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Designers at work
What do professional designers really do? This question needs to be asked in order to answer why you need a design education and what you need to study. The projects created by designers give form to the communication between their client and an audience. To do this, designers ask: What is the nature of the client? What is the nature of the audience? How does the client want to be perceived by the audience? Designers also explore the content of the message the client wishes to send, and they determine the appropriate form and media to convey that message. They manage the communication process, from understanding the problem to finding the solution. In other words, designers develop and implement overall communication strategies for their clients.
Some of the projects presented here will probably seem familiar because of their broad exposure in the media. Others, which are limited to a particular audience, may surprise you. You'll see that design arrests attention, identifies, persuades, sells, educates, and gives visual delight. There is a streak of pragmatism in American culture-our society tends to focus on results.
The processes that went into creating these design projects are often invisible, but the designer's own words describe the significant strategies. It's clear that some projects, because of their size, would be inconceivable without considerable project management skills. And the range of content clearly demonstrates the designer's need for a good liberal arts education to aid in understanding and communicating divers design content.
The projects that follow represent various media, such as print (graphic design's historic medium) and three-dimensional graphic design media, including environmental graphic design, exhibitions, and signage. Electronic media, such as television and computers, as well as film and video are also represented. Various kinds of communication are included, from corporate communications to publishing and government communications. Some project focus on a specialization within design, such as corporate identity programs or type design. Information design and interface design (the design of computer screens for interactivity) reflect the contemporary need to streamline information and to use new media effectively.
Three designer roles are also highlighted. Developed over a lifetime, these careers go beyond the commonly understood role of the designer. The corporate executive oversees design for a large company; the university professor teaches the next generation of designers and thus influences the future of the field; the design entrepreneur engages in design initiation as an independent business. Consider these and other design-related roles as you plan your studies and early job experience.
The projects and designers presented here were selected to illustrate the range of graphic design activities and to represent the exceptional rather than the ordinary. Seeing the best can give you a glimpse into the possibilities that await you in the competitive, creative, and rewarding field of design.
Digital design
Digital design is the creation of highly manipulated images on the computer. These images then make their final appearance in print. Although computers have been around since the forties, they were not reasonable tools for designers until the first Macintoshes came out in 1984. April Greiman was an early computer enthusiast who believes that graphic design has always been involved with technology. After all, Gutenberg's fifteenth-century invention of movable type created a design as well as an information revolution.
Greiman's first interest was video, which led naturally to the computer and its possibilities. She bought her first Mac as a toy, but soon found it an indispensable creative tool. "I work intuitively and play with technology," says Greiman. "I like getting immediate feedback from the computer screen, and I like to explore alternative color and form quickly on-screen. Artwork that exists as binary signals seems mysterious to me. It is an exhilarating medium!" She wants to design everything and to control and play with all kinds of sensory experience.
Designers working with digital design need to be more than technicians. Consequently, their studies focus on perception, aesthetics, and visual form-making as well as on technology.
I didn't have the math skills (so I thought) to become an architect. My high school training in the arts was in the "commercial art" realm. Later at an art school interview I was told I was strong in graphic design. So as not to humiliate myself, not knowing what graphic design was, I just proceeded onwards?the "relaxed forward-bent" approach, my trademark! -April Greiman
Multimedia design
The book remains our primary way of delivering information. Its form has not changed for centuries, and its internal organization-table of contents, chapter, glossaries, and so forth-is so commonplace that we take it for granted. But now a challenger has appeared: the computer. No longer merely a tool for preparing art for the printer, the computer is an information medium in itself.
Computer-based design delivers information according to the user's particular interest. Information is restructured into webs that allow entry from different points, a system that may be more like our actual thinking processes than the near order of the book is. On the computer, the designer can use time and sound in addition to text and image to draw attention, to animate an explanation, or to present an alternative way to understand a concept. This new technology demands designers who can combine analysis with intuition. Clement Mok does just that. He is a certified Apple software developer (he can program) and a graphic designer comfortable in most media. QuickTime system software, recently released by Apple, supports the capability to do digital movies on the Macintosh. As system software, it is really invisible. "Providing users with this great technology isn't enough," says Mok. "You also have to give them ideas for what they can do and samples they can use."
Mok addressed this problem by developing QuickClips, a CD library of three hundred film clips ranging from excerpts of classic films to original videos and animations created by his staff. These fifteen- to ninety-second movies can be incorporated into user-created presentations. It is like having a small video store in your computer. With QuickClips, Mok opened new avenues for presentation with the computer.
Type design
It is easy to overlook type design because it is everywhere. Typically we read for content and ignore the familiar structural forms of our alphabet and its formal construction in a typeface. Only when the characters are very large, or are presented to us in an unusual way, do we pay attention to the beautiful curves and rhythms of repetition that form our visible language.
Since Gutenberg's invention of movable type in the mid-fifteenth century, the word has become increasingly technological in its appearance. Early type was cast in metal, but today's new type design is often created digitally on the computer through a combination of visual and mathematical manipulation.
The history of culture can be told through the history of the letterform. The lineage of many typefaces can be traced back to Greek inscriptions, medieval scribal handwriting, or early movable type. Lithos, which means "stone" in Greek, was designed by Carol Twombly as a classically inspired typeface. She examined Greek inscription before attempting to capture the spirit of these letterforms in a type system for contemporary use.
Lithos was not an exact copy from history nor was it created automatically on the computer. Hand sketches, settings that used the typeface in words and sentences were developed and evaluated. Some were judged to be too stiff, some "too funky," but finally one was just right. These were the early steps in the search for the form and spirit of the typeface. Later steps included controlling the space between letters an designing the variations in weight for a bold font. Twombly even designed foreign-language variations.
