"Going Back to School on School Design"

I just got back a few days ago from a 1-1/2 day training session at Steelcase HQ in Grand Rapids, MI. It was phenomenal!! I truly learned so much, and met so many great people. It really was fantastic!

So, a lot of what I learned is still semi-confidential... (I sound so, important hehe) so I can't share everything I learned with you. But I've got a couple of tasty tidbits to hold you over until then.

Product Focus | Steelcase Node
What does 'node' mean? Well the 5th definition on merriam-webster.com was:

5

a : a point at which subsidiary parts originate or center 

This is the whole idea of the node chair. Each student has their own "subsidiary", their own little piece, of the classroom; where they can all come together to create a classroom experience.  

 

 

 

 

 

node chair, Steelcase

The node chair is designed to allow everyone to keep their belongings with them, while moving into teams, small groups, or lecture modes throughout the course of one class period. 

Let's face it, education is changing. In fact, classrooms are changing too. Why? Because children are changing.

Our entire education system has evolved so much since the days of the one room school house. You know what hasn't changed?? The furniture!

I mean really! Look at these images below:

historic classroom

modern day classroom

What looks different to you? Not a whole lot. 

Product Focus | Steelcase Verb
So next comes Verb. The system of classroom products (that blend super great with node seating) to create the ultimate flexible classroom.

The unique chevron shape of the tables allows for a curved (versus straight) lecture set-up, a distinct personal zone at the table, and increased sightlines between students.

Verb tables, Steelcase

The other pieces in this system include a very unique instructor station, markerboards, easels, and a wall track for markerboards. All of which pair nicely with many of the other products Steelcase has to offer (including interactive whiteboards).

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him."

How do we expect our children to learn from each other, when they can't even see each other, or work in groups, because the furniture in their classroom is built for lecture mode?

Steelcase has written up some great articles that include much more information about changing the way our education spaces look and act. Visit their website www.steelcase.com to find out more.

Where has the year gone??

Not that I'm getting tons of traffic like some people who do this professionally, but I realized this afternoon that I have, um, neglected! this blog for more than a year.

My apologies...

Can I just tell you something?

Last year (2012) was a crazy year for me. I mean, really. First of all, we bought our very first house at the end of January 2012. THEN, we planned our September wedding. THEN, we had a honeymoon. THEN, it was the holidays (and we threw a totally awesome Halloween party!).

a pretty wedding shot for your viewing pleasure

Can you blame a girl??? I've been busy, I told you!

So, in case you haven't noticed, the header on this blog has changed, since my name has changed. Hope you like it! I picked it out just for you all ;)

So... since we last spoke, I think you have missed out on pretty much an entire position here at Color Art. So, my first job was the Customer Experience Manager, doing showroom/inside sales/design/miscellaneous. Then I was the New Business Development Designer for one year, doing only preliminary design work. NOW, I'm am the Higher Education + Corporate Consultant. I really just started this position about two weeks ago... sooo... I will keep you posted.

:)

I'm happy to be back!

Beautiful weather + beautiful furniture

The weather around here has just been phenomenal lately! Sunny, breezy, and mid-70's during the day with cooler, clear nights. What more could ask for?? Makes me want to spend my time outside in some beautiful furniture, like the pieces below from Coalesse.

Emu Heaven Seating / Italy 2009 / Jean-Marie Massaud



Emu Heaven Seating / Italy 2009 / Jean-Marie Massaud



Emu Heaven Seating / Italy 2009 / Jean-Marie Massaud

Emu Heaven Seating / Italy 2009 / Jean-Marie Massaud

Pinterest

My cousin was telling me about this site, Pinterest and said I should check it out. It's vitrual cork boards that you "pin" pictures and videos onto. I thought it sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a whirl.

Well, first you have to request to get an account.

.....

Four hours later, I was the newest member of Pinterest, free to pin to my hearts desire.

It is actually pretty cool. You can have (what seems like) unlimited number of boards that you title and pin pictures to. You can create tags and mention fellow pinners as well. So far, I only have two boards. But... I'm getting there.

You can literally pin a picture from almost any site. I am having trouble with some sites though, it will pick up the wrong images off the site (like the banner at the top) or it will say "no large images found". But you can also pin pictures by uploading them. I have a wedding board and an house ideas board. There are fashion boards, food boards, quote boards, and much more!

