Constructed Thoughts: Built | Unbuilt
April 21, 2009
Advertising - A Magazine Just for You Arrives With Glitches - NYTimes.com
The shrinking world of advertising prompts magazines to shrink, shred and now redefine themselves for the digital age - learning from the online social media networks, online feeds, Twitter frenzy, Facebook and the likes....
Custom-made ads come along with the package.
Custom-made ads come along with the package.
April 20, 2009
April 18, 2009
April 16, 2009
April 12, 2009
April 9, 2009
April 8, 2009
April 7, 2009
Maps - Density of Cultural Events in New York and Los Angeles
Mapping the ‘WHA...’?!!
Spatial mapping is about interpreting data, spatially - not just documenting what we already know but to infer useful information and deduce insights. Disappointing 'much ado about nothing' is how I would describe this euphorically broadcast event by NY Times in today's issue. The project seems to be less about mapping the buzz but rather creating a buzz around mapping nothing.... unfortunately. Instead of mapping the ecology of real culture in terms of production and consumption and show how it may define, show or map culture and cultural space in the cities - the project draws swift and limited conclusions based on a very limited premise of how media views and covers the so-called high-end "cultural events". It also fails to take into account the advent of the internet and how the social ecologies of space have been transforming and generating other forms of cultural topographies hitherto unknown. Sometime this week, Facebook expects to register its 200 millionth user (Facebook amasses 200 million strong population worldwide - that would make it the 5th largest country in the world!).
Under the context of globalization and global connectivity, the question about 'culture' hangs in balance, simultaneously challenging the primary role of history, theory and philosophy. Driven by the proliferation of information and communication technologies, our spatial and visual culture is also changing. In my view, this visualization/mapping project fails to examine and explore Mapping as a tool for making city legible. It does not address urban culture from this vantage point, and has limited or no usefulness for those who care to understand cities and how the physical and social spaces diverge or intersect to define cultural geographies....
It is also sad to note that New York Times, that has lately been championing the useful art of info-graphics for socially conscious issues and matters, finds this worthy of being printed on its pages...
Spatial mapping is about interpreting data, spatially - not just documenting what we already know but to infer useful information and deduce insights. Disappointing 'much ado about nothing' is how I would describe this euphorically broadcast event by NY Times in today's issue. The project seems to be less about mapping the buzz but rather creating a buzz around mapping nothing.... unfortunately. Instead of mapping the ecology of real culture in terms of production and consumption and show how it may define, show or map culture and cultural space in the cities - the project draws swift and limited conclusions based on a very limited premise of how media views and covers the so-called high-end "cultural events". It also fails to take into account the advent of the internet and how the social ecologies of space have been transforming and generating other forms of cultural topographies hitherto unknown. Sometime this week, Facebook expects to register its 200 millionth user (Facebook amasses 200 million strong population worldwide - that would make it the 5th largest country in the world!).
Under the context of globalization and global connectivity, the question about 'culture' hangs in balance, simultaneously challenging the primary role of history, theory and philosophy. Driven by the proliferation of information and communication technologies, our spatial and visual culture is also changing. In my view, this visualization/mapping project fails to examine and explore Mapping as a tool for making city legible. It does not address urban culture from this vantage point, and has limited or no usefulness for those who care to understand cities and how the physical and social spaces diverge or intersect to define cultural geographies....
It is also sad to note that New York Times, that has lately been championing the useful art of info-graphics for socially conscious issues and matters, finds this worthy of being printed on its pages...
Related Article
New York
Los Angeles
April 6, 2009
April 3, 2009
March 31, 2009
March 30, 2009
March 28, 2009
March 23, 2009
March 22, 2009
March 21, 2009
Judging Albam by their Covers: Jonathan Jones on Guardian, UK
Jonathan Jones's favourite album covers
The cover of the Fleet Foxes album, showing a detail from Bruegel the Elder's Netherlandish Proverbs. Photograph: Public Domain
March 20, 2009
March 19, 2009
Liquid Letters
Liquid Letters
Source: www.adventureconstruct.com
A short animation created on a week long workshop called 'Typo-Move' as part of onedotzero motion graphics festival, and lead by graphic design pioneer Neville Brody. ... ...
March 17, 2009
Identity Crisis! | SciFi is now SyFy
Identity Crisis! | SciFi is now SyFy
When it comes to identity, tossing one in favor of the other may sometimes prove to be fatal.... Names and logos are no exception.
When it comes to identity, tossing one in favor of the other may sometimes prove to be fatal.... Names and logos are no exception.
March 16, 2009
March 15, 2009
March 13, 2009
March 10, 2009
Branding Recovery... OR Just B(r)and-Aid(s)!!!
Graphic Content | Making Obama’s Marks
Steven Heller discusses new logos for Obama's Recovery Programs : the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (Tiger)..
Steven Heller discusses new logos for Obama's Recovery Programs : the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (Tiger)..