Clearly, patience and a well-developed eye for form and system are necessities for a type designer.
As a kid, when I wasn't climbing trees, skiing, or riding horses, I was drawing and sculpting simple things. I wanted a career involving art of some kind. The restrictions of two-dimensional communication appealed to my need for structure and my desire to have my work speak for me. The challenge of communicating an idea or feeling within the further confines of the Latin alphabet lad me from graphic design into type design. -Carol Twombly
Film title design
Most people have had the experience of losing themselves in a film but probably haven't given much thought to the transition we go through mentally and emotionally as we move from reality to fantasy. Film titles help to create this transition. The attention narrows, the "self" slips away, and the film washes over the senses. Film titles set the dramatic stage; they tune our emotions to the proper pitch so that we enter into the humor, mystery, or pathos of a film with hardly a blink.
Rich Greenberg is a traditionally schooled designer who now works entirely in film. His recent Dracula titles are a classic teaser. He begins with the question: What is this film about? Vampires. What signals vampires for most of us? Blood. Greenberg believes that a direct approach using the simplest idea is usually the best. "What I do in film is the opposite of what is done with the print image. Dracula is a very good example of the process. There is very little information on the screen at any time, and you let the effect unfold slowly so the audience doesn't know what they're looking at until the very end. In print, everything has to be up front because you have so little time to get attention. In film you hold back; otherwise it would be boring. The audience is captive at a film-I can play with their minds."
Special effects are also of interest to Greenberg. In Predator, the designer asked, How can I create a feeling of fear? He began by exploring the particular possibilities for horror that depend on a monster's ability to camouflage himself so he seems to disappear into the environment. The designer's visual problem was to find a way for the object to be there and not be there. It was like looking into the repeating, diminishing image in a barber's mirror. To complicate matters, the effect needed to work just as well when the monster was in motion.
Whether designing opening title or special effects that will appear throughout a film, designers have to keep their purpose in mind. According to Greenberg, "Nobody goes to a film for the effects; they go for the story. Effects must support the narrative."
Television graphics
Motion graphics, such as program openings or graphic demonstrations within a television program, require the designer to choreograph space and time. Images, narration, movement, sound and music are woven into a multisensory communication.
Chris Pullman at WGBH draws an analogy between creating a magazine with its cover, table of contents, letters to the editor, and articles, to that of a television program like Columbus and the Age of Discovery. In both cases, the designer must find a visual vocabulary to provide common visual features. Columbus opens slowly and smoothly, establishing a time and a place. A ship rocking on the waves becomes a kind of "wallpaper" on which to show credits. The opening is a reference to what happened—it speaks of ships, ocean, New World, Earth—without actually telling the story.
In contrast, the computer-graphic map sequences are technical animation and a critical part of the storytelling. Was Columbus correct in his vision of the landmass west of Europe? Something was there, but what and how big? Was it the Asian landmass Columbus had promised to find? In 1516, Magellan sailed around the Americas by rounding Cape Horn-and found 5,000 more miles of sea travel to Japan! Columbus had made a colossal miscalculation.
The designer needed to visualize this error. Authentic ancient maps established the perspective of the past; computer animation provided the story as we understand it today and extended the viewer's perspective with a three-dimensional presentation. Pullman created a 3-D database with light source and ocean detail for this fifty-seven-second sequence. "The move was designed to follow the retreating edge of darkness, as the sun revealed the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and the delicate track of Magellan's expedition snaked west. As the Pacific finally fills the whole frame, the music, narration, and camera work conspire to create that one goose-bump moment. In video, choreography, not composition, is the essential skill."
Exhibit design
Objects, statistics, documentary photographs, labels, lighting, text and headlines, color, space, and place—these are the materials of exhibition design. The designer's problem is how to frame these materials with a storyline that engages and informs an audience and makes the story come alive. The Ellis Island Immigration Museum provides an example of how exhibition designers solve such a problem.
The museum at Ellis Island honors the many thousand of immigrants who passed through this processing center on their way to becoming United States citizens. It also underscores our diversity as a nation. The story is told from two perspectives: the personal quest for a better life, which focuses on individuals and families, and the mass migration itself, a story of epic proportions.
Tom Geismar wanted to evoke a strong sense of the people who moved through the spaces of Ellis Island. In the entry to the baggage room, he used space as a dramatic device to ignite the viewer's curiosity. Using a coarse screen like that used in old newspapers, Geismar enlarged old photographs to life size and then mounted these transparent images on glass. The result is an open space in which ghostly people from the past seem to appear.
The problem of how to dramatize statistical information was another challenge. The exhibit Where We Came From: Sources of Immigration uses three-dimensional bar charts to show the number of people coming from various continents in twenty-year intervals; the height of the vertical element signals volume. The Peopling of America, a thematic flag of one thousand faces, shows Americans today. The faces are mounted on two sides of a prism; the third side of the prism is an American flag. This striking design becomes a focal point for the visitor and is retained as a powerful memory.
Exhibit design creates a story in space. Designers who work in this field tend to enjoy complexity and are skilled in composition and visual framing, model making, and the use of diagrams, graphics, and maps.
Even as an adolescent, I was interested in "applied art." I was attracted to the combination of "art" (drawing, painting, etc.) and its practical application. While there was no established profession at the time (or certainly none that I knew of), my eyes were opened by the Friend-Heftner book Graphic Design and my taste more fully formed under a group of talented teachers in graduate school. I still enjoy the challenge of problem solving. -Tom Geismar
Signage design
As people become more mobile-exploring different countries, cities, sites, and buildings—complex signage design helps them locate their destinations and work out a travel plan. One large and multifaceted tourist attraction that recently revamped its signage design is the world-famous Louvre Museum, in Paris, France. In addition to the complexity of the building and its art collection, language and cultural differences proved to be fundamental design problems in developing a signage system for the Louvre.