Significant Memorial Buildings

I was browsing the Architectural Digest website and came across an interesting article. Here are some of my favorite pieces of the article. (For the full article, click here)

"The National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center opens on the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the United States. Like other well-known memorials, the fountains designed by architect Michael Arad in the footprints of the twin towers incorporate figurative symbolism, while exploring architecture’s power to express emotion. AD visits the most noteworthy memorials of the modern era from around the world"

Gateway Arch, St. Louis

"Most people don’t think of St. Louis’s celebrated Gateway Arch as a memorial, but in fact it’s the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial built to commemorate the westward expansion of the United States. In the 1948 competition for the memorial design, an unknown Eero Saarinen beat out his famous father, Eliel, with a simple but powerful steel parabola. America’s first modern monument, the 630-foot-high engineering marvel did not begin construction until 1963, two years after its designer’s death."

Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington D.C.

"Just 21 years old and a student at Yale University, Maya Lin was plucked from obscurity and immediately plunged into controversy when her design—a visual scar on the National Mall—won the 1981 competition. The memorial invites the viewer below ground level to read the names of the war’s more than 58,000 dead and missing inscribed on the face of two 247-foot black-granite walls. Decried as an insult to veterans, the simple structure elicited such powerful emotions upon opening to the public that its critics were almost immediately silenced."

Jewish Museum, Berlin

"No museum dedicated to the history of the Jews in Germany can be just a museum. Opened in 2001, Daniel Libeskind’s first major work is arguably his best. Built around the concept of erasure and void, its architecture integrates the meaning of the Holocaust into the consciousness of the city, physically and spiritually. The zigzagging form of its main building, the unusual gradient of the Garden of Exile, and the Holocaust Tower’s claustrophobic container are disorienting, but the architect calls the project an 'emblem of hope.'"

Pentagon Memorial, Washington D.C.

"In a two-acre park near the point of impact of American Airlines Flight 77 on 9/11, the Pentagon Memorial features 184 cantilevered, benchlike “units,” each engraved with the name of a victim, hovering above a pool of water. Somewhat convoluted in its details, Keith Kaseman and Julie Beckman’s design was chosen from more than 1,200 submissions in an international competition."

USS Arizona Memorial, Honolulu

"The USS Arizona is the final resting place for many of the ship’s 1,177 crewmen who lost their lives in the attack on Pearl Harbor 70 years ago. The 184-foot-long memorial, accessible only by boat, sits on the surface above the sunken vessel’s midsection, rising at either end to signify the United States’ ultimate victory. Its designer, Austrian-born Alfred Preis, fled the Nazi takeover of his homeland only to be imprisoned as an “enemy alien” in Hawaii, not far from where his monument now stands."

What a trip!

I was lucky enough to end my week with a wonderful trip to the Jasper Group facility in Jasper, Indiana! They were most hospitable there, and the weather and scenery could not have been better! What a beautiful place to make beautiful furniture.

We went on a personal tour through the Community manufacturing facility, where we saw how they create their chairs, from the lumbar yard to the last coat of polyurethane. It was so interesting to see how everything works, especially how they bend the wood to make those elegant curved legs.

We also went on a tour through the JSI casegood manufacturing facility. Again, really interesting! They make a really good quality product, and that makes it easy to want to partner with them.

By far, my favorite thing I saw was Community's new product line, Finn.

They actually have a solid piece of aluminum between two pieces of wood! I know in this economy, some other furniture manufacturers might just paint a silver stripe, or just put a very thin piece of aluminum on top of the wood, but not at Community. This is the real deal. And the product is so good looking!

Perfect for someone with borderline OCD (like me)

I found this great product from Wolf Gordon called Wink (check out what Interior Design mag has to say about it here). It is a clear finish that you can put on top of any paintable surface to make it a dry erase surface! Wow! I'm thinking... all over the kitchen... office... etc. I love making lists, so I could make a list virtually anywhere!

Missing Europe

Last summer, I was most fortunate enough to attend a two and a half week trip to London and Paris with two instructors from the Art Department and a (large) handful of us art kiddos. It was... awesome, amazing, beautiful, eye-opening, exhausting, wonderful, unforgettable... you get the idea.

I've been missing that trip lately. We returned June 31st of last summer, so about this time last year I was still high (metaphorically) from the trip.

Since I can't afford a $1500-something plane ticket, I will post some JMW Turner images instead. We got to see an entire gallery of his work. It was phenomenal. Even his "sketches" were better than anything I've ever painted.

