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CONTENTS DESIGN_________________________________4 INTERACTIVE/Designing Your Own Typeface ____ 6 PERSPECTIVE/On Simplicity ___________________10
SCIENCE________________________________12 FINDINGS/ You Aren’t Left or Right Brained ____14 WORLD/3D Printing Will Destroy the World ____16 BOOKS/Stairs ________________________________20
IDEAS__________________________________22 CULTURE/Workspace__________________________24
FEATURE THEORIES /Master & Servant_________30
design De [01]
ORIGIN magazine
science Sc [02] perspective
Pe [03]
Typeface Design
On Simplicity
Int [01]
Per [01]
Left or Right Brain?
3D Printing will Destroy
Fnd [02]
the World
Wrld [02]
Workspace
Master & Servant
Cu [03]
Thr [03]
Stairs
Bk [02]
FROM THE EDITOR THE WORLD IS A CRAZY & EXCITING PLACE.
What do you know? What do you want to know? Origin is all about finding out. Curiosity is an inherent trait of human consciousness and the pursuit of knowledge has propelled us towards some tremendous achievements. In the debut issue of Origin magazine, we explore a variety of current topics under the umbrella of design, science and perpsective. The Usability experts at 52 weeks of UX fill us in on the definition of simplicity and why it’s important to understand and apply. Next we challenge preconcieved notions of the age old adage of being left-brained or right-brained and how scientific discovery has discredited this commonly touted “fact”. Speaking of disovery, there has been a lot of fuss about the advancements and benefits of 3D printing, however it’s potential misgivings are dictated in “3D Printing Will Destroy the World” presenting interesting insight into materiality and the effects of consumer culture. Finally, this issues feature article will transport back into the 19th century to explore the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel whose contributions to the understanding of self provide valuable insight into how people view themselves and why. Origin is a about spreading ideas that educate, challenge and encourage discussion and critical thinking. So go forth, discover, engage and change the world!
Stephanie Stobart
DESIGN DE ‘ZÄŞN/ noun
A plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is built or made. Purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object. The art or action of conceiving of and producing a plan or drawing. An arrangement of lines or shapes created to form a pattern or decoration. Style, composition, makeup, layout, construction, shape, form. Purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object.
design De [03]
design De [01]
02.
A \ FUNDAMENTAL CHOICES
There are a number of early choices you need to consider. Will it be a serif or sans serif typeface? Will it be based on a writing implement or be more geometric? Will your design be a text face, comfortable at small sizes and suitable for long documents, or will it be a display face with an imaginative style, that works better a larger size?
By Jamie Clarke of Type Worship
01.
Tip: Designing a sans serif typeface can be more challenging for beginners, because the features that provide these typefaces with their identity are much more subtle.
Start
with a
brief
Designing a typeface can be a long journey so it's prudent to have a clear vision of its purpose. You might begin with something purely self-expressive. However, the usual practice is to create a typeface in response to a brief. Developing your own brief will inevitably require research and reflection. How will it be used: is it for a specific project or personal use only? Is there a problem you might solve? How might your typeface fit into a landscape alongside similar designs? What makes it unique?
The options are vast. Typefaces have been created, for example, specifically for academic texts, to provide better number systems for engineering documents or as a one-off for public lettering. Only when you know what your typeface will actually be used for can you really get started on the design.
03. Early pitfalls
You might decide to start by digitizing your own handwriting, which can be a useful practice exercise. However, because handwriting is so individual, without much refinement your typeface could be restricted to personal use.
Don’t base your design on an existing typeface’s outlines. 'Helvetica with wings' is not going to produce a better typeface or help you develop your skills as a type designer. This should go without saying.
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04. Use your hands Much is written on how to draw letterforms, but even if you are a Bezier curve master, I'd advocate defining your letterforms by hand in the first instance. Articulating certain shapes via computer when establishing your design can be awkward and time consuming. Try to create graceful shapes on paper for the first few characters before refining them digitally. Further characters can then be constructed on screen by matching key features, such as terminal endings and stroke widths. Tip: The hand naturally draws smoother, more accurate curves in a concave arc pivoted by the arm and wrist. To take advantage of this, keep turning your paper rather than adjusting your position or drawing against this pivot point.
05. Which characters to start with It can help to design certain characters first. Designing certain characters first can help set the style of your typeface and may be used to bring the other characters into harmony. Often called 'control characters', in a lowercase Latin typeface these would be the n and o, and in the uppercase, H and O are often used.
CONTROL CHARACTERS
noHO
06.
Moving to your computer There are a variety of ways to get your drawings onto the computer. Some advocate tracing programs, however I prefer manually tracing my drawings because I want full control over where the points on my curves go. Most software requires a well-defined drawing to work with effectively, so when you’re happy with a sketched character, try outlining it with a fine tipped pen (to get a shape edge) and then fill in the shape with a marker. Tip: You can then take a snap with your phone’s camera (these days most are of high enough quality), and send it to your computer.
07.
Choosing your software
Many
designers from a graphic design background will naturally opt straight for Adobe Illustrator to start drawing their type. For drawing individual letterforms and experimenting, this is fine. However, it soon becomes obvious that this is simply not the right tool for creating a typeface. From the outset you will benefit from working in an environment that gets you thinking about letter spacing and word creation.
The software choice has opened up in the last few years on the Mac. The current industry standard seems to be FontLab Studio (Mac and Windows), but new software like Glyphs and Robofont are gaining more traction with type designers. The programs aren’t cheap, but Glyphs does have a 'Mini' version on the Mac App Store, with some functionality removed that beginners are unlikely to miss. Both also offer a 30-day free trail. The other obvious advantage of these packages is that you can export your work in progress as a font.