Carbone Smolan Associates was invited to compete for this project sponsored by the French government. In his proposal, Ken Carbone emphasized his team's credentials, their philosophy regarding signage projects, and their conceptual approach to working on complex projects. Carbone Smolan Associates won the commission because they were sensitive to French culture, they were the only competitor to ask questions, and their proposal was unique in developing scenarios for how museum visitors would actually use the signage system.
The seventeenth-century Louvre, with its strikingly modern metal-and-glass entryway designed in the 1980s, presented a visual contrast of classicism and modernity. Should the signage harmonize with the past or emphasize the present? The design solution combines Granjon, a seventeenth-century French typeface, with contemporary graphics.
The signage design also had to address an internal navigational problem: how would visitors find their way through the various buildings? To add to the potential confusion, art collections are often moved around within the museum. The designers came up with an innovative plan: they created "neighborhoods" within the Louvre, neighborhoods that remained the same regardless of the collection currently in place. The signage identified the specific neighborhoods; the design elements of a printed guide (available in five languages) related each neighborhood to a particular Louvre environment. It's clear that signage designers need skills in design systems and planning as well as in diagramming and model making.
Design simply provided the broadest range of creative opportunities. It also appealed to my personal interest in two- and three-dimensional work including everything from a simple poster to a major exhibit. -Ken Carbone
Package design
Packaging performs many functions: it protects, stores, displays, announces a product's identity, promotes, and sometimes instructs. But today, given increased environmental concern and waste-recycling needs, packaging has come under scrutiny. The functions packaging has traditionally performed remain; what is needed now is environmentally responsive design. Fitch Richardson Smith developed just such a design-really an "un-packaging" strategy-for the Gardenia line of watering products.
A less-is-more strategy was ideally suited to capture the loyalty of an environmentally aware consumer-a gardener. The designers' approach was to eliminate individual product packaging by using sturdy, corrugated, precut shipping bins as point-of-purchase displays. Hangtags on individual products were designed to answer the customer's questions at point-of-sale and to be saved for use-and-care instructions at home. This approach cut costs and reduced environmental impact in both manufacturing and consumption. What's more, Gardena discovered that customers liked being able to touch and hold the products before purchase.
Retailers report that this merchandising system reduces space needs, permits tailoring of the product assortment, and minimizes the burden on the sales staff. A modular system, it is expandable and adaptable and can be presented freestanding or on shelves or pegboards. The graphics are clear, bright, and logical, reinforcing the systematic approach to merchandising and information design. Contemporary environmental values are clearly expressed in this packaging solution. The product connects with consumers who care about their gardens, and the packaging-design solution relates to their concern about the Earth.
Package designers tend to have a strong background in three-dimensional design, design and product management, and design systems.
Environmental design
Environmental graphics establish a particular sense of place through the use of two- and three-dimensional forms, graphics, and signage. The 1984 Olympics is an interesting example of a project requiring this kind of design treatment. The different communication needs of the various Olympics participants—athletes, officials, spectators, support crews, and television viewers—together with the project's brief use, combined to create an environmental-design problem of daunting dimension and complexity.
In the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the focus was on how a multicultural American city could embrace and international event. Arrangements were basic and low-budget. Events, planned to be cost-conscious and inclusive, were integrated into Los Angeles rather than isolated from it. Old athletic stadiums were retrofitted rather than replaced with new ones. These ideas and values, as well as the celebratory, international nature of the Olympics, needed to be expressed in its environmental design.
One of the most important considerations was to design a visual system that would provide identity and unity for individual events that were scattered throughout an existing urban environment. Through the use of color and light, the visual system highlighted the geographic and climatic connection between Los Angeles and the Mediterranean environment of the original Greek Games. The graphics expressed celebration, while the three-dimensional physical forms were a kind of "instant architecture"—sonotubes, scaffolding, and existing surfaces were signed and painted with the visual system. The clarity and exuberance of the system brought the pieces together in a cohesive, immediately recognizable way.
Under the direction of Sussman/Prejza, the design took form in workshops and warehouses all over the city. Logistics—the physical scope of the design and the time required for its development and installation—demanded that the designers exhibit not only skill with images, symbols, signs, and model making but also considerable design-planning expertise.
Design planning
Strategic design planners are interested in the big picture. They help clients create innovation throughout an industry rather than in one individually designed object or communication. First, the strategic design planners develop a point of view about what the client needs to do. Then they orchestrate the use of a wide variety of design specialties. The end result integrates these specialties into an entire vision for the client and the customer. This approach unites business goals, such as customer satisfaction of increasing market share, with specific design performance.
The scope of strategic design planning is illustrated by one Doblin Group project. Customer satisfaction was the goal of the Amoco Customer-Driven Facility. Larry Keeley, a strategic design planner at the Doblin Group, relates that "the idea was to reconceive the nature of the gas station. And like many design programs, this one began with a rough sketch that suggested how gas stations might function very differently." The design team needed to go beyond giving Amoco a different "look." They needed to consider customer behavior, the quality of the job for employees, the kinds of fuel the car of the future might use, and thousands of other details. Everything was to be built around the convenience and comfort of customers.
Keeley and his team collaborated with other design and engineering firms to analyze, prototype, and pilot-test the design. The specific outcomes of the project include developments that are not often associated with graphic design. For example, the project developed new construction materials as well as station-operation methods that are better for the environment and the customer. A gas nozzle that integrated the display of dispensed gas with a fume-containment system was also developed. This system was designed to be particularly user-friendly to handicapped or elderly customers. For Amoco itself, software-planning tools were developed to help the company decide where to put gas stations so that they become good neighbors. These new kinds of gas stations are now in operation and are a success.
