The switch to renewables requires a redesign of American life

12 August 2010 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

On the way down to Nashville for the Hutchmoot we stopped for lunch at a friend’s home near Kansas City. While there I began looking at a magazine called World, as I recall. I glanced at an article in the publication pointing at holes in the recent plans for renewable energy.

The long and short of what my skimming told me — I didn’t have time to finish the article — Renewable energy such as wind and solar won’t work for the cars we drive. No kidding! The article also, if I recall correctly, pointed out that these energy sources won’t even provide enough electricity, even if they are developed to the nth degree, to meet our current electricity needs.

I’ve made the point on the blog before, as I recall, that we need to revamp the culture and our environmental design in order to get to where most or all of our energy needs come from renewable sources. We can’t work from the assumption that we can maintain the cultural status quo while at the same time switching over to renewable sources of energy. Instead, we must become creative in all aspects of our lives. Developing more efficient lifestyles seems like common sense to me — regardless of where our energy is coming from (Per my cursory skim the magazine article suggested nuclear, but I’d still rather see other avenues developed further along with more intentionally efficient living.).

Cameraphone capture of part of a wind turbine, going down I-80 on our way home from Nashville.

On our way down to the Hutchmoot last week, my wife and I were introduced to Rodney and Sidney Wright. Rodney wrote The Hawkweed Passive Solar House Book. He showed us around their house — inserting at least one pun into every sentence — pointing to all of the attention paid to making the home more energy efficient. The energy bill for the home was less than $50 a month for the 1,200 square foot structure in Paducah, Kentucky (a walkable community, he pointed out). The couple paid good money for energy efficient appliances, used prefabricated wall panels with dense foam insulation to build with and of course designed the home with climate and geography in mind, in a passive solar fashion.

It’s going to take this kind of intentionality in our design of life, I believe, in order to make renewables work. Sure some things might cost more now and then, but Wright made a point of saying that even though their uber efficient Swedish microwave/convection oven might have cost them $3,000 they built the home for only $85,000 (doing some of the work themselves, such as painting) just four years ago.

Wright also pointed out that we used to do better at designing our dwellings and communities as they relate to their local environments. What will it take as a culture to forgo the more common and under-considered living spaces we create in the United States?

Filed under Architecture, Basis for designing well, Community planning, Environmental stewardship, Interior design, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Sustainable living

Let your squares be squares

13 July 2010 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

Julie Rozman, an architect-slash-ceramics blogger I’ve followed for a few years now, posted some images of her work for sale. She’s moving from Chicago to Urbana to study ceramics, and one of her sets of work reminded me of a post I’ve been thinking about for a while.

A long while, actually. Probably since I graduated from college almost ten years ago now.

Julie's sculpture does not forget it's roots.

In my architecture classes, in my graphic design classes and some of the time in my ceramics classes I watched aspiring artists and designers, myself included, forget the basics of design. We’d go after an assignment with passion, with dreams of being featured on the front cover of Architectural Digest, and forget that there are certain building blocks to every visual and spatial solution. They were overthinking the problem.

I suppose this is a symptom of the genius mentality, the drive for stardom usurping the desire to make useful and beautiful contributions to our surrounding environments.

Filed under Aesthetics, Affluenza, Architecture, Art, Art education, Artist as genius, Basis for designing well, Beauty, Ceramics, Design, Modern culture

Maps on paper (an appreciation for the tactile)

20 April 2010 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

I’ve always appreciated maps on paper, and can look at them for extended periods of time even when I’m not planning a trip. Fandangled electronic options are taking over though, and some suggest this could lead to a loss of cultural and geographic literacy. Besides this, I’ve heard of a few disasterous accounts of over-reliance on GPS in the past year, one of which ended up with the wrong house — full of family heirlooms — being demolished.

The most significant advantage I see in GPS is the ability to point you to local services which the article I link to above also points out. This is useful and something paper maps can’t do.

Still, let’s not give up on tactile mappage just yet.