08. Using the software
10. Looking at words
m I was using Glyphs, as recommended on the course. The interface is good and there are handy videos online, but like any software, it takes a little time to become familiar with.
Once you've imported your image, the drawing interface is pretty close to Illustrator, however I found the control of Bezier curve points and handles much more accurate in Glyphs.
counter
Tip: where possible, place your points on the extremities of the letterform curves (top, bottom, left, right) for greater control. See more digitization tips here on TypeCooker.
09. Text view mode
Once you have drawn a few letters, you can start typing words using the text view mode. Here again is one of the major advantages of this software: you can edit your shapes in the same text view to start harmonizing the characters together in words.
You can then begin making adjustments to the letter spacing, looking at the rhythm of the counters and refining the overall proportions, like the x-height, weight and width of your typeface etc.
STEM
Glyphs: Modifying your shapes within a text view As Matthew Carter is oft quoted: "Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters". With this in mind, aim to start looking at your design from a line and paragraph level as early as possible. Once you've created a few characters, you can enter them into Adhesion Text, an online tool that uses a simple dictionary look-up to provide you with the words you can make so far. Create a simple InDesign document with some text frames and paste these words into them. I set each text frame to a different font size for comparison (the sizes will depend on what your typeface is to be used for). Finally, export your typeface and select it within your document to see it in action. Tip: Font management programs such as Font Book, FontExplorer can help activate your fonts for use with InDesign. On a Mac, exporting your typeface straight into /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/ means that you can hit the export button and flick between the programs to instantly see the effect on a paragraph and line level (the only works inside Adobe products). Tip: While you’re still in the early stages of your design, before you’ve settled on any spacing, you can use InDesign’s built-in kerning tool to optically space your letters, maybe with some extra tracking, for a quick and dirty impression. However, this is total sacrilege when using a well-spaced, well-kerned typeface since you always want to use the in-built spacing.
11. Study other typefaces To create a credible typeface, you need to study other good examples. Looking at them in a critical way, from a contextual or historical perspective, will help you understand why certain design choices in these and your own typeface have a particular effect. Look at how the system of shapes work together consistently while forging an identity. This is the subject of an entirely different article and again, there are plenty of good books to help you on the right path with this, however, the advice I was given, is to look at both typefaces that are in a similar style to your own, and those text typefaces that are generally accepted to be good examples.
12.
SCALE IT DOWN It's important to review your typeface at different sizes in your test document. Depending on your brief, readability might be critical at smaller sizes, or you might be concerned with how your display text reads at a distance. A change of scale can be troublesome. Looking at how your shapes behave at a variety of sizes, and learning what design decisions affect them takes practice.
13. Get it on paper Seeing your typeface in print gives a different perspective. Printing your progress and seeing it away from the confines of pixels and backlighting will help you view it from a different perspective. To me, it seems much easier to spot issues with misshaped characters, the rhythm of counters, and the modulation of strokes etc, when pinned to a wall. It's also easier to make notes and sketches for adjustment. Another benefit of printing is that when making thousands of micro adjustments over a long development period, a printout can help you track your progress so you can see how far you’ve come.
15. Styles, weights and widths A good breadth of weights can often negate that small detail you spent days labouring over. When a designer is choosing a particular typeface, she is likely going to need a palette of options to design with. Does your typeface have a true italic, not just a slanted roman? Would your typeface suit a condensed version? This goes back to your brief and use cases for your typeface. See Lucas de Groot’s TheSans for an example of an font family.
&
16. Consider global usage So you've created something that you're quite proud of. Did you start with a Latin typeface? What about the 250 million readers of Cyrillic in Eastern Europe and central Asia? Or the 220 million Devanagari readers in India and Nepal?
14. It’s not just a-z
Your typeface might comprise of a limited set of characters because it's for a particular project, personal use or if it's a very decorative design. However if your aim is for it to be used by other designers, for a variety of projects, then it needs to be flexible and have a broad character set. This would generally include small capitals, diacritic signs (accents), and a choice of numerals, ligatures and more.
There is a growing market for non-Latin typefaces and some scripts are woefully underserviced. A common question that I also asked myself is: "Can a non-speaker design a good script for a language they do not read?" The answer is emphatically yes. It takes a lot of research, learning about the script's history and culture, meeting native speakers and exploring historical examples, but a large number of excellent typefaces have been designed this way throughout history.
17. Put it to the test Well-used Gujarati metal type One you’ve crafted something you're happy with, you'll want to start seeing how it performs at a range of tasks suited to the original brief. Try using your font on some previous design projects, replacing the original typeface. Create some specific artwork that will put it under pressure or perhaps ask a designer friend to test it out and give you some feedback. e
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design De [01]
ON SIMPLICTY
52 WEEKS OF UX.COM
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SIMPLE? All designers say simplicity is important, but what does it really mean to make something simple? Most of the time we think it means less, that by removing stuff we achieve simplicity. We think by keeping content above the fold we’re helping people focus, or by using bullets instead of paragraphs more people will read it, or by cutting text in half it becomes more clear. But simple doesn’t mean “less”. A better definition would be “just enough”. Oops, I may have oversimplified there… In some cases designs actually need more of something to become simple. So a better definition of simple is “just enough for comprehension and the ability to pursue and complete our goals”. Instead of hiding or cutting stuff away, here is how we can achieve more meaningful simplicity in our designs: - Have a single core idea (not several ideas, or a partial idea) - Improve clarity over time (don’t overwhelm with inappropriate details) - Use consistency (avoid using unnecessarily unique interfaces and messages)
HAVE A SINGLE CORE IDEA Attention and interest are the first things you need to develop to get someone to take any kind of action. The best way to grab attention and build interest is to present a single core idea, fully fledged. This allows the user to make a binary decision about it: “Am I interested or not?”. Introducing a feature in a way that people can instantly map it to a desired outcome will help them prioritize and be confident about their next step. The need to present a single core idea is true from the big picture all the way down to each of the smallest features.