(this is my desktop background)

Modern Rome: Campo Vaccino, 1839. JMW Turner

Ulysses deriding Polyphemus - Homer's Odyssey, 1829. JMW Turner

Regulus, 1828. JMW Turner

My Dream Kitchen

Well, we are house shopping. I'm currently (and embarrassed to admit) living in my parents house... it's not a dream, that's for sure. So, as we are house shopping, my designer brain is running wild!!!

Today, we found a house that had a good head start on my dream kitchen. What is my dream kitchen you ask? See below.

How much do I love this kitchen? Let me count the ways. First off, I love the natural light! Wow, wouldn't that be a dream to cook and entertain in?! Second, I love the island. I want an island that is not more cabinets and countertops, but more of a furniture piece. I like how this one has open shelving. It just seems more familiar and comfortable to me, like being at the dining table. I also love the cabinetry. Classy and a little modern with a small hint of country. And I love the lighting... and...

PS - I think this kitchen is half the size of the houses we are looking at... what can I say? My parents taught me to dream BIG :)

Neotini 2011

Every year the St. Louis part of the IIDA Mid America Chapter hosts a Neotini event. They rent out a venue and vendors and manufacturers set up for a Neocon-esque day with their latest and greatest. Last Thursday was this years event, held at the beautiful Kemp Auto Museum in Chesterfield. There was such a great turnout (I think the cars drew people in) and all of the vendors had wonderful products to show. It really was a great event, especially since I won a $25 Visa gift card (thanks IIDA).

Some of my favorite products were:

LiquidMotion Floor Tiles from Hirshfield's

Halina Stripe window treatment fabric from Carnegie

SW_1 Lounge Seating from Coalesse

"Residence Hall Suites May Foster Greater Alcohol Use" from InformeDesign

I like to regularly visit the site InformeDesign and browse through articles that interest me. What I like about InformeDesign is they read the article for you, then sum it up so you can just get through the article down to the facts. It's like the Sparknotes version of lengthy research articles.

Today, the article that sparked my interest was "Residence Hall Suites May Foster Greater Alcohol Use". Being that I just graduated last summer from a university that has only suite-style dorms, and being that I was a Resident Advisor (RA) at said university for two years, this article hit home for me. As an RA, we had to deal with alcohol policy violations all the time. I remember I was the RA on Duty one Halloween night and we were up until 6am writing incident reports, mainly for alcohol violations.

The article was saying that it is too easy for students who have suite-style dorms to hide away and not be seen with alcohol. They have a bathroom, a sink, and a fridge. They could live in there for days if they wanted to.

I just thought it was an interesting article... click here if you want to check it out.

Let me fill you in...

Boy, it has been a loooong while since I have posted. Let me give you a whirlwind update of my professional life. I got a job selling furniture at a retail store. It was not what I was looking for, but it offered a paycheck (something I was temporally missing) and some skills about sales. While working that job, I went to an IIDA event and met some awesome people from the furniture and design industry. We exchanged business cards, etc. etc., and now I am working at Color Art Integrated Interiors as the Customer Experience Manager. I am doing some sales, some design, managing the resource library, and meeting and event planning. It is really fun, and very fast paced. I am learning so much, it is hard to believe that I actually went to school before this. Some advice to current Interior Design students: there is so much they don't teach you in school. Well, rather, they can't teach you in school. Like how to deal with snotty clients, or how to work within a budget. Those kinds of things are too hypothetical, it would just be hard to make a realistic lesson.

I am very grateful to have this position, and to work for this company. I have met so many people that have been my champions, and I know they will continue to help me grow.

Lindsey Pollak's "Getting from College to Career: 90 Things To Do Before You Join the Real World"

So I recently joined the professional networking website www.gurunation.com and from there, I found the profile of Ms. Lindsey Pollak. In her profile she listed the book she had written "Getting from College to Career: 90 Things To Do Before You Join the Real World". I was interested in the book, so I ordered it off of Amazon. I started reading it tonight and so far it is really great! It is a very easy read, and everything is broken down into small sections. I think I might carry this book around with me everywhere I go. If I just have a free minute or two I could do a little reading here and there. I also think it is really great that she has all 90 of her tips listed in the Table of Contents, so you can easily go back and find a tip to refer to it.