Publication systems
Creating a visual system is like designing a game. You need to ask: What is the purpose? What are the key elements and relationships? What are the rules? And where are the opportunities for surprise? With over 350 national parks and millions of visitors, the United States National Park Service (NPS) needed a publication system to help visitors orient themselves no matter which park they were in, to understand the geological or historical significance of the park, and to better access its recreational opportunities. The parts of the system had to work individually and as a whole.
Systems design involves considerations of user needs, communication consistency, design processes, production requirements, and economies of scale, including the standardization of sizes. Rather than examining and designing an isolated piece, the designer of a system considers the whole, abstracting its requirements and essential elements to form a kind of game plan for the creation of its parts. When Massimo Vignelli was hired to work with the NPS design staff, they agreed on a publication system with six elements: a limited set of formats; full-sheet presentations; park names used as logotypes; horizontal organization for text, maps, and images; standardized, open, asymmetric typographic layout; and a master grid to coordinate design with printing. The system supports simple, bold graphics like Liberty or detailed information like Shenandoah Park, with its relief map, text, and photographs.
A well-conceived system is not a straightjacket; it leaves room for imaginative solutions. It releases the designer from solving the same problem again and again and directs creative energy to the unique aspects of a communication. To remain vital and current, the system must anticipate problems and opportunities. Designers working in this area need design-planning skills as well as creativity with text, images, symbols, signs, diagrams, graphs, and maps.
Educational design
Educational publishing isn't just textbooks anymore. Traditional materials are now joined by a number of new options. Because children and teenagers grow up with television and computers, they are accustomed to interactive experiences. This, plus the fact that students learn best in different ways—some by eye and some by ear—makes educational publishing an important challenge for design.
Ligature believes that combining visual and verbal learning components in a cooperative, creative environment is or paramount importance in developing educational materials. Ligature uses considerate instructional design, incorporating fine art, illustrations, and diagrams, to produce educational products that are engaging, substantive, relevant, and effective.
A Ligature project for a middle school language arts curriculum presents twelve thematic units in multiple ways: as a full-color magazine, a paperback anthology, an audiotape, several videotapes, a language arts survival guide giving instruction on writing, software, fine art transparencies, and a teacher's guide containing suggestions for integrating these materials. These rich learning resources encourage creativity on the part of both teachers and students and allow a more interactive approach to learning.
Middle school students are in transition from child to adult. The central design issue was to create materials that look youthful but not childish, that are fresh, fun, and lively, yet look "grown up." The anthology has few illustrations and looks very adult, while the magazine uses type and many lively images as design elements.
In educational publishing, multidisciplinary creative teams use prototype testing to explore new ideas. Materials are also field-tested on teachers and students. Designers going into instructional systems development need to be interested in information, communication, planning, and teamwork.
Magazine design
What makes you pick up a particular magazine? What do you look at first? What keeps you turning the pages? In general, your answers probably involve some combinations of content (text) and design (images, typography, and other graphic elements). Magazine designers ask those same questions for every issue they work on; then they try to imagine the answers of their own particular audience-their slice of the magazine market.
At Rolling Stone, designers work in conjunction with the art director, editors, and photo editors to add a "visual voice" to the text. They think carefully about their audience and use a variety of images and typefaces to keep readers interested. "We try to pull the reader in with unique and lively opening pages and follow through with turnpages that have a good balance of photos and pullquotes to keep the reader interested," says deputy art director Gail Anderson. Designers also select typefaces that suggest the appropriate mood for each story.
The designers work on their features from conception to execution, consulting with editors to help determine the amount of space that each story needs. They also work with the copy and production departments on text changes, letterspacing, type, and the sizing of art. At the beginning of the two-week cycle, designers start with printouts of feature stories. They select photographs and design a headline. Over the course of the next two to three days, they design the layouts. At the same time, each Rolling Stone designer is responsible for one or more of the magazine's departments and lays out those pages as well. Eventually both editors and designers sign off on various stages of the production process and examine final proofs.
Anderson is excited about how the new technology has changed the role of magazine designers. "We now have the freedom to set and design type ourselves, to experiment with color and see the results instantly, and to work in what feels like 3-D. The designer's role has certainly expanded, and I think it is taken more seriously than it was even a few years ago." Magazine designers should enjoy working with both type and images, be attuned to content concerns and able to work well with editors, have technological expertise, and be able to tolerate tight deadlines.
Drawing—deciding what is significant detail, what can be suggested, and what needs dramatic development—is a skill that all designers need in order to develop their own ideas and share them with others. Many designers use drawing as the core of their work. Milton Glaser is such a designer.
Keeping a creative edge and searching for new opportunities for visual development are important aspects of a lively design practice. When Glaser felt an urge to expand his drawing vocabulary and to do more personally satisfying work, he found himself attracted to the impressionist artist Claude Monet. Glaser liked the way Monet looked: his physical characteristics expressed something familiar and yet mysterious. Additionally, Monet's visual vocabulary was foreign to Glaser whose work is more linear and graphic. While many designers would be intimidated by Monet's stature in the art world, Glaser was not because he was consciously seeking an opportunity for visual growth. In a sense, Glaser's drawings of Monet were a lark-an invention done lightly.
Glaser worked directly from nature, from photographs, and from memory in order to open himself to new possibilities. The drawings, forty-eight in all, were done over a year and a half and then were shown in a gallery in Milan. They became the catalog for a local printer who wanted to demonstrate his color fidelity and excellence in flexibility of vision: the selection of detail, the balancing of light and shadow, and the varying treatments of figure and background.