“NOTHING SAYS SEND MESSAGE, LIKE THE WORDS ‘SEND MESSAGE’.” - DES TREYNOR @DESTRAYNOR This is an example of a small feature being extremely clear to an outcome. The copy here could have been “Go” or “Submit Now” or just “Send”. None of these are as clear or binary as “Send Message”, which in two words allows people to confidently agree or disagree with it. As you move into more complex features being binary gets exponentially harder, but the goal should remain the same: lead people with a core idea that properly sets their expectations. If we fail to do this, the perception of complexity will grow.
A SINGLE CORE IDEA IS: - Binary - simple enough that there are only two sides to it… allowing people to assess their agreement or not. - Stated in plain language be as clear and obvious about the problem or opportunity as possible. - Repeated constantly - every interface should reiterate the appropriate problem or opportunity where appropriate. - Tied to an outcome - the end goal of each problem or opportunity should always be visible.
IMPROVE CLARITY OVER TIME
USE CONSISTENCY
After gaining people’s interest, getting them to invest their time and mental energy is the next big step. Even when your audience finds your application interesting, there can still be lots of friction. If they’re intimidated by it, the adoption rate will be slow. You have to show them that they can accomplish their goals
A new user and a long-time user are very different animals. If you want to keep people around, you need to help them feel like they’re mastering each part of the application and have no reason to worry about the next one. Each feature needs to be approachable enough to seem enjoyable and feel like it’s going to be the best use of their
without frustration.
“WEB COPY: WRITE TOO LITTLE AND THE MEANING DOESN’T COME THROUGH. WRITE TOO MUCH AND THE BLOCK IS SKIPPED BECAUSE IT WAS TOO THICK TO SCAN.” - RYAN SINGER @RJS Much like a conversation that is refined over time, the right details in the right moments will give momentum to the process and increase the chances of it reaching a positive end. Removing relevant, but inappropriate details, will keep people moving forward and reduce the chances of being distracted. Remember, every investment of time or mental effort without a meaningful result will add to the perception of complexity. IMPROVE CLARITY OVER TIME WITH: - Clear starting and ending points - make sure it’s obvious how to do something valuable within an interface. - Progressive disclosure - be appropriate: put focus only those details that help with comprehension of the current task. - Obvious paths always provide a clear transition to the next step or level of detail.
time and energy.
“WHETHER IT IS FLAGS WAVING IN THE WIND, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EMPTY OR CROWDED TRAIN PLATFORMS, OR THE FOOTPRINTS IN THE FIELDS THAT SUGGEST PATHS TO FOLLOW, WE SEARCH FOR SIGNIFICANT SIGNS IN THE WORLD THAT OFFER GUIDANCE.” - DON NORMAN @JND1ER
Showing people a friendly face will give them confidence and put a smile on their face. Help people see things they’ve seen before and draw conclusions based on things they already know. There’s nothing wrong with a complex interface when you have a complex problem, but there’s no excuse for dropping someone off in a foreign land without a guide or a map. That’s just mean. BE CONSISTENT THROUGH: - Consolidating routines - identify similar processes and use similar approaches. - Building patterns - put similar things in similar places so people can act through intuition. - Occasionally breaking the rules - know when an interface is genuinely unique —it’s probably not as often as you think.
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WHEN MORE IS LESS Prevailing wisdom suggests that simplicity is about less…removal and reductionism. But simplicity is really about comprehension and clarity of purpose…can we design such that people instantly understand what’s going on and make a confident decision about what to do next? To practically achieve simplicity we can stick to a single core idea, improve clarity over time, and use consistency to help users achieve efficiency. In this way more can be less…by adding the appropriate details at the appropriate time the entire process comes to seem simple to the people using it. Simplicity has tricked us into thinking its about less. But it’s really about having just enough. e
SCIENCE SÄŞENS/ noun
the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
science Sc [02]
science Sc [02]
DESPITE WHAT YOU’VE BEEN TOLD,
:-)
YOU AREN’T ’LEFT BRAINED’ OR ‘RIGHT BRAINED’ By Amy Novotney of the Guardian
x A ! 3+3
?
F
rom self-help and business success books to job applications and smartphone apps, the theory that the different halves of the human brain govern different skills and personality traits is a popular one. No doubt at some point in your life you’ve been schooled on “left-brained” and “right-brained” thinking – that people who use the right side of their brains most are more creative, spontaneous and subjective, while those who tap the left side more are more logical, detail-oriented and analytical. Too bad it’s not true.