One of the tips she talked about is figuring out what you look like online, including, but not limited to Facebook. She recommends that you Google yourself and see what comes up. She says "...if you don't exist in Google, you don't exist at all." Well, I just Googled myself, and apparently I have a fairly popular name. I am a lawyer, I play lots of different male college-level sports, and I have various other jobs too (haha). This blog didn't show up until page 5 of the Google results. I feel like that is not very good "Googleability" for me, although, from reading the page titles of the other Jordan Becker's in the world, they might be hard to beat. Pollak suggests getting profiles on several networking websites other than Facebook, so I will work on that. She also suggests writing reviews for books or short papers and submitting them to professional organizations you are involved in, for me, that would be ASID.

I feel like I have a lot of work to do, but atleast this blog is a step in the right direction! I exist on Google, just not until page 5.

Job Opportunities in this Tough Economy

I keep in touch with one of my friends from our Interior Design program who just recently graduated. She is having a really hard time finding jobs, which makes me very nervous for this upcoming May, when I will be job searching as well.

I am putting my portfolio together this semester and it really has made it "hit home". Graduation is just a few short months away and I don't know if I am ready! I am ready to get out of the dorms, but I am not sure how ready I am to be job hunting.

I also have become interested in working for Disney World (doing design work). Boy, their website is hard to figure out! I found the section that talks about the design work they do, but in order to see if there are job listings, you have to create an entire profile, and to be honest, I didn't understand all of the questions the job profile application was asking.

Hopefully my classes this semester will help me get ready for the real world. And if not, I always have my wonderful Professors to back me up!

IDEC Design Competition

It's the start of a new semester, and my last semester (as an undergrad)!!

Before the semester had a chance to get busy, I chose to do a design competition outside of class for the chance to win a little extra cash. The competition was sponsored by the Interior Designers Educators Council (IDEC) and was a group project that was time-sensitive. You only had 14 days from start to finish and the project had to be recieved to Regionals by February 1st. It was a busy two weeks...

I chose to do this project with two of my good friends (and classmates) Rachel and Ashley. The project was to design a learning commons (about 4000 s.f.) for a university. We were supposed to combine technology with sustainability.

This was a really great project for me to do for several reasons. 1) We have not done any projects concerning educational spaces, and won't do any before I graduate and put my portfolio together. 2) It was a learning experience! My team interviewed two of the Library Professionals that work at my University's library and I learned so much about our library! I can text message and Instant Message my library and they will answer questions for you! (How cool is that?!) 3) This project really helped me get familiar with systems furniture (particularly Herman Miller) which is perfect timing because one of my classes for this semester is Corporate & Institutional Design and we have to use systems furniture for our project.

We sent in our project last Friday. We don't find out if we go to Nationals until the end of February. It is going to be a long wait!

This is the last day of the semester...

Mr. Babcock is talking about how we should be keeping up with our blogs, so I figured I should post a new blog. To be honest, this blog has gotten pushed off because of other projects and homework...

This is the last day of the semester so my Intro to Graphic Design and Illustration class is over officially. I have learned a lot from this class. I am very happy that I decided to go ahead and take this class for an elective.

This class has made me significantly more comfortable with Photoshop and Illustrator. I definitely feel much more prepared to create my portfolio next semester; which is the goal I had when I signed up for this class.

Some of the projects that we did I did not enjoy as much as some of the other projects. The zine was definitely my least favorite project. The zine was a project that was supposed to be a how-to mini-magazine that would be fairly easily reproduced. I chose to do "How to Make the Perfect Deviled Eggs". I really enjoy making deviled eggs and my family and friends always talk about how good they are, so I liked my topic a lot. The project itself just was not very entertaining and interesting to me. It was the first project we used Adobe InDesign. I like the way InDesign is set up, but I feel the zine project did not let us learn very many things about InDesign. I feel like there are probably a lot of things that I don't know about InDesign.

I am really excited about creating my portfolio next year. I hope this class proves to be as helpful as I suspect it will be.

Thanks for a great semester!

Alternative Media Project

The alternative media project has been the most enjoyable project, for me, thus far.

The assignment was to select/sketch a simple image/logo, then reproduce the image through non-traditional media.

