Category: <span>Culture</span>

Published April 7, 2009 by

Fly away home

beetlesA very interesting sojourn across Melbourne today with a first-ever visit to the Immigration Museum followed by the Melbourne Museum.

The Immigration museum on the whole is a bit dry, but I was very impressed and quite moved by the introductory area/video – a powerful reminder about migration and about how conflict, restrictions and poverty affect the world.

And then as the visit to the Immigration Museum was a bit flat for uni purposes (yes there were motives) I decided to face the new fangled Dinosaur walk seeing as the novel I’m reading at the moment has like-themes. So the Dinosaur walk (and the rest of the building) was over run with kids and not really that amazing because to be honest Dinosaurs aren’t really my thing… except for my very early intro to computers where the ‘build the dinosaur’ game was the coolest ever – I happened to turn around and there’s this wall covered in the most beautiful insects and I literally stopped dead.

I used to be obsessed with insects growing up in PNG (and in the Solomons, but to a lesser extent). I kept an Atlas moth in a soft-drink bottle (Who knows how) and made sure I payed it the courteous visit today. The patterns and collections and fascination with bugs at a younger age helps me understand a little of what I could call my aesthetic today – which sounds really pretentious so lets call it, my interest in design.

Insects are incredible, how did I ever fall out of love?

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Culture Life Uni

Published March 16, 2009 by

Split class, snobby stew

Quite an interesting lecture this morning on sociology – or rather design as a subset of sociology. My lecturer got to talking about French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his theories of social capital. In terms of social capital there is a split in the working class and the middle class – expectations and norms. I was quite amused to see that I fit into both the examples of the classes that he gave then and there:

I can and am a bit of a snob about the fact that I like art and galleries and sophisticated things of the kind, my aesthetic grimmaces from the designs of glossy tabloids and my family grew up talking intellectual at the table… but despite all my middle class idiosyncracises I think that I’ll always go back to the opinion that the best food is slow cooked.

…yeh okay, it really was a ‘you had to be there and be in my head’ moment…

Sometimes I should really keep the things that amuse me to myself.

Culture Design

pierre bourdieu

Published March 11, 2009 by

Social Entrepreneurship

play-769009In a valiant effort to make homework seem interesting, let me share. My uni subject Design & Buinsess Strategy is a group based initiative related to the development of a business plan and whatever other paraphernalia comes with that – our constraint: the business must be based around Social Entrepreneurship. This is infact an incredibly interesting topic and only dry in the sense that it is 10:30pm and I would rather be lazying around watching a West Wing. We drew the standard blanks last week of an initial group meeting where no two people knew each other nor had very many good ideas OR our ideas were too complex for the comparatively short 12 week assignment.

I spent a little of my long weekend pondering what gap we could fill in society (or at least pretty up), what need we could meet. I was supposed to go away and dig up three ideas about combating obesity – frankly I am really not interested in health issues. Obese kids are often the product of their parents and frankly this culture is full of lazy people (*cough who watch West Wing at 10:30 at night) and you can’t force activity… unless at gunpoint. Parents get far too offended if you challenge their actions or parenting and bang you have a sizzler (think sizzler down the drain rather than mmm sausage) of a business idea. *Note that less lazy people would and will come up with wonderfully creative solutions to help combat obesity, all I’ve hit so far is an arson attack on McDonalds but the project gets huge and illegal and not very viable very quickly.

So I have an idea, it is quite simple, quite feasible and not at all about obesity but rather poverty – something I care a bit more about (At least in theory).  I wont share just yet – incase anyone comes along and smoozles my idea before I float it. (Possesive aren’t I?) – or perhaps it’ll be overshaddowed by something else far more brilliant, in which case you won’t have lost out.

But Social Entrepreneurship. Interesting.

My friend Susannah is currently over in Costa Rica with a group of fellow Engineering students. When I look at projects like theirs – which is around building orphanages (I think) and the other less standard remarkable innovative things that are going on in the larger sphere of the design world it gives me hope.

There is something in design thinking in this sense that offers something quite new to the world. It’s not necessarily about creating something out of nothing but of working with what is existing and extending it’s power for positive social change. Reminds me of a bit of the whole ‘a lie based on truth is more believable’ saying, but naturally far less negative. It just works.

To read a little more about Social Entrepreneurs, I suggest you go check out this.

Create Culture Design Life Social Justice Sustainable Uni

business plan design thinking innovate social entrepreneurship

Published February 26, 2009 by

Brand Launch – MECS, BSRT

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Today – finally – is the launch of the new MECS brand. Initially the project was part uni assignment that I coupled with a pitch and managed to get the job! For the last little while I have been working on their signage and stationery and as soon as I get given copies, and the signs are put up – I will share some photos. Note to the locals: I’m not responsible for the car stickers or the open day signs… just the other stuff.

This is the logo, by way of explanation it is:

  • An abstraction of three people in conversation, this ties in with both a community focus and home-school partnership.
  • A tree, representative of growth and suitable for the Yarra Ranges environment.
  • Pathways, indicative of MECS providing direction and leading students through their time at school.
  • And to a lesser extent the addition of five colours is reflective of 5 values (which I cannot pull off the top of my head at this very moment).

The logo has undergone several transitions from where I left it and a huge number from where it started. The one submitted to uni used an entirely different typeface and was one-colour, the placement was also closer to the secondary vertical version. The typeface in use now is Fontin it suits the school better than the previous one, it also makes my life easier because it is of superior quality and can be used more widely.

Secondary vertical version:

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This morning the school had a brief morning tea to officially kick off the branding. I am really happy with the outcome, it feels right for the school. Here’s to hoping I get to dig my hands into their website in the next few months. In the mean-time I have picked up another job doing a website revamp for a pharmacy.

I am not sure if I have talked much about concluding my time working at Ergo Consulting. I am in the handover process and will be finished by the end of March it seems the timing is really good. I’ve loved working with Ergo and learnt a huge amount while I’ve been there – not only in administration/design but about the business world. They are exceptional people to work for. This year however, I need to focus on uni a bit more and want to keep doing this freelancing stuff to get some experience under my belt.

On the design note, I have also just finished the Business Sustainability Round Table website (Work through Ergo) – the focus of all my IE complaints via Twitter of late. The fun area is in the member section (Which you aren’t allowed to go to!) and I got to dig around and make useful various plugins and php. I also created the BSRT logo – the pyramid is to do with some business model/a leaf shape for sustainability, the ’round’ bit is quite literal for ’round table’, you could say it is globe’ish too, but that could be taking things a bit far. A brochure is currently getting printed, photos to come of that too.

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Branding Culture Design Life Uni Web Design Work

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Published January 23, 2009 by

50 People, 1 Question

Makeesha shared one of these videos today and I made my way over to Crash + Love and checked out the other two.

They’re wonderful. Especially the Brooklyn “closet theory”.

Culture Movies