Pixelgawker

By: Megan Deal

Blogs are everywhere. They’re inescapable communities that establish themselves anytime someone or a group of someones has something to show or say. They’ll grab ahold of their participants for hours, whether one is mindlessly scrolling, or thoughtfully engaging within the conversation. These portals of user-generated content are becoming an especially popular tool for designers and design students, as they’re employed for a myriad of different purposes. Whether establishing an arena for design discourse, or being used to simply document a personal or group process, blogs will continue to rise in popularity as a viable means of communication. (more…)

By: Megan Deal

Sitting inside Bowling Green State University’s Olscamp Hall, we anxiously awaited Marian to “take the stage,” and deliver for us a mystifying lecture on life, love, and pursing design bliss. That she did. In a typical University lecture environment, complete with rows of gradually descending chairs that magically become desks, Marian engaged her student audience for a solid 90 minutes. The Vancouver residing designer was, to my surprise, a very dynamic speaker, telling the individual story of each piece as it appeared on screen. It quickly became apparent that Bantjes has a profound attachment to her work, though she discussed each piece in a very modest way – an approach that I found to be quite refreshing. Referring to her winning t-shirt design for a Speak-Up competition, (the victory she deems responsible for her growing success), Marian states that “It (being the design) won the competition.” She refers to the work itself as being the real winner, as opposed to saying “I won the competition”, or “MY design was the winner.” This unpretentiousness carried through her entire talk. (more…)

by: Megan Deal

At some point during our elementary years, between sessions of cursive writing, and bouts of long division, we learned the proper way to structure a sentence. In the following years, we practiced and practiced, until our poor little minds were unconsciously identifying adjectives and composing compound sentences. Then, in our high school careers we were taught the best way to structure sentences into paragraphs, and then subsequently paragraphs into essays. We learned various rhetorical and stylistic devices that aided us in this process, until we were able to develop clear ideas into syntagmatically coherent sentences. Again, we practiced. Practice perfected. (more…)

posted by megan deal 

I have developed a conditional process. These conditions have become habits, no less obsessions – a set of circumstances that must be present in my design process if I am to perform with the highest degree of creativity. Some of these conditions are material (i.e. strong coffee, black fine point pens, jazz), some are environmental (campus library, office, secluded apartment), but most often these factors are determined by the task at hand. We each have established our own set of process rules that, when followed, allows us to design with heightened capability. All of these conditions, however different for each designing individual, share a common thread, that is, they are desirable. They are our addictions, and we are dependent upon them to function. They are the constituting parts in our creative process that we utilize on repeat, and the predictable patterns that form between projects. We strive to reach them. They are the conditions that are important in shaping our design process and who we are as designers. (more…)

posted by chad reichert

Several years ago, my wife and I had purchased our first home. We were very excited to move in and make it our own. It was a 1933 Cape Cod with lots of “charm.” If you have ever purchased a similar home you know that charm can mean several things. It can represent unique character that only a house from that era can have including original wood floors, hand crafted staircases, oddly shaped rooms and cozy spaces. It can also represent non-operating windows, turn-of-the-century electrical wiring, peeling paint and a built-in (more…)