March 3, 2009
February 27, 2009
February 24, 2009
Feedback: Production | Transmission | Communication | Dissemination
Depart From Zero (Low signal, high noise version)
February 23, 2009
February 22, 2009
Credit Where Credits Are Due: The Past and Present (From NY Times)
Interesting and timely recap of Cinema Graphics from the past and present in NY-Times. Known and/or unknown unsung heroes/designers that created memorable title sequences for various films, through history go unacknowledged if not unnoticed. Here is a remarkable tribute.... -V.
Credit Where Credits Are Due: The Present
Credit Where Credits Are Due: The Present
February 21, 2009
After the Fall
No Downtime (or downturn) for Design
The current economic crisis, combined with environmental issues pose challenges as well as opportunities for designers. . Tied to the question is the issue of consumption. Faced with new realities and knowledge of the consequences of ignorance call for us to redefine or reinstate the role of design. Design as a response to necessity vs indulgence, or both, prompt us to look at use-patterns in a much wider context than what the 20th century consumerism did. There is a paradigm shift..... We as a consumer society have understood how to share our resources and exploit them selfishly. Time has come to also share risks; design must play a significant and responsible role for the collective good.
Recession should not mean regression.... progressive ideas come from the need to be frugal and inventive at the same time; to do more with less, is the challenge 21st century designers must embrace.
-Viren
I.D. - After the Fall
The current economic crisis, combined with environmental issues pose challenges as well as opportunities for designers. . Tied to the question is the issue of consumption. Faced with new realities and knowledge of the consequences of ignorance call for us to redefine or reinstate the role of design. Design as a response to necessity vs indulgence, or both, prompt us to look at use-patterns in a much wider context than what the 20th century consumerism did. There is a paradigm shift..... We as a consumer society have understood how to share our resources and exploit them selfishly. Time has come to also share risks; design must play a significant and responsible role for the collective good.
Recession should not mean regression.... progressive ideas come from the need to be frugal and inventive at the same time; to do more with less, is the challenge 21st century designers must embrace.
-Viren
I.D. - After the Fall
February 17, 2009
The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives | NY Times
It fascinates me to note how gullible we are as a society of the "willing victims"; and how technology has colonized us since the industrial revolution...
Our personal space is shrinking day-by-day...
-V
Our personal space is shrinking day-by-day...
-V
February 13, 2009
February 7, 2009
January 31, 2009
History of the Internet | Video
History of media and communication is also the history of culture(s). Some technologies define not only the way of life, they also change the way we see ourselves and like/want to see ourselves.
Global connectivity has not only increased communication, it has also changed the way we communicate - affecting and altering our perceptions of the world. Culture as something belonging to a particular 'place' is contaminated (albeit, in a positive sense too) and is emerging more as a flattened topography cluttered with visual, textual and non-verbal messages that we witness as a language of the new millennium.
Viren Brahmbhatt | de.Sign
Global connectivity has not only increased communication, it has also changed the way we communicate - affecting and altering our perceptions of the world. Culture as something belonging to a particular 'place' is contaminated (albeit, in a positive sense too) and is emerging more as a flattened topography cluttered with visual, textual and non-verbal messages that we witness as a language of the new millennium.
Viren Brahmbhatt | de.Sign
The Super Ad Bowl - Two Decades of Players - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com
Mapping History with an interactive interface: End of Print? Interactive History and great data-graphics for those graphically and visually inclined...
Viren Brahmbhatt | de.Sign
The Super Ad Bowl - Two Decades of Players - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com
Viren Brahmbhatt | de.Sign
The Super Ad Bowl - Two Decades of Players - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com
January 26, 2009
January 22, 2009
January 20, 2009
January 6, 2009
Ethereal.....
Postcards From Mars
NASA
RIPPLES A crater between the southern highlands and northern lowlands, intersected by what may have been a shoreline of an ocean.
NASA
RIPPLES A crater between the southern highlands and northern lowlands, intersected by what may have been a shoreline of an ocean.
January 2, 2009
Celebrate 200 Years of Braille...
Braille: A Language of touch, that touches millions of lives and us....
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Why Braille is brilliant
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Why Braille is brilliant
January 1, 2009
December 26, 2008
December 25, 2008
Words as Signs
Historically, words have been in use to effectively communicate, seduce and be persuasive. In today’s technologically advanced and visually obsessed world, they have taken over our lives and have become bits and bytes that pixelate our imagination. Reading is constantly confronted by seeing and scrolling... while words float over and across the screen enticing to draw our attention or distract us from reality as they bend every form of what is real. But still, however treacherous they may/can be, as designers, we will always use them to seduce, persuade or dissuade; but more than anything else, never lose sight of the fact that they are 'visual' and graphic and can be used not only to tell stories but to also paint them....
Some Buzzwords published in NY Times with illustrations by Jessica Hische are worth checking:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/weekinreview/buzzwords2008.html
Some Buzzwords published in NY Times with illustrations by Jessica Hische are worth checking:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/weekinreview/buzzwords2008.html
December 23, 2008
December 19, 2008
December 18, 2008
Places Journal: A Forum of Design for the Public Realm
Pratt's Graduate School of Architecture and Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (Professors Meta Brunzema and Viren Brahmbhatt) have introduced an innovative course on sustainable neighborhood planning in Bedford Stuyvesant, which will also inform further planning and implementation by the Pratt Center for Community Development and others.