5x6
In a new two-year study published in the journal Plos One, University of Utah neuroscientists scanned the brains of more than 1,000 people, ages 7 to 29, while they were lying quietly or reading, measuring their functional lateralization – the specific mental processes taking place on each side of the brain. They broke the brain into 7,000 regions, and while they did uncover patterns for why a brain connection might be strongly left or right-lateralized, they found no evidence that the study participants had a stronger left or right-sided brain network. Jeff Anderson, the study’s lead author and a professor of neuroradiology at the University of Utah says: “It’s absolutely true that some brain functions occur in one or the other side of the brain, language tends to be on the left, attention more on the right.” But the brain isn’t as clear-cut as the myth makes it out to be. For example, the right hemisphere is involved in processing some aspects of language, such as intonation and emphasis. How, then, did the left-brained/ right-brained theory take root? Experts suggest the myth dates back to the 1800s, when scientists discovered that an injury to one side of the brain caused a loss of specific abilities. The concept gained ground in the 1960s based on Nobel-prize-winning “split-brain” work by neuropsychologists Robert Sperry, and Michael Gazzaniga. The researchers
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conducted studies with patients who had undergone surgery to cut the corpus callosum – the band of neural fibers that connect the hemispheres – as a last-resort treatment for epilepsy. They discovered that when the two sides of the brain weren’t able to communicate with each other, they responded differently to stimuli, indicating that the hemispheres have different functions. Both of these bodies of research tout findings related to function; it was popular psychology enthusiasts who undoubtedly took this work a step further and pegged personality types to brain hemispheres. According to Anderson: “The neuroscience community has never accepted the idea of ‘left-dominant’ or ‘rightdominant’ personality types. Lesion studies don’t support it, and the truth is that it would be highly inefficient for one half of the brain to consistently be more active than the other.” Yet, despite Anderson’s work and other studies that continue to disprove the idea that personality type is related to one or the other side of the brain being stronger, my guess is that the left-brained/ right-brained vernacular isn’t going away anytime soon. Human society is built around categories, classifications and generalizations, and there’s something seductively simple about labeling yourself and others as either a logical left-brainer or a free-spirited right brainer. Similar to the Myers-Briggs test – another widely used personality test with limited scientific evidence – the left-brained/rightbrained thinker theory provides us with an explanation for why we are the way we are, and offers insights into where we fit into the world. It’s also a great conversation starter – and if used as a novelty, or a way to strengthen the “weaker half” of your brain, the myth is pretty harmless. The problems start, however, when the left-brained/right-
brained myth becomes a selffulfilling prophecy. When your 12-year-old fills out an online personality test that pegs her as a “right-brainer” and she decides to skip her math homework – because the test told her she isn’t good with numbers – the persistence of this false dichotomy starts to become destructive. The same goes for the unemployed worker who forgoes applying for their dream job because the job description calls for creativity skills they think they may not have. What research has yet to refute is the fact that the brain is remarkably malleable, even into late adulthood. It has an amazing ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells, allowing us to continually learn new things and modify our behavior. Let’s not underestimate our potential by allowing a simplistic myth to obscure the complexity of how our brains really work. e
3D
PRINTING WILL l DESTROY THE WORLD. By Rachel Armstrong of the Architectural Review
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Norman Foster plans to print moon bases using an array of mobile printing nozzles on a 6 metre frame to squirt out sequential layers of lunar soil that will be set with a binding solution. The current system can work at a rate of 2 metres per hour, but next generations of printers are expected to reach 3.5 metres per hour or more, and be able to finish an entire building in a week. Back on Earth, firms are using Contour Crafting to structurally match building design with their environments by combining 3-D printers and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This experimental technology may one day design entire ports to withstand future earthquakes that devastate places like Haiti, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional construction company. And more 3-D magic is on the way. Stratasys has just announced its new revolutionary 3-D printer that can produce multiple material types in a single print run, reducing the price of complex prototypes by around 50 per cent, while Skylar Tibbits promises us a phase of 4-D printing where strange geometries become even weirder when they encounter activating solutions. But is 3-D printing really as wonderful as it’s made out to be? Over the last few years, it has certainly excited many designers and architects through its dexterity in handling large data files and translating marvelous CAD geometries into material form. Yet, it seems a tall order to claim that a process can actually be ‘efficient’ compared with modern industrial processes, when it slowly and laboriously squeezes matter out of a tube at a snail’s pace, to produce objects in studio units that have the look and feel of delivery wards and appear to be just as resource and time intensive. Such systems can also only deal with relatively small volumes of matter when compared with industrial processes, where substrates include cheap plastics, costly metals and incredibly expensive tissue culture.
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I’m also yet to see a full supply chain analysis on the energy and resource requirements of 3-D printing – over and above a comparison with producing a specific object using subtractive processes. It is even more extraordinary for a practice whose material platform is largely based on plastics, compounds that do not do well in ecosystems, to propose to be ‘ecological’. But perhaps the most vexing aspect of 3-D printing is that squirting plastics into funny digital shapes says absolutely nothing about matter – which as Timothy Morton reminds us, is the essence of Nature. And, it is the very issue of the translation of geometric plots into a material expression that, in the longer term, will distinguish between whether 3-D printing in specific circumstances is simply a ‘better’ form of industrialization – or whether it will deserve its early acclaim as a revolution in making heralded by Forbes, Harvard Business Review and the BBC. Most 3D printing requires non-recyclable, oilbased plastics and energy intensive processes Undoubtedly 3-D printing appears to be an antidote to some aspects of industrial processes, with human centered benefits, where designers and information technology literate end-users are given more personal freedom through customizable processes. 3-D printing can also process locally sourced materials, reducing the expense of transport and distribution systems and has even been proposed to improve employment conditions. But amid all the hype, 3-D printing needs urgent interrogation with respect to its relationship with the biggest challenges of our time. This stems from the impacts of global scale material shifts that we culturally recognize as climate change – a phenomenon that we have contributed to through our global-scale industrial manufacturing processes. Climate change may be evidenced empirically in specific events – such as rising sea levels and escalating concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide – but it is also experienced through bizarre encounters with matter such as the covert continents of particulate plastics causing the painful death of marine wildlife and entering our own food chain. In other words, in the 21st century, matter is lively, strange and unpredictable – and is a force to be reckoned with.
1. A WORKING GUN 2. GUITAR 3. HAND-MADE CAMERA LENS 4. SHAKUHACHI FLUTE 5. 3D FETUS 6. 3D PRINTED MEDICAL MODELS 7. COFFEE CUPS 8. HIGH HEELS 9 BIKINI
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5.
