Czech schoolchildren

Spotted in Ostrava, Czech Republic.

An Irish conversation

This conversation happened on whatsapp between me and one of my fellow students:

If this were an Icelandic conversation, the answer would be "Room 256" or whatever, and the poor questioner would be left sitting there for an hour.
Whereas, because it's Ireland, the question presumes that the person asking is in a room for a 9 o'clock lecture and is puzzled because no-one else is there. Unspoken. And yet the person answering could read between those lines and gave the requisite answer although, arguably, not the answer to the question.
Fascinating!
(Maybe it's not an Irish thing, maybe this happens with other cultures too, but I recognise it as Irish and it certainly contrasts with my Icelandic experiences)

Earth architecture

Reading a book by Peter Frey,  Learning from Vernacular: Towards a New Vernacular Architecture,  I came across the phrase:
"Earth architecture represents a way of ecological construction that requires only 1% of the energy that is necessary to erect an equivalent building made of concrete or bricks,  and returning it to its original state requires no energy at all."
When I looked into constructing an earth (one of the options was cob) building as a vegetable storehouse,  I ran into problems with designing foundations.  So the first miscomprehension with the above sentence would be believing that the *entire* building can reduce energy so dramatically.  Typically there is some stone,  brick or concrete construction required too. Secondly,  are we not calculating human labour involved? Because gathering the earth required is laborious -  it should be subsoil with less organic matter than topsoil so deeper digging required! Return to its original state... don't mistake this as implying that the building will leave no mark or footprint when gone- remember those foundations?  And the roofing will likely not be earthen either.

Vegan Cooking for One

This is a design blog so I need to talk about the design of this book. Leah Leneman is the author. Published by Thorsons, a British publishing company in 2000 but originally published as The Single Vegan in 1989.

What I love is... the shopping lists. The book is broken into seasons: Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter. And there are 9 weeks in each season. So that's 18 weeks' worth of recipes.
The notes in the beginning explain that sometimes vegans live with other people who aren't vegans - so this recipe book is not for single people per se but in particular for vegans who cook for themselves. Clever!
There's one recipe per day except for Sunday when there's a lunch, dinner and dessert recipe provided!
One day, a recipe might require "half a cabbage" but one of the other days of the same week, the other half cabbage will be used up.
There's also a list of staples included - or store cupboard stock.
Personally, I am not a vegan. But I am single. I discovered I actually eat out a few nights in the week and therefore the shopping list actually lead to waste.
My favourite recipes were the indonesian noodles and the green curry. Some of the recipes were a bit odd - involving eggless mayonnaise but I suppose that's par for the course for a vegan... and I always replaced the tofu with sausages :)

Is it a painting? No, it's embroidery.

  

Seen in Gotheborg design museum:

Suzy Strindberg
Gron skog, 1999 

Design that makes the world work smoother

Sometimes we forget that things were designed. Systems and objects conceived in someone's mind. Solutions devised. Problems analysed. People and scenarios enquired into and understood.
How's this for a successful ubiquitous design?

The ticket machine with numbered slips of paper and correlating display. 

I have seen this in shoe shops, train station ticket offices, official government passport or motor tax offices. And used internationally also.

I especially think this is wonderful because users are empowered - it's quite a straightforward system, uncomplicated, easy to understand - and if this system is not working out in the user's scenario, it's easily removed and another queuing method devised.

Sometimes the tickets and the screen are out of synch when the customer agent clicks for the next number "64?" and nobody appears but quickly, humanly, a little bit of eye contact among queuers, a decision by the customer service agent and the numbers are brought back to function. When used in the right places, I love it!

Seen in Gotheborg Design Museum:

Turn-o-Matic, M80
Queue ticket dispenser and queue number display
A&E Design AB, Stockholm, 1974
Tom Ahlstrom
Hans Erich

Designing websites

I've dabbled in design of all sorts. And one area has been website design.
Similar to database design, it's really important to get the layout of the end item mapped out before ever using fancy software and good looking graphics. The "architecture" of the website is very important.
Here's a draft initial sitemap or layout design I did for the pages on a friend's website for her company. We never followed through on it but the initial sketch stands up.

I initially drew this on paper as a mindmap kind of but drew it on paint for the purposes of sharing here. All the technology in the world can't beat a little bit of human thinking and intellectualising and planning.