Fred studied art history at Middlebury College and photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, and was a professional photographer. A founding principal of Envision Corporation, Fred directed corporate communications media projects for Polaroid, The Boston Globe, Digital Equipment, Sheraton, and many others. Fred helped create Boston’s multimedia presentation bid to host the 1976 […]
Year: 2019
Elmer Ray Pearson
When I arrived at the ID, Institute of Design, in 1976, very little of László Moholy-Nagy’s legacy remained. Jay Doblin, the next leading director of the school, as it is told, had rubbish trucks come to remove the emptied-out legacies of the Chicago Bauhaus and its traditions. There was a faculty revolt, and a great […]
Carl Zahn
When I became an associate at Leverett A. Peters, Associates, Carl Zahn dropped in one day unannounced, just to see what was going on in this new studio on Boston’s Boylston Street, across from the public library. Zahn’s professionalism was highly regarded. He knew the best set of printers from which one could choose for […]
Under Russian Rule
Introduction Paul Winkler was my grandfather. He was born in 1866, was a school headmaster and appointed church organist in Breslau, Silesia, a region which became part of Poland after 1945. It is assumed that he retired in 1931 at the age of 65 as most professionals of his generation did. Ten years before he […]
Ideen sind billig! (Ideas are Cheap!)
In the mid-fifties, this sign was in one of the classroom-studios of Kunstschule Amsterdam in Hamburg. The gist of it is: Ideas like words are cheap, unless successfully translated into quality images and objects, supported by high intelligence and discipline, selection of appropriate and sensitive metaphors, choice of materials and tools and reflecting high skills […]
Indentity in Sheep’s Clothing
Americans May Have No Identity, But They Do Have Wonderful Teeth. * -Jean Baudrillard, paraphrased Identity as Territorial Marker Behind the concept of “identity”, hidden, lies a much more powerful human trait, namely the sense and extreme need for ownership, control, and territoriality. Through physical, social, and cultural territoriality, humanity is animated by nature […]
Acknowledgment
This web-project was started some six years ago by Megan Verdugo, a relentless and selfless design and typography enthusiast, an UMassD alumna, graduating successfully from the Design Department of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, in which I held a position as design educator since 1973 until retirement. Megan Verdugo owns the total archive […]
What is Design History?
A slideshow from the classroom. Gif runs 5 seconds each frame.
On Design Research
By Jorge Frascara and Dietmar R. Winkler From Design Research Quarterly Volume 3, Number 3 July 2008 Design Research Society ISSN 1752-8445 Peter K. Storkerson, Editor Editor’s Introduction: Communication design, generally, is an outlier in the larger field of design, by virtue of its non-participation in empirical research and its lack of interest in […]
Appendixes
At the beginning, they say, the word was birthed. That may be true. But at the end, it says right here, in the mechanics of life, at the end of the book, there fall the appendixes . . . Any encyclopedia will mark “appendix” a collection of supplementary material, usually placed at the end, […]