4. 3. 7.
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2. 9. 8. THINGS YOU CAN ACTUALLY PRINT IN
3D
So, despite its growling list of glowing attributes, 3-D printing is not a revolution in making until it addresses the fundamental issue of 21st-century materiality. Yet, if it does so then this technology may actually have an even greater potential for a paradigm shift in production than it is already expected to be. Currently, 3-D printing suffers from the same issues that bedevilled nanotech, which promised us a new era of materials where programmable specks of matter could behave like tiny robots and bring world-changing innovation through the advent of ‘smart’ materials. Yet, like 3-D printing, nanotech is constrained by industrial paradigms. So while we anticipated highly willful materials, caricatured in dystopian scenarios as grey goo,1 the reality is that nanotechnology ‘actually’ gave us slightly shinier objects, or ones with new properties, such as electrical conductivity. Indeed, since nanotechnology cannot ‘act’ without human design and because of the scales involved, Andrew Ellington observes that the platform poses an insurmountable hardware and software challenge - that would consign designers to a Willard Wiggin-style existence. In fact, a quip made by Tom Knight that biology is the ‘nanotechnology that works’ actually addresses Ellington’s predicament, as there is a fundamental difference between the matter in mechanical systems and natural ones – machines are designed at equilibrium, and Nature exists at far from equilibrium states.2 So, if 3-D printing is genuinely going to take us beyond yet another version of ‘less damaging’ industrial practices – that are cheaper, faster, better – into a space where working with these systems could shift our values and, for example, produce objects that are genuinely life-promoting, then it needs to respond to this emerging cultural concern and practically engage in establishing a practice of 21st-century materialism. Currently, 3-D printing is an artisan practice for an oligarchy of enthusiastic designers who alongside marketing gurus are extolling the virtues of ‘organic-looking’ shapes.
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We could start by properly critiquing the impacts of this technology beginning with a much deeper analysis of the materials used, the energy and resource requirements, and the supply chains that result in printed objects. Fully characterising the current production systems may help us to understand how they could be developed into ecosystems of exchange where the coveted objects can be meaningfully recycled by our biosphere. But it is also vital that 3-D printing becomes the champion of research into dynamic systems and lifelike materials – which may not yet have a mature market – so that we can produce objects that in themselves forge positive environmental relationships such as carbon recycling or soil generating systems. If 3-D printing does not fully take on this responsibility then the sustainability of our current highly ‘customised’ objects is likely to be under scrutiny, as the unit cost of printers falls and hobbyists make legions of white elephants out of toxic plastics and when our landfills are chock-a-block with yesterday’s badly made fashionable shapes. And while some – such as ultrasound embryo portraits – may have enduring sentimental value, it is likely that most will simply clutter up our rubbish dumps and precipitate our plastic marine continents as indestructible rubbish icebergs. Yet, 3-D printing could be a revolution in the making – but it’s not there yet. A lot more work needs to be done on its ecological profile so that it truly ruptures the conventions of industrial practices – and to do this, it must first urgently tackle the weighty issue of 21st-century materiality. e
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THE STAIRS By Bill Bryson
AN EXCERPT FROM BILL BRYSON’S BOOK “LIFE AT HOME� We now come to the most dangerous part of the house-in fact, one of the most hazardous environments anywhere: the stairs. No one knows exactly how dangerous the stairs are, because records are curiously deficient. Most countries keep records of deaths and injuries sustained in falls, but not of what caused the falls in the first place. So in the United States, for instance, it is known that about twelve thousand people a year hit the ground and never get up again, but whether that is because they have fallen from a tree, a roof, or off the back porch is unknown. In Britain, fairly scrupulous stair-fall figures were kept until 2002, but then the Department for Trade and Industry decided that keeping track of these things was an extravagance it could no longer afford, which seems fairly misguided economy, considering how much fall injuries cost society. The last set of figures indicated that rather whopping 304,166 Britons were injured seriously enough in stair falls to required medical attention that year, so it is clearly more than a trifling matter. John A. Templer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of the definitive (and, it must be said, almost only) scholarly text on the subject, The Staircase studies of Hazards, Falls and Safer Design, suggests that all-injury figures are probably severely underestimated anyway. Even on the most conservative calculations, however, stairs rank as second as the most common cause of accidental deal, well behind car accidents, but far ahead of drownings, burns, and other similarly grim misfortunes. When you consider how much falls cost society in lost working hours and strains placed on the health systems, it is curious that they are not studied more attentively. Huge amounts of money and bureaucratic time are invested in fire prevention, fire research, fire codes, and fire insurance, but almost none is spent on understanding or preventing falls.