Drawing is a rich and immediate way to represent the world, but drawing can also illustrate ideas in partnership with design.
Identity design
Creating the key graphic element that identifies a product or service and separates it from its competitors is a challenging design problem. The identity needs to be clear and memorable. It should be adaptable to extreme changes in scale, from a matchbox to a large illuminated sign. And it must embody the character and quality of what it identifies. This capturing of an intangible is an important feature of identity design, but it is also a subtle talent.
Hotel Hankyu International is the flagship hotel for the Hankyu Corporation, a huge, diversified Japanese company. It is relatively small for a luxury hotel, with only six floors of accommodations. The client wanted to establish the hotel as an international hotel, rather than a Japanese hotel. In Japan, "international" mean European or American. Consequently, the client did not look to Japanese designers, but they hired Pentagram-with the understanding that the hotel's emblem would be a flower, since flowers are universally associated with pleasure.
The identity was commissioned first, before other visual decisions (such as those about the interior architecture) were made. Here the graphic designer could set the visual agenda. Rather than one flower, six flowers were designed as the identity, one for each floor. To differentiate itself in its market, this small luxury hotel benefited from an extravagant design. Each flower is made up of four lines that emerge from the base of a square. The flowers are reminiscent of the 1920s Art Deco period, which suggest sophistication and world travel. Color and related typefaces link the flowers. One typeface is a custom-designed, slim Roman alphabet with proportions similar to those of the flowers. The other consists of Japanese characters and was designed by a Japanese firm.
The identity appears on signage, room folder, stationery, packaging, and other hotel amenities. It is clear and memorable and conveys a sense of luxury. Designers working with identity design need to be skilled manipulators of visual abstraction, letterforms, and design systems.
Systems design
Systems design seeks to unify and coordinate all aspects of a complex communication. It strives to achieve consistent verbal and visual treatment and to reduce production time and cost. Systems design requires a careful problem-solving approach to handling complexity.
Caterpillar Inc. is a worldwide heavy-equipment and engine manufacturer. Its most visible and highly used document is the Specalog, a product-information book containing specifications, sales and marketing information, and a competitive-product reference list. A Specalog is produced for each of fifty different product types into twenty-six languages. The catalog output totals seventy million pages annually. Before Siegel & Gale took on Specalog, no formal guidelines existed, so the pages took too much time to create and were inconsistent with Caterpillar's literature strategy and corporate image.
Bringing systematic order and clarity to this mountain of information was Siegel & Gale's task. First they asked questions: What do customers and dealers need to know? What do the information producers (Caterpillar's product units) want? An analysis of existing Specalogs revealed problems with both verbal and visual language: there was no clear organization for content; language was generic; product images were taken from too great a distance; and specifications charts lacked typographic clarity. The brochures of Caterpillar's competitors were also analyzed so as not to miss opportunities to make Specalog distinctive. These activities resulted in a clear set of design goals.
A working prototype was tested with customers and dealers. Following revisions, the new design was implemented worldwide. Its significant features include an easy-to-use template system compatible with existing Macintosh computers (thus allowing for local-market customization), a thirty-percent saving in production time and cost, and increased approval by both customers and dealers. Achieving standardization while encouraging customization is a strategy in many large international organizations. Designers involved with projects like this study information design, design planning, and evaluation techniques.
Designers are problem solvers who create solutions regardless of the medium. But, designers create within the confines of reality. The challenge is to push the limits of reality to achieve the most effective solution. -Lorena Cummings
Corporate communication
Whether they are large or small, corporations need to remind their public who they are, what they are doing, and how well they are doing it. Even the venerable Wall Street banking firm of J.P. Morgan needs to assert itself so the public remembers its existence and service. Corporate communications serve this function, and the design of these messages goes a long way toward establishing company image.
Usually corporate communications include identity programs and annual reports, but there are also other opportunities to communicate the corporate message. Since 1918, J.P. Morgan has published a unique guide that keeps up with the changing world of commerce and travel. The World Holiday and Time Guide covers over two hundred countries, and keeps the traveler current with twenty-four time zones. In the Guide, the international businessperson can find easy-to-read tables and charts giving the banking hours as well as opening and closing business times for weekdays and holidays. Specific cultural holidays, such as Human Rights Day (December 10) in Namibia and National Tree Planting Day (March 23) in Lesotho are included. The seventy-five-year history of the Guide is also an informal chronicle of world change. It has described the rise and decline of Communism and the liberation of colonial Africa and Asia; today it keeps up with the recent territorial changes in Europe. The covers of the Guide invite the user to celebrate travel and cultural diversity; the interior format is a model of clarity sand convenience.
In-house design groups have two functions: they provide a design service for their company and they maintain the corporate image. Because projects are often annual, responsibility for them moves around the design group, helping to sustain creativity and to generate a fresh approach to communication. Consequently, the Guide is the work of several designers. To work in corporate communications, designers need skills relating to typography, information design, and print design.
My early exposure to a design studio made me aware of the design profession as an opportunity to apply analytical abilities to an interest in the fine arts. Graduate design programs made it possible for me to delve more deeply into the aspects of design I found personally interesting. Since then, the nature of the design profession, which constantly draws the designer into a wide range of subjects and problems, has continued to interest me in each new project. It's been this opportunity to satisfy personal interests while earning a living that ha made design my long-term career choice. -Won Chung
Nonprofit design
Just as profit-oriented corporations need to present a carefully defined visual identity to their public, so must a nonprofit organization like the Walker Art Center. Even with limited resources, this museum uses graphic designers to present its best face to the public.
