Patrick Sisson - Writer, Journalist, Cultural Documentarian, Music Lover

PATRICK SISSON

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Local Aesthetic: Portland Design Guide

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Nothing Major

July 19, 2013

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In the second installment of our Portland Design Guide, we zero-in on stores and galleries with a focus on the handmade and hands-on. From a legendary outdoor brand to the nation’s oldest craft musuem, Portland offers a range of designers and designed objects reinterpeting the region’s design heritage for today.

Poler

 1300 W Burnside / polerstuff.com

An important place to outfit before any outdoor trek, or merely a one-stop shop to gear up for the seasonal shift to fall and winter, Poler’s new flagship store (as of March 2013) showcases the best of the local outdoor brand, as well as rotating pop-up displays and camp coffee gear from Stumptown. “Poler is an amazing brand with deep roots in Portland, utilizing the design talents of locals like Marc Smith,” according to Jason Sturgill, a local artist and educator. “Their camping gear is top-flght, and the amazing store design is worth a visit by itself.”

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Travelzoo Local Deals

As an Associate Publisher of Local Deals at Travelzoo, I’m part of a fantastic team of salespeople and producers who send high-quality restaurant, spa and activity deals to millions of subscribers in the Midwest, Texas and Canada. I’m fortunate enough to work with exceptional writers who have created content for top-tier merchants like Four Seasons and Bliss Spas and acclaimed restaurants such as Nobu, Yusho and the Crescent Club. You should do yourself a favor and sign up. Click below for samples.

Stefan Sagmeister / The Happy Show

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Nothing Major
July 19, 2013
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The Austrian-born, typography-tweaking graphic designer takes a stark view on what makes us tick in his latest exhibition, The Happy Show.

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Photo: John Madere

For an art installation that examines what makes us feel good, Stefan Sagmeister’s The Happy Show, on display at the Chicago Cultural Center through September 23, doesn’t stay fixated on the sappy and upbeat. A Blaise Pascal quote (“All men seek happiness… This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves”) as well as a disclaimer at the entrance (“if you regularly weep into your pillow at night, visiting won’t keep you from doing so”) paint a less alluring picture of our collective mental state than the designer’s punchy typography, infographics and videos, hung on bright yellow walls.

Sagmeister, the Austrian-born, award-winning graphic designer who currently heads NYC-based firm Sagmeister & Walsh, doesn’t shy away from displays that incite—his famous 1999 AIGA lecture poster featured text carved into his torso. But in our discussion of his current exhibition, Sagmeister asserts that he’s just being honest. He brings this combination of bluntness and charm to The Happy Show, a concept that came to fruition during a year-long sabbatical (Sagmeister takes a trip every seven years to recharge) to Indonesia in 2008.

We spoke to Sagmeister at the opening reception to The Happy Show in Chicago about what the exhibit has taught him, and how his non-scientific self-experimentation lead to confusing results.
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Blue Sky Bakery Case Study

Helping a Bakery Rise Up and Reach Out
Blue Sky Bakery & Café Case Study
EPIC
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Blue Sky Bakery & Café in North Center serves the community in both senses of the word, providing baked goods and sandwiches as well as job training and employment experience to homeless and at-risk youth. For teens hungering for a better life, the non-profit’s 12-week paid program lays the foundation for success, imparting self-confidence and job skills. But the effort that comes with running the cafe means the marketing effort has never reached its full potential. Enter EPIC, to bring the messaging to maturity.

The EPIC volunteer team, led by Radhika Gupta, Senior Interaction Designer at Acquity Group, rebranded Blue Sky, explaining cooking’s role as a vehicle for social change. A tattoo-inspired logo that hit the perfect note was the cornerstone of the campaign, and numerous other touch points, like new business cards and signage, told the story of the social enterprise.

The team approached community engagement from multiple angles, crafting a strategy to increase traffic, catering orders and neighborhood awareness, while letting customers know about “baked goods for the common good.” Zeroing in on moms and commuters, the team drafted posters and formulated interactive means of engagement, like a “keep the social change” jar and a collective program to sponsor the training of an additional youth at the bakery. Striking photography by Robert Olding – which incorporated mouthwatering food imagery and the children of two team members – spoke to the mommy demographic.

As one of the new taglines explained, Blue Sky promises “social change, powered by your appetite.” The EPIC team’s communication strategy raised awareness of the bakery and café’s social mission and helped locals become more invested. In the end, what is a good neighborhood café and if it doesn’t bring the community together?

Case Study by Patrick Sisson

EPIC TEAM, CHICAGO
Radhika Gupta: Team Lead

Andrew Berriz: Strategist
Kenny Lapins: Writer
Nicole Nejati: Project Manager
Robert Olding: Photographer
Spencer Rysman: Designer
Nicholas Stocking: Strategy
Libby Taggart: Researcher/Designer
Brad Tippett: Web Designer/Developer
Jennifer Wisniewski: Designer

The Olympic City

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Nothing Major
June 21, 2013
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With Rio racing to prepare for 2016, Brazilian protests against stadium spending raging and the price tag for the Sochi Winter Olympics rising precipitously, the subject of infrastructure spending for the bi-annual games is a heated one. But it’s the second life of these structures which often leave a permanent mark on the urban landscape, marks that are explored in The Olympic City project.

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit (Urbanized, Objectified and Helvetica) and photographer Jon Pack examine the aftermath of the games, chronicling the legacy of leftover structures in neighborhoods and cities long after the games have ended. The first phase of this ongoing project, covering Athens, Barcelona, Beijing, Berlin, Helsinki, Mexico City, Moscow, London, Los Angeles, Montreal, Lake Placid, Rome, and Sarajevo, has been collected in The Olympic City book out this month.
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Enjoy the Experience

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Nothing Major
April 19, 2013
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Lost albums and self-made musicians are profiled in a sprawling new book on DIY recordings.

