In the early 1970s, the editors of the Harvard Business Review received a critical letter from Edward Tufte, scolding its design director—me—as basically incompetent in designing intelligent diagrams for the journal’s audience. He introduced himself as an expert and included his book as an example of good design. It was the first edition of the […]
Design Theory + Criticism
Nicolas Negroponte
…avanti, avanti, avanti,you avant garde architect…have gall, guts, audacity, cheek…jaunt gallantly onward… just don’t gallivant from gala to gala…don’t lose, but guard your integrity…because in your exuberancewanting to be the centerof notoriety or the toast of town, a household word…it’s beginning to show…that you are lagging behind…your cupboard stands bare…now you must play catch up with your principles…begin […]
A hidden, deep feminist struggle at MIT
In the evolution of the office, I suspect a deep feminist struggle was started by Muriel Cooper, who always championed her independence and unpredictability against a male-dominated world, especially when very few women were in primary or leading roles in furthering MIT as an academic institution. This struggle was intuitively joined by Jacqueline Casey. It […]
Commercial Art vs. Graphic Design
Dietmar R. WinklerDesign Practitioner and Educator University of Massachusetts Dartmouth MIT Museum, Cambridge, MassachusettsWednesday, January 9, 2018 A distinct nomenclature change…a name does not change behaviors…things are what they are… Graphic Arts is a term that is used by the printing industry. Here the concept of “arts” does not relate to what we understand as […]
In response: Gates Adresses Harvard Grads 2007
Opinion in response to Thursday, March 22, 2007, Harvard Crimson announcement: Gates Will Address Grads: World’s richest man will get Harvard degree at last—32 years after dropping out In a climate of cultural indifference, and worse, continuous assault on the value of liberal arts education—deemed useless for survival—I was reminded that the original Harvard “core” was about […]
Metaphor and Semantics
For the past thirty years I have been intrigued by the processes of acceptance and integration of new and world changing concepts in the Arts; literature (new styles of unfolding narratives embedded in lyrics, poetry, fiction and journalism), music, dance and stage performance and visual arts and architecture. It is perplexing to see often on […]
Visible Language
Even Cavemen Could Do It Better
The Need for Change in the Design Paradigm:Adding Communication Eloquence (Data Search and Collection, Information Synthesis, Conceptualization and Generation of Contents and Information Management) to Traditional Form and Text Dexterity By Dietmar R. Winkler From the insights of Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician, a great sentiment for a distinct and useful mission for a […]
What is progress?
Industrialization? Urbanization? Globalization? Is it about Efficiency? Expediency? Introducing Scientific, Medical, Technological Solutions? Is it about Modernization, a blind belief in Science and Technology? Has Humankind been able to improve living conditions or the environment? Is it Progress, when the human biology is being ignored, even crippled, when all ecological connections with the environment are […]
Aesthetics:
Not Value Collisions, but an Invigorating Humanistic and Democratic Value Dialogue “If an ox had hands and could paint a picture, his god would look like an ox.”—Xenophanes of Colophon Aesthetics: ‘Pure’ and ‘Absolute’ or ‘Obsolete’. If one were to take Kenneth Clark’s analysis of John Ruskin’s nineteenth century concepts about art and aesthetics and […]