For twenty years the Walker Art Center presented itself in a quiet, restrained, and neutral manner. It was a model of contemporary corporate graphics. But times change, and like many American museums, the Walker is now taking another look at its role in society. The questions the Walker is considering include: What kind of museum is this? Who is its audience? How does the museum tell its story to its audience? What should its visual identity and publications look like? Identity builds expectation. Does the identity established by the museum's communications really support the programs the Walker offers?
The stock-in-trade of the Walker Art Center includes exhibitions and the performing arts for audiences ranging from children to scholars, educational programs, and avant-garde programming in film and video. As the museum's programming becomes even more varied, the old "corporate" identity represented by a clean, utilitarian design no longer seems appropriate. To better represent the expanded range of art and audience at the museum, The Design Studio, an internal laboratory for design experimentation at the Walker, is purposely blurring aspect of high and low culture and using more experimental typefaces and more eclectic communication approaches. Posters, catalogs, invitations to exhibitions, and mailers for film and performing art programs often have independent design and typographic approaches, while the calendar and members' magazine provide a continuity of design.
Publication design, symbol and identity systems, and type and image relationships are among the areas of expertise necessary for in-house museum designers.
I like the way words look, the way ideas can become things. I like the social, activist, practical, and aesthetic aspects of design. -Laurie Haycock Makela
Information design
How do you get around in an unfamiliar city? What if the language is completely different from English? What kind of guidebook can help you bridge the communication gap? Access Tokyo is a successful travel guide to one of the most complex cities in the world. It is also an example of information design, the goal of which is clarity and usefulness.
Richard Wurman began the Tokyo project as an innocent, without previous experience in that city. His challenge was to see if he could understand enough about Tokyo to make major decisions about what to include in a guidebook. He also needed to develop useful instruction to help the English-speaking tourist get around. Ignorance (lack of information) and intelligence (knowing how to find that information) led him to ask the questions that brought insight and order to his project. Using his skill in information and book design, the designer used his own experience as a visitor to translate the experience of Tokyo for others.
Access Tokyo presents the historical, geographical, and cultural qualities that make Tokyo unique, as well as resources and locations for the outsider. Maps are a particular challenge since they require reducing information to its essential structure. The map for the Yamanote Line, a subway that rings Tokyo, is clear and memorable. The guide is bilingual because of the language gap between English with it Roman alphabet and Japanese with its ideographic signs. The traveler can read facts of interest in English but can also show the Japanese translation to a cab driver.
Wurman also wanted to get the cultural viewpoint across. To this end, he asked Japanese architects, painters, and designers to contribute graphics to the project. The colorful tangram (a puzzle made by cutting a square of paper into five triangles, a square, and a rhomboid) is abstract in a very Japanese way. Access Tokyo bridges the culture chasm as well as the information gap.
Design entrepreneur
"One who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business enterprise?" This dictionary definition of the word entrepreneur is a bland description of a very interesting possibility in design. A design entrepreneur extends the general definition: he or she must have a particular vision of an object and its market. While many designers believe they could be their own best client, few act on this notion. Tibor Kalman of M&Co. acted: he was a design entrepreneur.
Kalman's firm, M&Co, was not without clients in the usual sense. Their innovative graphics for the Talking Heads music video "(Nothing but) Flowers" demonstrates that creativity and even fun are possible in traditional design work for clients. But somehow this wasn't enough for Kalman. He was frustrated with doing the packaging, advertising, and promotion for things he often viewed critically. He wanted to do the "real thing," the object itself.
Kalman started with a traditional object, a wristwatch. He then applied his own particular sense of humor and elegant restraint to the "ordinary" watch in order to examine formal ideas about time. The Pie watch gives only a segment, or slice, of time, while the Ten One 4 wristwatch is such a masterpiece of understatement that it is in the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Other variations include Romeo (with Roman numeral rather that Arabic ones), Straphanger (with the face rotated ninety degrees to accommodate easy reading on the subway), and Bug (with bugs substituted for the usual numerals). These few examples give a sense of the wry humor that transforms an ordinary object into a unique personal pleasure.
Entrepreneurial design requires creativity and business savvy along with design and project-management skills. Of course, an innovative concept is also a necessity. Vision and risk-taking are important attributes for the design entrepreneur.
I became a designer by accident; it was less boring than working in a store. I do have some regrets, however, as I would prefer to be in control of content rather form. -Tibor Kalman
Corporate executive
If you are a take-charge person with vision, creativity, and communication and organizational skills, becoming a design executive might be a good long-term career goal. Obviously, no one starts out with this job; it takes years to grow into it. A brief review of Robert Blaich's career can illustrate what being a design executive is all about.
Educated as an architect, Blaich became involved with marketing when he joined Herman Miller, a major American furniture maker. Then he assumed a product-planning role and began to consciously build design talent for the organization. By the time he was vice president of design and communication, Blaich was running Herman Miller's entire design program (including communication, product, and architectural design). In a sense, he was their total designer.
In 1980 Blaich came to Philips Electronics N.V., an international manufacturer of entertainment and information systems. Located in the Netherlands, Philips is the world's twenty-eighth largest corporation and was seen by many Americans as a stodgy foreign giant. The president of Philips asked Blaich to take the corporation in new directions. By the time Blaich left in 1992, design was a strategic part of Philips's operation and its dull image was reinvigorated and unified. What's more, the corporation now saw its key functions as research, design, manufacturing, marketing, and human resources-in that order. Design's number-two position reflected a new understanding of its importance. Today, as president of Blaich Associates, Blaich is a consultant for Philips and responsible for corporate identity and for strategic notions of design.
Just what do corporate design executives do? They look at design from a business point of view, critique work, support new ideas, foster creativity and collaboration, bring in new talent, and develop new design capabilities. They are design activists in a corporate setting.