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As the ritual of hunting down limited-edition vinyl for Record Store Day begins, music fans can turn to a new book about private press recordings to see what limited really means. Enjoy The Experience: Homemade Records 1958-1992, the first release from the Sinecure Books imprint, compiles, catalogs, and exposes hundreds of private press records, a celebration of self-funded, small-batch sounds from the margins of the music world.

Assembled over three years from the collections of noted vinyl afficianados like Eothen Alapatt and Gregg Turkington, the profiles of these rare releases paint a portrait of self-starters and artistic misfits, from outsider folk trios to religious cult leaders, who had the drive to commit their visions to vinyl by themselves, before the days of Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

Editor, author, and collector Johan Kugelberg, who wrote the book with Paul Major and Michael P. Daley, says the attraction is “privately made records as an American vernacular.”

“I’ve been knee-deep in this stuff for over half my life to date,” he says. “I love this music and these people, so the ultimate art experience for me is the realization that what Paul Major coined as ‘real-people music’ is infinitely more rewarding than mass-produced music product.”
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The Comradery

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Nothing Major
March 25, 2013
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Designers Erin Huizenga and Deborah Alden are the types that get invited for coffee to talk shop. Both also teach at schools like Northwestern and IIT Institute of Design and work with socially conscious organizations like Firebelly University (where Alden was Dean) and EPIC (which Huizenga founded). But their experience, and a jolt of caffeine, hasn’t always produced immediate answers, especially when questions came from mid-level designers looking to navigate to the next level of their career.

With their new design-centered educational organization, The Comradery, Huizenga and Alden decided to tap into community wisdom to provide answers to complex professional questions. Aiming to be an inclusive hub where students learn through participation, The Comradery plans to host classes focused on design thinking and leadership, starting with a kickoff event April 13, a design research workshop taught by IDEO’s Julka Almquist.

“We want to establish a culture of lifelong learning,” says Alden, “and doing things experientially.”

The upcoming workshop schedule suggests an interdisciplinary, professional approach: how to craft a compelling presentation by Dinesh Goburdhun, Associate Partner of Strategy at VSA Partners; entrepreneur Chris Finlay of Otabo discussing how to find the value of your business; and Alisa Wolfson, director of design at Leo Burnett, on finding inspiration in life and practice. By focusing on interdisciplinary topics and leadership, the learning experiences won’t just be relevant for designers, says Alden, but will benefit anyone interested in creative processes.

“The thing about a place like IDEO is, they aren’t all designers by trade, they become designers by using the process,” says Alden. “To me, the design process is a way of thinking laterally and asking the right questions. It can be mystical to people, and we want to pull back the curtains.”

Pencil to Pixel

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Nothing Major
March 25, 2013
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Even in the age of streaming video, the vast majority of the information we consume online is in the form of type. While sophisticated typography may be a given in an era of web fonts, a new exhibition from famed font and imaging firm Monotype showcases the painstaking artistry behind the classic typefaces we see on screens everyday.

“Pencil to Pixel,” which runs May 3-9 at New York’s Tribeca Skyline Studio, connects historic, handcrafted fonts and hot metal typesetting to the contemporary type displayed on handheld devices. More than a century of artifacts drawn from the Monotype’s archives in Salfords, UK, will be part of this rare display, including drawings by Eric Gill, creator of Gill Sans, production pieces from Helvetica, original drawings of Times New Roman commissioned for The Times of London, as well as concept art, photos, and metal and film masters. It helps “tell a story about how the design of typefaces is informed, constrained, and even enhanced by technology” according to Monotype type director Dan Rhatigan.

“It’s an opportunity to see the hand of the author,” says James Fooks-Bale, Monotype’s director of marketing, who helped curate the exhibit. “A lot of designers are familiar with the tick-down menu in Adobe and aren’t familiar with the fact that it came from someone’s hand. Consider that in Salfords alone, the original Monotype plant built in 1897, there were once 1,000 people at work designing typefaces. The precision engineering apprenticeships there were considered second only to Rolls Royce.”

New Trends in Mobile Design

Article/Interview
Nothing Major
March 25, 2013
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timoni

The chances are good that you’re reading this article on your smart phone. It shouldn’t be news that, increasingly, mobile design is synonymous with web design. But while the ability to read anything anywhere isn’t noteworthy anymore, the new ways that designers shape and deliver content—from a new gesture-based app, or a responsive news site that shifts to fit the device, to an interface with flat fields of content you control with the swipe of a finger—all showcase a new series of design solutions and innovations.

“People are reinventing the standard all the time,” says Nick Disabato, who runs a freelance interaction design consultancy in Chicago.

Nothing Major spoke with Disabato, also the editor of the Distance design quarterly journal and author of Cadence & Slang, and Timoni West, a designer at Foursquare, about how design is evolving in response to the challenges, constraints, and characteristics of the mobile space.
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Unbranded Designs

Article/Interview
Nothing Major
February 27, 2013
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ISACHAIR

Early last year, Unbranded Designs co-founder Sameer Dohadwala thought it would be easy to build his own custom desk. After a process he jokes was a miserable failure—all that was left were Home Depot receipts and a “pile of wood and broken dreams”—he sought out independent designers to help finish the job. That’s when he had an epiphany. With co-founders Samer Saab and Max Greenblatt, he could create a better way to bring well-designed furniture to the masses.

That spark led to Unbranded Designs, a new online design community and furniture manufacturing concern in Chicago. Dohadwala met with independent designers and found that most had amazing prototypes and renderings in their studios, unrealized and unseen by the masses. “Their work was much more interesting than the mass-designed pieces we had been looking at,” said Dohadwala. “I wanted all of them in my apartment.”

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