Filed under Basis for designing well, Tactile

Beer as indicator of quality over quantity

20 March 2010 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

Another interesting piece from The Curator, written by Brian Watkins, talking about one of my favorite subjects, quality versus quantity. Excerpting from his post Good Work and Beer Culture:

    Beer has always been popular in our country, but always in different ways. It’s an old story to discuss the recent dominance of microbreweries over macrobreweries. The shift that we’ve seen in the last few years has gone even further. Now, even microbreweries are giving way to smaller craft breweries, and because of this trend, never in the history of our country has beer been more of an artisanal practice. This is quite an occasion.

    Quite an occasion, because this example provides us with an excellent gauge for how our culture now approaches work. We can all see consumers trying to shift from quantity to quality. Toyota’s CEO recently said that their failure in manufacturing was because they had become more concerned with profit margin than with creating a quality product — ironic, since the highest quality products are starting to take in the most profit. We are becoming (we hope) more intelligent consumers who buy less crap and look for more efficient products.

How astonishingly refreshing that the CEO of a giant company would admit that they were more concerned with profit than their product — and express a (hopefully honest) desire to do something to change that. We’ve all known this was the common corporate modus operandi for years now. Watkins goes on to quote Dorothy Sayers talking about work (in the context of WWII, but very applicable to modern day):

    The habit of thinking about work as something one does to make money is so ingrained in us that we can scarcely imagine what a revolutionary change it would be to think about it instead in terms of the work done. To do so would mean taking the attitude of mind we reserve for our unpaid work — our hobbies, our leisure interests, the things we make and do for pleasure — and making that the standard of all our judgments about things and people. We should ask of an enterprise, not “will it pay?” but “is it good?” . . . not merely where the profits go or what dividends are to be paid, not even merely whether the workers’ wages are sufficient and the conditions of labor satisfactory, but loudly and with a proper sense of personal responsibility: “What goes into the beer?”

Filed under Basis for designing well, Craft, Disposable culture, Handmade, Modern culture

Design FAIL the second

17 July 2009 by pcNielsen 4 Comments

The past year my wife and I have eaten at Red Robin with some regularity, since it’s menu is friendly to gluten free diets. We were there with her family tonight and I was reminded of one of my restaurantorial pet peeves:

Photo0017

Menus should not take up so much of the table. They should not overlap the menu of the person across the table from you.

Filed under Basis for designing well, Design

Massive design FAIL

17 July 2009 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

This morning we learned our termite contract had lapsed, much to our surprise (and, much to our chagrin, very late in the process of selling the house). The realtor reminded me the contracts require payment every year, for which the companies come out and poke a flashlight under the house to scare away the spiders. I vaguely remember hearing this four years ago when Serfco treated the Hygge and Fika.

After hearing this I talked on the phone to Serfco and received confirmation that the company sends out a bill after the first year. Followed by two reminders. But we never got a bill, or at least neither the wife — who’s very administrative along these lines — or I remember getting a bill, let alone two follow up pieces of mail.

The Serfco rep I talked to this morning admitted the bill they mail out looks basically just like junk mail. FAIL. Why, pray tell, why? Yes, the wife and I are human and occasionally forget something, however I’m pretty convinced we never actually received any of the aforementioned mail from Serfco. At this point there’s nothing we can do about that one way or another, but a bill that looks like junk mail? That’s bad business (surely it’s in their best interest to keep customers paying, since if the first year bill isn’t paid the policy is simply canceled), and terrible design.

junk-mail-tank

How many Serfco bills ended up in Burtonwood and Holmes’ Junk Mail Tank?

On the flipside, here’s an old post briefly examining a piece of junk mail I received that worked.

Filed under Basis for designing well, Design, Environmental stewardship

Intentional Observation: Mennonites in flip-flops

1 July 2009 by pcNielsen 8 Comments

“A little bit of dissonance is really required to have something
that will hold our attention for a longer period of time.”

- Pete Pinnell

Two things in the past few months prompted me to ponder the idea of contrast.