Professor of design
The best teaching is about learning, exploring, and making connections. Teachers in professional programs are almost never exclusively educators; they also practice design. Sheila Levrant de Bretteville is a case in point. She is a professor of graphic design at Yale University and owner of The Sheila Studio. Both her teaching and design are geared toward hopeful and inspiring action.
Looking at a student assignment and at one of de Bretteville's own design projects illuminates the interplay of teaching and practice. De Bretteville saw the windows of abandoned stores in New Haven as an opportunity to communicate across class and color lines. She chose the theme of "grandparents," which formed a connection between her Yale students and people of the community. The windows became large poster that told stories of grandparents as immigrants, as labor leaders, as the very aged, and more. The project gave students the opportunity to explore the requirements of space, materials, and information.
De Bretteville's project, Biddy Mason: Time and Place, is an example of environmental-design. Located in Los Angeles, it explores the nine decades of Biddy Mason's life: as a slave prior to her arrival in California and as a free woman in Los Angeles where she later lived and worked and founded the AME church. "I wanted to celebrate this woman's perseverance and generosity," says de Bretteville. "Now everyone who comes to this place will know about her and the city that benefited from her presence here." A designed tactile environment, which included the imperfections in the slate and concrete wall, required working with processes and materials that were often unpredictable-like the struggles Biddy faced in her life.
Biddy Mason and the grandparent windows connect design practice and teaching as de Bretteville encourages her students to use their knowledge, skills, and passion to connect to the community through design.
Graphic Design: A Career Guide and Education Directory
Edited by Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl
Copyright 1993
The American Institute of Graphic Arts
Presenting Sponsor
Together with AIGA, Adobe is creating innovative programs that give members a voice, nurture young designers and actively engage the creative community in dialogues about the important issues in the fields of design and technology. The alliance between AIGA and Adobe is a long-term partnership dedicated to advancing design and the use of technology across creative industries as well as understanding and highlighting the impact of design on the economy and society. Learn more about Adobe.
About the Author: Juliette Cezzar is a designer, writer, and Assistant Professor of Communication Design at the New School's Parsons School of Design, where she was the Director of the BFA Communication Design and BFA Design & Technology programs from 2011–2014. She served as President of the board of directors of AIGA/NY from 2014–2016. She is the co-author, with Sue Apfelbaum, of Designing the Editorial Experience, and the author of five other books, the latest of which is The AIGA Guide to Careers in Graphic and Communication Design.


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subset: commoncrawl


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Many different initiatives have greeted the launch of Tokyo and Kyoto City Notebooks in Japan. Prominent and visible space has been secured at six premium venues in Tokyo, in order to maximize the exposure and attention on the launch, and an exhibition of Moleskine Notebooks decorated by local artists and designers was on display.
For further info: visit Qahwa's website


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GPSolo Magazine - March 2006
Estate and Financial Planning
Drafting Flexibility into an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust
Elements of a typical irrevocable life insurance trust. In designing an ILIT, an attorney makes use of an array of elements, including the following:
• identity of the settlor and trustee;
• statement of the trust's irrevocability;
• administrative and dispositive provisions;
• beneficiary withdrawal powers to provide for present interest gifts and other powers of appointment;
• powers of the trustee;
• trustee's powers relating to life insurance;
• provisions for compensating the trustee and appointing a successor;
• directions for administering the trust and accounting for and safeguarding trust assets;
• miscellaneous provisions relating to trust construction, ap-plicable state law, binding agreement, or other items; and
• proper execution of the trust document under applicable state law.
Design tools that can provide flexibility in an ILIT include (1) general and special powers of appointment; (2) distributions or withdrawals within the scope of a specified ascertainable standard; and (3) administrative powers in the trustee. Appointing a trust protector and making the trust a grantor trust for income tax purposes also increase trust flexibility.
Powers of appointment. Property subject to a general power of appointment is includable in the power holder's gross estate for federal estate tax purposes. For that reason, the grantor of an ILIT cannot retain a general power of appointment and remove the underlying insurance policy from the grantor's estate.
ILITs, however, commonly grant a general power of appointment to individuals other than the grantor. Most ILITs include Crummey withdrawal powers to ensure that gifts to the trust qualify for the gift tax annual exclusion. Crummey powers are general powers of appointment that partially or wholly lapse within a specified time period.
The lapse of a Crummey withdrawal power in excess of $5,000 or 5 percent of the trust assets, whichever is greater, can cause the power holder to be treated as having made a transfer to the trust for tax purposes. To prevent a lapse of a general power in excess of the so-called five-and-five limits of Code § 2514(e), many planners use a "hanging" power. With a hanging power, the excess amount does not lapse; rather, the power holder maintains a continuing right to exercise the general power of appointment over the excess amount. If the life insurance policy in the ILIT reaches a point at which no more premiums are due and no additional contributions are made to the trust, the "hanging" amount can begin to lapse at the greater of $5,000 or 5 percent of the trust assets subject to the power until no amount is left hanging.
A special power of appointment allows the power holder to transfer certain property to another person, but not to himself, his estate, or creditors of either. A non-grantor spouse can hold a limited power of appointment to alter the beneficial interests of the children. Some planners use limited powers of appointment in lieu of a hanging power to prevent the lapse of a Crummey withdrawal power in excess of the greater of $5,000 or 5 percent.
Spousal access limited to ascertainable standard. Sometimes a grantor would like to have indirect access to trust assets during his lifetime. A planner can accomplish this by giving the trustee the discretionary power to make distributions to the grantor's spouse for the spouse's health, education, maintenance, and support. Because the distributions are limited to an ascertainable standard, the power should not cause inclusion in the grantor's or the grantor's spouse's estate. To make sure that transfers to the trust are excluded from the grantor's estate, the trust document should not relieve the grantor of any support obligations imposed by law.