My process started with brainstorming to generate ideas for the kinds of media I would use. I had a lot of ideas that I was excited about. Some of the ideas that I wanted to do didn't work out. I wanted to make my image out of Cheerios in a bowl of milk. The cereal kept moving and sticking to each other and made it impossible to create my image. So I figured I could edit the picture in photoshop, so I took a picture of the Cheerios the way that they were in the bowl. When I started editing the picture in photoshop, I ran into a couple problems. I think if I was more proficient in photoshop I would have been successful at editing the images. The first problem I had was cutting out the Cheerio. I should have taken the picture with just one Cheerio in the bowl. The problem was getting all of the unneccessary Cheerios out of the picture and then filling in that space with milk. The way the lighting was, the milk had a slight gradient effect, which I tried very hard to reproduce, but couldn't. I ended up not using the cereal picture at all, which I was a little upset about. I think towards the end of the semester when I am better at photoshop I will try the cereal image again.

The other photo I wanted to have was one where the image was cut out of grass. So the image would be really short grass and the other grass would be taller around it. This didn't really work out either, I think the grassy area I was using had too short of grass. That is how I ended up with the dandelion picture. I saw the dandelion in the grassy area I was in, and decided I could just create my image by reproducing dandelions. I was pretty pleased with the outcome of the dandelion photo, but I think, again, if I was better at photoshop, the photo would be more convinving.

The other photo that I edited in photoshop was the photo of the water on the pavement. The original photo (which is not on my picasa album) was actually my third attempt at making the image with the water. It was a lot harder than I was expecting! The water would spread out when it was soaking into the pavement making my image into a jumbled mess. The third attempt was the best looking of the three, and then I edited it a little in photoshop. I just used the lasso tool to copy so of the pavement in the picture and put the pavement over some areas that were wet that I didn't want to be. I also used this process to clean up some of the edges and to tighten up the image some. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I really enjoyed this project. I think I could probably do this project again using the same image and still have 10 new photos done. Once my brain got going, I just kept thinking of ideas.

Check out my album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/JordanBeckerDesign/AlternativeMedia?authkey=Gv1sRgCOPK2sjZ8o-6PQ&feat=directlink

Looking for Graphical Opportunities

When combining images, sometimes it can be hard to find creative ways to make two images one. Here are some things to keep in mind:

-Sometimes, when you put things next to each other, it is easier to see a similarity between the two.
-Sometimes, if you just mush two images into one, you can develop (through several attempts) one image that successfully combines the two. With the method especially, you might just have to go for it, knowing that your first couple attempts are not going to be exactly what you are looking for, but they might lead you to the final image you want.
-Using positive and negative shapes is an easy way to combine two images into one. One image is white, the other is the black around/next to it.
-Using one line or one shape as a commonality between the two images is also a way to get to the two to merge into one.

Finding graphical opportunities has a lot to do with exploration. You might try to combine an image 10 different times before finding the one combination that has everything you want in it. And sometimes, you might have to draw something that you know is not what you want at all, just to get your mind working in the right direction. No image is a wasted image! Everything is important to the process!

Developing Graphical Images

For some people, like myself, it is very hard for me to eliminate the details and just leave the important information. I feel like everything is important! So there are some things to keep in mind when you are having trouble simplifying images to make them less like a picture and more like a graphic image:

1. try to make things as geometric as you can... boxes, circles, squares, etc. Even if you go back and make the shape more complex, simplifying the image with just geometric shapes can really help you identify what is truly an important part of the shape.

2. try to make things solid. Solid shapes are much easier to read, especially from far away. And sometimes, when you are trying to a figure out how to make the image have the information it needs and still make it a solid object, it will help you eliminate unnecessary details.

Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychology basically says this: people are smart. They like to figure things out. They don't want things to be laid out so plain and simple that there is no challenge. So, when you apply this to art, this means people like to figure out what the piece means, or is supposed to be, etc. There are several parts to Gestalt psychology:

Emergence: we can form entire images when just a small part of the image is shown and the rest is implied
Reification: we can form shapes with implied and imaginary lines
Multistability: when an image can pop back and forth between two different images/objects
Invariance: we can recognize geometric shapes even when they are rotated or morphed
Pragnanz: we like to order things

• law of closure: if you draw something with a broken line, we will just visually close the line
• law of similarity: our mind groups things with similarities
• law of proximity: our mind groups things according to distance
• law of symmetry: things that are symmetrical are groups regardless of distance or location
• law of continuity: our mind will continue with already formed patterns
  

• law of common fate: our mind groups things that are moving in the same general direction

These rules and theories are very important to keep in mind when making art because we don't want our viewer to think that we, as the artist, think the viewer is dumb. We want to give the viewer the satisfaction of "figuring it out" after looking at our work. And, sometimes, leaving things out or making things harder to figure out make the piece more interesting and unique.