December 17, 2008
December 16, 2008
Urban typography and the legible city....
Visual clutter? Positively enticing. Profoundly interesting....
Urban typography and the legible city....
A Typographic Survey of the City of London from Michael Bojkowski on Vimeo.
Urban typography and the legible city....
A Typographic Survey of the City of London from Michael Bojkowski on Vimeo.
December 13, 2008
New York Housing Chief Is Chosen for Cabinet - NYTimes.com
We need an urbanist, not another technocrat or a bureaucrat.. at HUD... Over the past years, HUD has been a marginal player to effectively guide urban policy or projects... let alone housing. HUD is a good idea that didn't work... doesn't work. Specially now, with sustainability (green collar jobs?!) at t's core, urbanism needs to be redefined with housing foreclosures issue at one hand and unemployment/financial crisis at the other...
New York Housing Chief Is Chosen for Cabinet - NYTimes.com
New York Housing Chief Is Chosen for Cabinet - NYTimes.com
December 5, 2008
Why Do They Attack Particular Cities | Terrorist Attacks on Mumbai
Mumbai: A Divided City
I was in New York, not in Mumbai when terror struck that city over the past few days… I was in New York on 9-11 when terror struck New York, standing right next to Seven World Trade Center and still feel the terrifying vibrations under my feet when the first tower collapsed. I am separated by vast seas and muted grief from Mumbai but the events I watched live on my laptop and TV made me feel as I did on 9-11. Mumbai and New York are separated by the silence of that grief and the unspoken words: we feel the pain.
I am an architect in New York, and a world citizen with close ties to Mumbai. I belong to the same human tribe that inhabits this planet and calls one city home versus the others. We all have that dubious relationship with the city, others and ours. At times that relationship is a love affair and at other times, it is reproachful. I understand very well why that may be so, however, am at a loss when the latter is taken to extremes and cities are targeted for violence and are wounded. I understand, cities are symbolic of their political, social and economic structures and Mumbai is not an exception. Like every other city, Mumbai has its shortcomings, inequities and chaos. But it also has its vibrancy due to those dichotomies that produce tense dynamics. Then, there is the global context that defines Mumbai and New York like many other cities as ‘targets’, as sites of atrocities. On one hand, we as humans are better connected than ever before in the history of mankind, however, events like these reminds us of how far apart we are from each other.
Mumbai is a divided city, so is the world.
I was in New York, not in Mumbai when terror struck that city over the past few days… I was in New York on 9-11 when terror struck New York, standing right next to Seven World Trade Center and still feel the terrifying vibrations under my feet when the first tower collapsed. I am separated by vast seas and muted grief from Mumbai but the events I watched live on my laptop and TV made me feel as I did on 9-11. Mumbai and New York are separated by the silence of that grief and the unspoken words: we feel the pain.
I am an architect in New York, and a world citizen with close ties to Mumbai. I belong to the same human tribe that inhabits this planet and calls one city home versus the others. We all have that dubious relationship with the city, others and ours. At times that relationship is a love affair and at other times, it is reproachful. I understand very well why that may be so, however, am at a loss when the latter is taken to extremes and cities are targeted for violence and are wounded. I understand, cities are symbolic of their political, social and economic structures and Mumbai is not an exception. Like every other city, Mumbai has its shortcomings, inequities and chaos. But it also has its vibrancy due to those dichotomies that produce tense dynamics. Then, there is the global context that defines Mumbai and New York like many other cities as ‘targets’, as sites of atrocities. On one hand, we as humans are better connected than ever before in the history of mankind, however, events like these reminds us of how far apart we are from each other.
Mumbai is a divided city, so is the world.
November 12, 2008
November 9, 2008
Blackness
Black is not a color... it is beginning to dawn upon our generation. There are shades of blackness that define us as a human race that constantly get defined and redefined as part of political processes that shape our culture and our perceptions of us and the 'others'... Jean Paul Sartre wrote in 1944: "l'enfer, c'est les autres" (The ' other' is hell), in "No Exit " however, our generation's quest is not to find an exit but to open doors.... Doors to perception and change.... Change is fueled by 'blackness' not as a perceived tool but as what defines the collective contemporary consciousness in the 21st century. We are ready to define the 'otherness' by redefining ourselves as a human race - represented not as a 'crowd' but as an individual consciousness that contributes to the larger 'us' as a collective culture - We do not 'exit' not because of the fear of the unknown, but because of what can be attributed (as in Garcin's desire in the play by Sartre) for validation that he is not a coward - each one of us is not a crowd.The ‘otherness’ is now new ‘blackness ’….. Blackness used to be defined as the degree to which an individual, regardless of their ethnic background, is sympathetic to or a part of the mainstream African-American culture. But now, that is being put into another context and being redefined as an almost ‘colorless’ blackness under globalizaion and changing definitions of mariginalization. Blackness at times, is a brand… as presented to us by the media. It is not merely a political tool, but it is also a process that transcends color, race, ethnicity or intellectual orientation. It is at once expressed as power and powerlessness as strength – epitomized by language and its use. It is visual and pure blindness simultaneously.
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