The Dictionary as Art Concept?

Magritte A to Z, Tate Publishing, 2011, showing Magritte's Time Transfixed, 1938. Designed by Tony Waddingham

How important is originality when it comes to book design? The issue came up recently in a panel discussion in Zurich that I took part in, organized around the annual Most Beautiful Swiss Books competition. The term “beauty” is something of a red herring here. What the jury, which included Cornel Windlin (the chair), Lars Müller and Linda van Deursen, seemed to be looking for were books that contribute something new in their design. Exactly what this means in terms of the 19 titles they chose for their final selection, and how these books meet this criterion, was never properly defined during our discussion. But it did seem that a book that was merely excellent in applying a familiar design approach, as plenty of the also-rans appeared to be, couldn’t, in the jury’s view, qualify as a “most beautiful” book. 

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How to Start a Movement "If something happens in the world that requires a response within 48 hours, you can mobilize people at a moment’s notice."

Home page of Purpose, a new organization that consults 

on the formation of movements and helps spur of few of its own.

His mother wanted him to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer or an architect, Jeremy Heimans says with a laugh. Instead, the Australian native became what he calls a “movement entrepreneur,” an expert in using the internet to build social movements around pressing issues. He launched GetUp.org, a grassroots organizing force in his homeland that has more members than all the country’s political parties combined, and he co-founded Avaaz.org, a global online pressure group (avaaz means voice in languages from Hindi to Farsi to Bosnian). His latest venture is Purpose, a New York–based consultancy on movement formation and development that has a not-for-profit arm that launches its own campaigns; one of them, AllOut.org, promotes LGBT rights worldwide and recently helped quash a bill in Uganda that would have made being gay punishable by death. Last month the Ford Foundation presented Heimans with one of its 12 Visionaries Awards, an honor that comes with a $100,000 grant, calling the 33-year-old “a next generation leader.” Here, excerpts from a recent interview with Heimans, conducted in an admittedly old-fashioned way — by phone. READ MORE design observer

Architect Barbie made her industry debut

Architect Barbie on display at the AIA convention in New Orleans, May 2011. [Photo courtesy of Mattel, Inc.]

In February Architect Barbie made her industry debut at the Toy Industry Association's Toy Fair in New York City; in May she made her professional entrance at the American Institute of Architects convention in New Orleans. But Architect Barbie's real beginnings were political. In 2006, while I was a research fellow at the University of Michigan, the passage of Proposal 2, a ballot initiative, ended affirmative action in that state. Debates before and after the law's passage tore into friendships and collegial relationships, and the atmosphere on campus was tense as the school's colleges, including architecture, struggled to determine what the new law would mean for diversity among students and faculty, and ultimately why that diversity mattered.   READ MORE - designobserver