C vs. N

Design is...

Design is to make a synthesis of Needs + Information + Colors in order to create something Greater than the Sum of its Parts.

Barriers.

Fear of the unknown.
Fear of looking stupid.
Premature judgment of ideas.
Attachment:
- to old ideas.
- to past successes.
Resistance to change.
Reluctance to explore better methods.
Stopping at the first good idea.

Dorothea Tanning

Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.

The First Paradox

Words are delicious, powerful and tenacious. They are valuable, fabulosly seductive and dangerously diversionary, all at the same time. They are so persuasive that they can conspire to convince many people that just talking and writing it down is the design process. Words allow us to live in our heads where we can always remain mentally pregnant with ideas; ideas are safe and protected in this deliciously speculative womb. Giving birth is a much more painful reality. Forcing the idea to live in the tactile, tangible, visual and visceral world is a demanding and genuinely creative exposure of a different kind and finally, is the only real test of a visual idea's true value.

Objectified.

A big definition of who you are as a designer is the way that you look at the world. And I guess it's one of the curses of what you do, you're constantly looking at something and thinking, why is it like that? Why is it like that and not like this? A brilliant documentary about objects and their stories.

Are you happy?

L'Ampoule

Francis Picabia, Américane (American Woman), cover of the journal 391, no. 6. 1917

The Chess Theory

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning playing chess, 1947

Tomorrow Is Never

Kay Sage, 1955

Joseph Cornell

Shadow boxes become poetic theaters or settings wherein are metamorphosed the elements of a childhood pastime.

Dada Bulletin Covers

Marquise Casati

Man Ray, 1922, silver print

Francis Picabia

Between my head and my hand, there is always the face of death.