell their stories. Whether your a graffiti artist or an architect or a songwritter or a news anchor, at the end of the day you've all got a story to tell. The difference is just the medium your using. We are in school to learn good PROCESS so we can tell great STORIES.

STORY- This is a book shelf in my room. It is full of several different types of media. Vinyl, books, cd's and dvd's. All off these things share at least one funtion in common. That is that they all tell stories. They do so in different ways and styles and techniques, but all tell some type of story.

ARTIFACT - This is a crucifix that I got after my first communion when I was in the first grade. It seems old to me because when I think back to how little I was when I got it, it feels like forever ago. But when I think about how ancient this particular design is, and how old the tradition is that it represents, it seems rather new.


MULTIVIEW- These are two different paintings that I have done over the past year or so. Both obviuosly are of my bike. Both show the bike in dynamic poses but also show two different kinds of feel. What is cool to me about these two paintings is that they are of my bike in the same position, just different points of view. I never touched the bike, simply walked around it to see it from another perspective and yet the bike was saying two totally different things at the same time.

CYCLE- I cannot think of much of a better example of cycle than that of plant life changing with the seasons of the year. In this example, the trees in the spring time blooming and coming back to life after a long frozen winter. The cycle that continues without fail and also is completely necessary. If the tree didn't go through cycles with the weather, it wouldn't survive longer than 1 year.

TRANSLATION - This is a picture someone in my band took as were driving somewhere in the Pacific Northwestern part of the country. It represents translation well to me because it strikes me as a powerfull image, yet silent at the same time. And to me that implies that this scene is left to be translated however anyone wants to see it for themselves. What does it say to you?



Quotes -

"Architecture is arguably the most accurate, the most truly revealing, human cultural artifact"
- Roth, p.12

"In architecture, as in all operative arts, the end must direct the operation. The end is build well. Well building hath 3 conditions: commodity, firmness and delight."
- Sir Henry Wotton - The Elements of Architecture

Interior Architecture is, "the holistic creation, development & completion of space for use"
- John Kurtich + Garret Eakin

"Beauty will result from the form and correspondence of the whole"
- Palladio

"Design... deserves attention not only as a professional practice but as a subject of social, cultural & philosophic investigation."
- Richard Buchanan +Victor Margolin

- Jeff Linn