Everybody trips on stairs at some time or other, it has been calculated that you are likely to miss a step once in every 2,222 occasion you use the stair, suffer a minor accident once in every 63,000 uses, suffer painful accident once in every 734,000 and need hospital attention once every 3.616,667 uses. Eighty-four percent of people who die in stair falls at home are sixtyfive to older. This is not so much because the elderly are more careless on stairs, but just because they don’t get up so well afterward. Children, happily only very rarely die in falls on stairs, though households with young children in them have by far the highest rates of injuries, partly because of high levels of stair usage and partly because of the startling things children leave on steps. Unmarried people are more likely to fall than married people, and previously married people fall more than both of those. People in good shape fall more often than people in bad shape, largely because they do a lot more bounding and don’t descend as careful and with as many rest stops as the tubby or infirm. The best indicator of persona risk is whether you have fallen much before. Accident proneness is a slightly controversial area among stair-injury epidemiologists, but it does seem to be a reality. About four persons in ten injured in a stair fall have been injured in a stair fall before. People fall in different ways in different countries. Someone in Japan, for instance, is far more likely to be hurt in a stair fall in an office, department store, or railway station that is anyone in the United States. This is not because the Japanese are more reckless users, but simply because American don’t much use stairs in public environments. They rely on the ease and safety of elevators and escalators. American stair injuries overwhelmingly happen in the home--almost the only place where many American submit themselves to regular stair use. For the same reason, women are far more likely to fall down stairs than men: they use stairs more, especially at home, where falls most commonly occur. When we fall on stairs, we tend to blame ourselves and generally attribute the fall to carelessness or inattentiveness. In fact, design substantially influences the likelihood of whether you will fall, and how hurt you will feel when you have stopped bouncing. Poor lighting, absence of handrails, confusing patterns on the treads, risers that are unusually wide or narrow, and landings that interrupt the rhythm of ascent or descent are the principal design faults that lead to accidents. e
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HOW MANY BLACK DOTS ARE THERE?
PERSPECTIVE PER’ SPEKTIV/ noun
The art of drawing solid objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other when viewed from a particular point. A particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.
perspective
Pe [03]
perspective
Pe [03]
WORK S P A C E By Various Authors These days, just about everyone has a deskspace or workspace where they spend many hours, mostly stationary, peering into their computers. Some more so than others. Since we spend so much time in these spaces, Origin was wondering how different people approach the layout and purpose of this oftinhabited space. As a result, we approached some of our most favourite people to find out how their workspace influences their individual design/work/play methods. Each contributor was asked a series of questions and asked to attach a photo of their desk.
ORIGIN ASKED: 1. What are the things you do at your desk? 2. Describe the aesthetic of your workspace and what makes it unique to you and your needs. If you’re desk space doesn’t reflect your ideal workspace, feel free to describe what that would look like. 3. Describe when you work best in your space. *All submitted answers have been unaltered.
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EZEQUIEL P. READS DRAWS STAYS OPTIMISTIC WORKS UNDER STRESS
A
s you can see from my photos, my desk is not really conductive to doing much. I use my desk mostly for working. Other things that you would typically do at your desk I do in another space, like reading or drawing. I wish I could say this is the worst I had, but that would be a lie. One time I had a desk that was really just a two-layered coffee table with my computer on it and a pillow on the floor to sit on. That was killer on my back. Another time, I had my computer monitor on top of a dresser, and I would sit on my reading chair with my keyboard on my lap, and the mouse resting on the arm rest. That was a disaster also. I could go on and on. However dismal the situation, I have always found it important to have a “working space” regardless of living conditions. I moved in to this enormous house earlier last summer. I am sort of helping take care of this huge house while the owners are in Australia. They will be there until sometime late 2014. But because I am only here as a temporary groundskeeper or whatever, I decided that I would simply take a little corner of the house for myself. That ended up being a basement room that has poor lighting, but it has its own bathroom so it’s not all bad.
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Initially, I was going to use a breakfast nook in the main floor to set up shop, but me and my roommate ended up filling the space with a king size bed that we didn’t want to use. My ideal work space would have tons of natural light, and a very large desk where I can use in a variety of ways, white washed walls and floors and some ferns to liven it up. It would be filled with good art and good books. Most of my work ends up being in my desk because I am old school and use a desktop. I started saying I live in 2005 because that’s how old my computer is. Additionally, my software is probably from that time also. I am running Windows XP, Adobe Creative Suite CS4, and Microsoft Office 2003. Coincidently, my calendar is from 2013. It pretty ridiculous, but I mean, if it’s not broken, why fix it? Sometimes limitations are good. I am a huge procrastinator, so I usually end up doing the majority of my work in the evening through the night till early hours of the morning. I find a lot of inspiration when I am under some stress, so usually I am finishing projects pretty close to their deadlines. I work best under stress, sleep deprivation, and under the influence of folk music.
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STEPHANIE S.
STUDies DOes HoMEWORK READs As a information design student, I spend a lot DRAWs STUFF of time at my desk. Because I spend a large portion of my time at my desk, I see value in actively influencing the space to encourWORKs
age maximum efficiency and creativity. As a result, my desk area is set up to remind me of things that inspire me. I’ve been procuring my desk since I started school and because of this, the layout of my desk is often evolving. As I become more knowledgeable about the aspects of design, I have come to appreciate different layouts, contents and structures. The constant reconfigurations of space has became another avenue to practice what I’ve learned. My workspace consists of an IKEA desk that has two drawers, cupboard, magnetic backboard and two shelves. Currenty I have a 24” monitor tethered to a 15” macbook pro. Lately I’ve been keeping my pens and pencils in these pots of fake grass so that I can easily reach for one when I have an idea. I get a kick out of how it retains a sort of ironic organic feel. Having an organized workspace is important to me and I always clean up my workspace when I am done for the day so I can ensure that when I return I am not distracted and can just jump into the task ahead.
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NICK S.
WorkS on a desk top computer CheckS hard-copy mechanical DOES drawings EatS lunch UseS THE telephone SketchES designs My work space is a desk system in the traditional L shaped design with a desk top computer located in the middle. The monitors are 135 degrees apart and allows for comfortable viewing while seated. The right side desk is my main task based area used for checking and sketching of designs. The left side desk is used for general storage of files etc. Natural light comes from a full width window and a large glass patio door. Computer screen glare is not a problem as both window and patio have roller blinds. As an added feature the patio leads directly to a south facing deck.