First off, I’ve taken note this year of the mennonites (at least that’s what we assume they are) shopping at our local Walmart. I’ve long had a fascination with Amish (and old order Mennonite, thus) cultures, probably in large part because of what seems to be their slower paced, more relationship and community based lifestyles. Another part of my interest almost certainly stems from the culture’s seeming affirmation of working with your hands.

There are two observations I’ve made with respect to contrast in observing the local mennonites. First of all, the men dress in such a way that you can’t pick them out of a crowd: Boots, jeans and t-shirts, but you know they are mennonite because of the lady on their arm donning a modest handmade dress, with a bonnet or cap in her hair.

Secondly, the women’s more conservative dress is often at odds with their footwear. I’ve seen them wearing tennis shoes for years now, but it was only a few months ago I saw some of them wearing flip-flops for the first time. This wonderfully jarring discrepancy scrawled a grin on my face that lasted all the way into the parking lot. The nearly neon flip-flops next to pale blue, floral, handmade dresses worked for me in light of Pinnell’s quote at the top of this post, and apparently work for mennonites too. Brightly colored synthetic footwear is simply at odds with the common (mis)conceptions harbored by those of us not immersed in that culture.

Mennonites in flip flops

I wanted to take a picture with my cameraphone, but abstained from bothering the young ladies. Instead I searched through Flickr and found the fantastic image above, taken by Jizzon, showing a group of mennonite women, some in bright colored flip-flops (click on the image to go to the Flickr page where you can enlarge it). The clothing contrast in Jizzon’s photograph isn’t as stark as it usually is in the Siloam Springs’ Walmart. The girls in his capture are wearing much brighter handmade dresses than I’ve ever seen the group in Northwest Arkansas don.

If you’re craving even more paradox, look at this image of two mennonites in dresses and bonnets on a jet ski.

Secondly, after looking through an album posted by a photographer friend, Aus10, on Facebook I commented as follows:

    Interesting to me how so much portraiture (including wedding photography) in the past five years or so has been about creating contrast — or so it seems to me as an observer. The well-groomed subjects are placed in rough and rustic environments: Against decrepit buildings with peeling paint, along derelict railway tracks covered in weeds etc. Seems to me this is a new trend for the media, and one that I like (unlike this everybody jump up in the air phenomenon). Is my observation correct in your professional opinion? And can you talk about why you think this is the case, if you think my assessment is correct?

The photographer’s reply was more or less to say that the high school seniors, in the case of the album I responded to, see their friends’ photos or advertisements for Urban Outfitters and want the same thing. Regardless of these teen’s, um, less than intellectual desire for this aesthetic, I must reiterate that I think it works and works well.

My own senior picture was from one of those gimmicky old-time photo rooms (which is what I wanted it to be, although mom had me submit a color image from a $10 Sears sitting for the actual yearbook.) However, I would have liked something akin to this popular contrasty style if I would have thought it was worth it for my parents to spend $400 (I’m sure it’s much more nowadays) for proper senior photographs.

Filed under Color, Handmade, Intentional observation, Northwest Arkansas, Siloam Springs

In a pickle

21 May 2009 by pcNielsen 8 Comments

I haven’t mentioned the whole moving scenario in a while. After not being comfortable, so to speak, with Enid real estate I decided to pursue a job at John Brown University, more specifically their Soderquist Center for Business and Ethics. A friend had recommended me for the position, a part-time design job which would allow me to continue working for M-DAT through the end of the year as I hope to do.

It seemed like I had a good shot at getting the position. I was qualified — based on the draft of a job description I was sent — and my own design aesthetic fit well with the Center’s intentions. Further, despite figuring there would be competition in an economy like this, it didn’t seem like there were many other candidates. If any. And of course my friend, a JBU professor who helped create the position, gave them my name. Regardless, I learned yesterday afternoon that I was “not selected for this position.”

Upon reading the rejection in my inbox yesterday afternoon, my gut conjured up one of those sinking sensations. Thankfully it didn’t last long, but to say the near future looks comfortable would be quite absurd. A year ago we would have been more comfortable in this kind of situation, but a slew of unexpected expenses over the past six months or so have damaged the savings account.

