Always awake

10 inspiring participatory design projects.

#1 Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, Stefan Sagmeister

Not your traditional book. A case with a die cut face on the front. Each page that is pulled out or put back in creates a different look. Also inside is a booklet with text.

#2 And The Pursuit Of Happiness, Maira Kalman

A retelling of the story of george washington that everyone can relate to. Its hown in a hand drawn format with funny and relateable illustrations. It feels more like the story of a friend than a president.

#3 A collection a Day Lisa Congdon

My new hero. Lisa collects thing and over the course of a year she photographed or illustrated a collection or part of a collection in her home or studio. Just fantastic. I want to do this too!

#4 365 Thank you notes

After a particularly bad year, John Kralik made a new years resolution to be more thankful of the good things in his life by writing a thank you note everyday for a year. He complied these notes to everyone from his son to his barista and compiled them in a book.

#5 Post secret

Most everyone knows of this social experiment by now,

#6 Pictory

“17 photographic  accounts of visual delight” A collection of photographs by 17 different people who have written an accompanying statement about the moment in the photograph when they experienced true delight. The Pictures are nice, but its the descriptions that really help the viewer to be a part of the delight.

#7 We Feel Fine

A collection of “emotional data” compiled by finding blog posts with “I feel” in them and plotted by location and other data. Really astounding! I was quite surprised to see that much data being recorded. Really makes a person feel less alone to know that that many other people feel the same!

#8 The Sheep market

A collection of 10,000 sheep drawn by online workers who were paid .02 to drawn a sheep facing left. You can scroll over the sheep to see them drawn larger and from start to finish.

#9 Public print lab

Kind of like a flickr or instagram community except all images uploaded were printed out in black and white and used in an installation.

#10 The Wilderness downtown- Arcade Fire

This completely rocked my world. The website asks for your childhood address then uses google street view in addition to video footage to really make you a part of the video. I hadn’t seen where I grew up in years. Then it asked me to write a note to my childhood self. I could feel the emotion welling up inside me. Wow. Just awesome.

Well guys? did we all survive? no one had a mental break down right? Its really weird to go through all of that and not know who came out the other end. Im hoping no one went off the deep end. :) I don’t want to wait till 320 to find out who are still my classmates! SOOO Hi. I passed. Who else is here with me? :)

1. Hot air balloon ride

2. Circus theme

3. 80’s Prom

4. Westen theme/ High noon showdown

5. Bad sweater vest party

6. Roaring 20’s

7. Nacho libre/ spanish wrestling crazy spandex

8. Neon spandex, bad biking outfit party

9. The jetsons vs. the flinstones

10. 90’s rap party

11. Vintage video gamer / ground control party

12. Seriously kate 15 ideas??? party :) 

I havent yet seen the movie Helvetica, I know I know, But its in my netflix queue. This reading made me want to see the movie. I knew that it was widely used, but I didnt realize how much. I thought the part about how it was used on a garbage truck, and then a photo of those garbage trucks are in the louvre. Thats pretty hilarious, but at the same time it says alot about how perfect, clean and beautiful the typeface is.

Sheesh I really hope this isnt a weather report.

It was an interesting reading because it continues the push in my mind for me to really examine typefaces more.