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BENJAMIN P. GAMES HARD RECORDS MUSIC STREAMS VIDEO Most of the time you can find me playing League of Legends at my desk, but sometimes I play Rocksmith so I can practice playing my guitar. I used to have an xbox set up as well, but it was getting to be a bit much. My main computer is a gaming PC, but I have a Mac at another desk where I record music with my band. I go through mouses pretty fast, but currently I have a Logitech Razer Abyssus which is made specifically for gaming. My current keyboard is a Razer BlackWidow also specifically made for gaming. Right now I have an Astro gaming headset, but I’ve had many different kinds in the past. I used to be a pretty popular Youtube commentator back when I played Call of Duty, that’s partly why I have a microphone, but now I use it mainly to talk to my friends online.
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FEAT URE
MAster SUMMARY Hegel moves from the discussion of consciousness in general to a discussion of self-consciousness. Like the idealist philosophers before him, Hegel believes that consciousness of objects necessarily implies some awareness of self, as a subject, which is separate from the perceived object. But Hegel takes this idea of self-consciousness a step further and asserts that subjects are also objects to other subjects. Self-consciousness is thus the awareness of another’s awareness of oneself. To put it another way, one becomes aware of oneself by seeing oneself through the eyes of another. Hegel speaks of the “struggle for recognition” implied in selfconsciousness. This struggle is between two opposing tendencies arising in self-consciousness—between, on one hand, the moment when the self and the other
A LESSON IN HEG
SPARKNOTES.COM come together, which makes self-consciousness possible, and, on the other hand, the moment of difference arising when one is conscious of the “otherness” of other selves vis-à-vis oneself, and vice versa. Otherness and pure self-consciousness are mutually opposed moments in a “life and death struggle” for recognition. This tension between selves and others, between mutual identification and estrangement, plays out in the fields of social relations. Hegel explains that the realization of self-consciousness is really a struggle for recognition between two individuals bound to one another as unequals in a relationship of dependence. One person is the bondsman and one is the servant. The bondsman, or servant, is dependent on the lord. Because he is aware that the lord sees him as an object rather than as a subject (i.e., as a thing, rather than as a thinking, self-aware being), the lord frustrates his desire to assert his pure self-consciousness. He is stuck in a position of reflecting on his otherness.
r + SERVANT The independent lord, on the other end, is able to negate the otherness that he finds reflected through the subordinate bondsman, since the bondsman does not appear as a conscious subject to him. As the independent and superior partner in this relationship, his otherness does not bear down on him. The lord occupies the position of enjoying his dominant status, whereas the bondsmen must continuously reflect on his status as a subordinate “other” for the lord. At the same time, the lord does not find his position completely satisfying. In negating his own otherness in the consciousness of the bondsman, in turning the bondsman into an object unessential to his own self-consciousness, he has also to deny a fundamental impulse toward recognizing the bondsman as a consciousness equal to himself. At the same time, the bondsman is able to derive satisfaction in labor, a process of working on and transforming objects through which he rediscovers himself and can claim a “mind of his own.”
The Lordship and Bondage section is among the most widely cited in all of Hegel’s writings. The struggle for recognition between lord and bondsman inspired Marx’s account of how class struggle naturally arises from the exploitation of one social class by another. A diverse array of twentieth-century thinkers, including psychoanalysts and existentialists, have drawn on Hegel’s ideas here. Earlier idealists, such as Kant, pointed out the difference between subject and object, but Hegel believed that the subject, or the self, is aware of its self only as a distinct entity through the eyes of another self. The radical idea inherent in this view is that consciousnesses are inextricably interwoven and that one cannot have any concept of oneself without having actually experienced a moment of identification with the other. Many readers have found his notion of self-consciousness easier to grasp intuitively than many of Hegel’s other concepts. His account seems to ring true with everyday experience.
GELIAN LOGIC ANALYSIS This section of the Phenomenology, and for that matter the rest of the book, is difficult because of its abstractness. Hegel writes about lords and bondsmen (or masters and slaves, as it is sometimes translated), and it is hard at first to see whom he is talking about and whether this is meant to describe social relations today or at some period in the past when slavery was more widespread. Precisely because it is so abstract, the section has been interpreted in many different ways. It is possible to view the lord and bondsmen relationship as an early stage of history, since the Phenomenology describes the evolution of Spirit throughout the course of human civilization, culminating in modern society. However, the dialectical evolution of Spirit throughout history may also be seen as a metaphor for the process through which each individual develops psychologically. Thus, the images of the lord and bondsman may be interpreted not literally, but as metaphors for positions in which we all find ourselves throughout life—sometimes as the objectified bondsman, sometimes as the objectifying lord.
PEOple come to know themselves through the image they suppose others hold of them. This image is positive or negative depending on who that person is, where he or she stands in society, and so forth, and gives rise to familiar stresses as individuals strive to assert their free individuality against the objectifying images that others have of them. e
ideas Id [03]
HEGEL’S
Master + Servant A TALE OF CONFRONTATION, DOMINATION, SUBMISSION, & COOPERATION Written and Illustrated by Stephanie Stobart
YOU MAY BE WONDERING WHO THE HECK IS HEGEL? AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?
CONSCIOUSNESS OF
SELF AS SELF
HEGEL WAS A GERMAN PHILOSOPHER FROM THE 19TH CENTURY. HE IS MOST FAMOUS FOR HIS CONCEPTS OF FREEDOM, REASON, SELFCONSCIOUSNESS, AND RECOGNITION.
CONSCIOUSNESS OF
OTHERS AS OTHERS YOU’RE EATING SOMETHING...
IF I’M HUNGRY I’LL EAT SOMETHING
IF NO ONE EVER ACKNOWLEDGED YOU, YOU WOULDN’T EXIST AS A PERSON.