My wife and I really don’t know where to go from here (although we have some ideas). Two quite promising part-time jobs have not panned out in the past four months, a building we hoped to turn into living/retail seems out of range financially (thanks to mandatory fire sprinklers) and the doors to Enid, Oklahoma — where the in-laws live — seem to have all closed. In all likelihood we’ll have to put the house on the market and hope it sells very quickly.

Moving map

I’ll conclude this little rant by posting links to my portfolio and resume. While I may not be featured in PRINT magazine any time soon (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), I am a good designer with a fairly broad level of experience in print media, and a good knowledge of the internet even though I’m not a programmer.

Adding: I’ve published the portfolio and resume. When I posted this entry they were not yet public.

Filed under Design, Personal reflection, Siloam Springs

The notable floor plan

13 April 2009 by pcNielsen 3 Comments

Friday we drove over to Enid, Oklahoma again to look at an almost perfect house — or so it seemed based on our understanding of the house in comparison to our needs.

washington

On paper, the property is indeed just right for us. However, when we walked through it yesterday we both realized this 1,900 square foot building had less space than our current 1,500 square foot bungalow.

Allow me to explain. We knew the second floor of this Enid house would be somewhat cut up simply by observing the dormers from outside. What we didn’t expect was a first floor that was almost as bad, functionally. The largest (i.e. “master”) master bedroom was off of the dining room, which isn’t too unusual in older homes but is particularly strange in this one. The only main floor bathroom is off of the kitchen. A smaller bedroom boasted a bumped out closet and doors on two walls, leaving about six feet of wall space for furniture, and the kitchen was hashed together indiscriminately.

Some of these problems could have been easily dealt with during the home’s recent remodel. Instead, the remodel apparently focused on utilities (with some obligatory new paint, carpet and kitchen cabinets). Most of the money the owners spent went into new HVAC and electrical. From what I could tell, the electrical was done very well, but this doesn’t make up for a poorly laid out interior space.

My wife and I don’t need 1,900 square feet. We don’t even need 1,500 square feet. In fact, to a degree the amount of square footage in a home is irrelevant,

if the home is well-designed.

The realtor said there had been a lot of interest in this house, from as far away as California, although we were the first to see it. I know that the house, with it’s chopped up 1,900 square feet, newer utilities and two car garage will be great for some family out there. However, I’m not convinced it’s for us.

Filed under Architecture, Basis for designing well, Design, Interior design

The visual credit crisis

19 March 2009 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

Earlier this week I posted the following in my Facebook status:

    Paul Nielsen :: Realizing I have an eye (and degree) for design, but just don’t fit into the graphic designer’s culture.

Basically, I’ve realized this year, again, that I just don’t share the interests and passions of most serious graphic designers. I don’t look forward to new software; I don’t rant passionately against spec work like a lot of professional graphics people seem to. I have more of a marketing mind now (for good or ill) and realize that the job of a logo isn’t so much to grab attention — and professional accolades — as it is to create a brand. And, like two friends who commented on the Facebook status, I’d rather be getting my hands dirty than sitting in front of a computer all day (although half a day is OK).

That said, however, I’m still acutely aware of the surrounding visual environment, and appreciate good design when I see it. FlowingData posted a significant montage of good graphics related to the current economic crisis earlier this week, 27 visualizations to be exact. The one I appreciated most was the only video in the group.

The video, created by graduate student Jonathan Jarvis, above is the first of two parts posted on YouTube. See the full-length video on Vimeo here (YouTube limits videos to less than 10 minutes, and I can’t embed the Vimeo video because I don’t yet self-host The Aesthetic Elevator.). I also quite liked the following poster, if it can be called that, by Jess Bachman.

golden-parachutes

Click on the image to see the entire visualization. Bachman’s own website is called WallStats.

Filed under Affluenza, Design, Modern culture, Sustainable living

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