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The Self-Reliance Project
The Self-Reliance Project is a daily essay about what it means to be a maker during a crisis—to think through making, to know yourself better through the process of producing something—and how this kind of return to self-knowledge might just be the entire point.

It’s title comes from the 1841 essay on self-reliance by the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote with astonishing clarity about the perils of conformity and consistency, about what it means to follow your mind, trust your instincts, and listen to your heart.

So for now, stay well, stay home, and do your work. But don’t just take it from me. Take it from Emerson.

Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

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Design Observer Studio Sessions
Join us as we practice social distancing the best way we know how—in conversation with all of you.

In 2003, we started Design Observer as a great place to meet for conversation about all the ways design affects our lives. Little did we imagine it would an even better place to meet seventeen years later.

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Observed


Is the future of refugee housing permanence?

It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby,” explores Picasso‘s legacy through a feminist lens, asking if, when, and how modern audiences can separate the artist’s work from his infamously misogynistic behavior.

Quite possibly the most fascinating job opportunity in design right now.

Jessica Helfand on using AI as a tool to reverse-engineer a historical narrative.

Rethinking the city.

Rethinking the planet.

The problems of the user interface, one streaming service at a time. More here.

Urban design, with safety in mind. And that includes parks.

Think design thinking is over? Think again.

A museum renames a vegetable still life by Van Gogh that identified the wrong kind of allium.

Graphic design and typography obsessives—look no further!

“The challenge isn’t just that our systems default to keeping the “unlike” out,” notes Jens Martin Skibsted, “but we are, rather, in need of an interconnected worldview that appreciates the existence of other realities and contexts.”

Neville Brody’s new monograph (his THIRD)—covering his work for Nike, Coca-Cola, Tate Modern and Channel 4, as well as various informational graphics and magazine editorials—will be published next month by Thames&Hudson.

Milan Design Week wants to know your most memorable experience. Ours is easily Shaped by Water, an immersive experience exploring water as a source of inspiration for design. Co-created by Ivy Ross and her design team in collaboration with the water, light, and sound artist, Lachlan Turczan. Vote for your favorite here.

Non-profit design advocacy agency Where are the Black Designers? (WATBD?) has announced a year-long partnership with digital product studio Ustwo.

“He was mulling a career in graphic design when, at 17, he saw a searing image that would change the course of his life.” The American photographer Kwame Brathwaite has died. Considered the catalyst fo the “black is beautiful” movement in the 1960s, Braithwaite’s career spanned art, music, and more. He was 85.

The subtley, simplicity, and curious symbolism of the humble serif.

After a career of looking at pictures, she is now making them. George Gendron talks to Kathy Ryan, longtime director of photography at The New York Times Magazine.

COLLINS co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Brian Collins and co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Leland Maschmeyer will speak on branding and creativity at OFFF Barcelona this weekend.

“I can’t imagine any person with a background in graphic design made that thing without a committee of bland politicians sanding away its edges until they felt safe enough to unveil that to the public.” Behold: Logogate!

Black designers, curators, and more.

How do you stop deep-sea trawlers from harming ecosystems? Commission 10-ton marble sculptures and place them on the ocean floor, of course.

For ten years, Matt Needle has reimagined every best picture award nominee by redesigning their posters.

Coca-Cola...and art?



Jobs | June 08