NO SELF
“SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS IN AND FOR ITSELF WHEN . . . IT SO EXISTS FOR ANOTHER; THAT IS, IT EXISTS ONLY IN BEING ACKNOWLEDGED.”
THE MASTER AND SERVANT DIALECTIC IS CONSTRUCTED AROUND THE CONCEPT OF SELF. BUT WHAT IS SELF?
CONSCIOUSNESS OF
OTHERS AS SELF ...THEREFORE YOU ARE HUNGRY
WHEN TWO PEOPLE MEET THEY ARE SYMMETRICAL.
AM I YOU? ARE YOU ME? MYSELF
YOURSELF
me
you
- HEGEL you would be a personless body.
BUT, THIS SYMMETRY RESULTS IN A STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM. i know you know
THIS GOES ON AND ON...
I WANT TO BE INDEPENDENT HEGEL BELIEVES THAT EACH SELF WANTS TO “SUPERSEDE THIS OTHERNESS OF SELF”
i know you know you know i know i know you know i know EACH SELF WANTS TO BE ITS OWN PERSON
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INTRODUCING
the master & SERVANT
BECAUSE OF THE ULTIMATE DESIRE TO SUPERSEDE THE OTHER, A STRUGGLE OF DOMINATION AND SUBMISSION BEGINS...
I WOULD LIVE STRICTLY FOR MYSELF ...
WHILE I WOULD DO THINGS FOR MYSELF, YOU WOULD ALSO DO THINGS FOR MYSELF...
...AND YOU WOULD LIVE ONLY FOR ANOTHER, ME!
...AND NOT FOR YOURSELF
SINCE YOU WILL DO EVERYTHING FOR MYSELF, YOU AS A SELF, WILL NO LONGER LIVE!
YET, BOTH SELVES LIVE ON THROUGH THE CONTINUED MUTUAL RECOGNITION OF THEMSELVES IN ONE ANOTHER.
I WANT HIM TO THINK I AM GREAT AND ALMIGHTY
HE WANTS ME TO RECOGNIZE HIS GREATNESS AND POWER
THE SUBMITTER IS ESSENTIALLY GIVING UP THEIR LIFE. THE VICTOR COULD KILL THE LOSER, BUT CHOOSES TO ENSLAVE THE LOSER INSTEAD.
BUT
A DEAD SERVANT DOES NOT OBEY ANYBODY AND SO IS FREE
THEY REALIZE THAT ONE OF THEM MUST SUBMIT FOR
INITIALLY THERE IS A BACK AND FORTH STRUGGLE FOR DOMINATION.
REMEMBER:
EACH SELF NEEDS ITS OWN LIFE AS WELL AS THE LIFE OF THE OTHER TO EXIST AS A SELF.
ME
YOU
MYSELF
YOURSELF
BOTH TO LIVE
THE MASTER I WILL SPARE YOU YOUR LIFE, AND INSTEAD YOU WILL DO EVERYTHING FOR ME
THE SERVANT
INDEPENDENT
DEPENDENT
TO BE FOR ITSELF
LIVE, OR BE FOR ANOTHER
CONSCIOUSNESS
YOU ACT ON MY COMMAND
THE MASTER SEEMS TO HAVE IT MADE,
CONSCIOUSNESS
I DO AS HE SAYS
THE SERVANT DOES ALL HIS WORK AND RECOGNIZES HIS MASTERS POWER.
BUT, WHAT THE MASTER REALLY WANTS IS RECOGNITION FROM AN EQUAL, NOT A SERVANT. HE DOesN’T REALLY RESPECT ME
BUT HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
I RESENT AND FEAR him
INTRODUCING
THE FEAR OF DEATH
THE MASTER BECOMES MORE AND MORE DEPENDENT ON THE SERVANT. I FORGET HOW TO MAKE A SANDWICH
THE SERVANT IS SLOWLY GETTING TRANSFORMED INTO A TRULY INDEPENDENT CONSCIOUSNESS.
I KNOW HOW TO MAKE THE BEST SANDWICHES!
DURING THE INITIAL STRUGGLE IT SEEMS THE MASTER OVERCAME THE FEAR OF DEATH... I HAVE PROVEN I AM THE DOMINANT SELF
THE SERVANT IS ACTUALLY THE ONE WHO CONFRONTED DEATH, THROUGH HIS SUBMISSION.
I MUST RID MYSELF OF MY NATURAL EXISTENCE AND BECOME A SERVANT
...BUT THE MASTER HAS ONLY BYPASSED THE FEAR OF DEATH.
THE SERVANT BECOMES...
HIS DETACHMENT TO NATURAL EXISTENCE THROUGH SERVITUDE, HAS FREED THE SERVANT. HE HAS BEEN DEVELOPING HIS NATURAL EXISTENCE ALL ALONG.
THE SERVANTS POWER EVENTUALLY EQUALIZES TO THE MASTER DEPENDENT
INDEPENDENT
MASTER CONTROLS SLAVE
SLAVE IS CONTROLLED BY MASTER
CONSCIOUSNESS
I HAVE GAINED SKILL AND DISCIPLINE, AND THEREFORE POWER
A “PURE BEING FOR SELF”
IN THEIR EQUALITY, THE MASTER RECEIVES WHAT HE WAS AFTER ALL ALONG, AN EQUAL. I RESPECT YOU
CONSCIOUSNESS
Resources
CREATED BY
STEPHANIE STOBART
Gardiner, Patrick. “Master & Servant.” (1969) Nineteenth Century Philosophy. (New York: Free Press, 1969) 47-51. Bertrand Russell, “Analogy” (1948). In T. O. Buford (Ed.), Essays on Other Minds. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1970)
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