Loans from the trustee to the grantor or grantor's spouse. Another way for the grantor to gain access to trust assets is through secured loans from the trustee. The grantor executes a note secured by property pledged by the grantor. The note accrues interest at a fair market rate at least equal to the appropriate applicable federal rate for the type of note and the term of the loan.
When the grantor dies, the cumulative loan and accrued interest are paid back to the trust from the grantor's estate. The loan and accrued interest payment should be deductible from the insured's gross estate as a bona fide debt. The effect of this deductible loan and accrued interest payment is to transfer a substantial portion of the decedent's estate to the trust free from transfer tax.
Trust protector. To add even further flexibility, a trust instrument can name an independent party to act as the "trust protector." A trust protector holds wide-ranging powers to alter the terms of the trust agreement, sometimes including the power to add, remove, or change beneficiaries or change the distributive provisions of the trust.
Naming a trust protector has its drawbacks. The grantor must trust completely the judgment of the individual appointed as the trust protector. Otherwise, the trust protector potentially may exercise his powers to frustrate the grantor's intent as expressed in the trust agreement.
Increased flexibility with a grantor trust. Most ILITs qualify as "intentionally defective grantor trusts." An intentionally defective grantor trust is a grantor trust for income tax purposes, but a transfer to such a trust is a completed transfer for estate and gift tax purposes.
Essentially, the IRS ignores a grantor trust for income tax purposes. The grantor reports the income from a grantor trust on his personal return, instead of on the return of the trust or its beneficiary. If an ILIT holds income-producing property, trust income can be used to pay premiums on the insurance policy. Even though the trust uses the income to pay premiums, the trust income is taxed to the grantor. This has the effect of transferring an amount equal to the income tax from the grantor to the beneficiaries of the trust without having to treat transfers as a gift for gift tax purposes.
Because the grantor and his grantor trust are treated as the same person for income tax purposes, sales of appreciated property by the grantor to the trust do not create an income taxable event. The sale of a life insurance policy to the trust for full and adequate consideration generally avoids the transfer for value rule and may be successful in avoiding application of the three-year rule for estate tax purposes.
An ILIT can be a grantor trust for income tax purposes but not give the grantor powers that will cause assets in the trust to be included in the grantor's estate for estate tax purposes. Most grantor trust powers, if retained by the grantor personally, would cause the trust assets to be included in the grantor's estate for estate tax purposes. Certain powers, however, that create a grantor trust for income tax purposes do not simultaneously cause inclusion of trust assets in the grantor's estate.
Richard C. Baier is an assistant vice president of advanced sales for Jefferson Pilot Financial in Greensboro, North Carolina. He can be reached at email@example.com. Drafting a flexible irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT) is both an art and a craft. This article looks at trust design features that recognize the changing needs of the trust grantor or beneficiary.
|For More Information about the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section
- This article is an abridged and edited version of one that originally appeared on page 62 of Probate & Property, September/October 2005 (19:5).
- For more information or to obtain a copy of the periodical in which the full article appears, please call the ABA Service Center at 800/285-2221.
- Website: www.abanet.org/rppt.
- Periodicals: Probate & Property, bimonthly magazine; Real Property, Probate and Trust Journal, quarterly journal; RPPT Bulletin, e-publication produced six times per year; E-Dirt—Online for Real Estate, e-publication produced three times per year; E-State—Online for Estate Planning, e-publication produced three times per year.
- CLE and Other Educational Programs: Watch out for RPPT's monthly CLE teleconferences; for more information please visit our website.
- Books and Other Recent Publications: Probate and Trust: Estate and Trust Planning; Asset Protection Strategies, vols. 1 and 2; Wills, Trusts, and Technology, 2d ed.; The Funding of Living Trusts; An Estate Planner's Guide to Qualified Retirement Plan Benefits, 3d ed.; A Guide to International Estate Planning.


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The hallmark of Provencal cuisine is aioli, a rich sauce of crushed garlic, egg yolks, lemon juice, mustard, white wine vinegar, and sunflower oil. A traditional summer banquet, Aioli Complet, consists of poached salt cod with a variety of fresh steamed vegetables, and bowls of thick aioli. Sometimes a boiled egg, shellfish, leg of lamb, and chickpeas are added to this feast. This displays the many delicious foods that are enhanced by delicious aioli. Try it on grilled fish or meats, chilled to the side, or grilled on top. Savor it in soups and sandwiches. It can also be used as a mayonnaise to liven up such dishes as potato or chicken salad. Aioli is more than a sauce-- it's a symbol of Provence!
Product of France.


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The Outpouring of God's Spirit
We receive the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit by faith when we place our trust in Christ. Thus, no Christian should think that he is without the help of the Holy Spirit or that he needs to do something ...Read More
The Call for Repentance
True repentance is confidently grounded in what God says about Himself in His Word, but it expresses itself in humility toward Him. We come before our Creator with confidence that He is faithful and just to forgive our sins (1 ...Read More
The Army of the Lord
John Calvin comments on Joel 2:1–11, reminding us that its final end is not to preach judgment for judgment's sake but to warn people to turn from sin: "The object of the narrative, then, is to make the ...Read More
A Better Age
To call upon the Lord, one commentator has noted, is to trust in Him alone for salvation, evidencing that faith through a commitment to His will and way, not our own. Under the plentiful outpouring of the Spirit, we are ...Read More
The Grain Offering Restored
God's prophetic word to Israel is a word for us this day: "I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten" (Joel 2:25). Even if we feel like we have fallen too far for ...Read More


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My Ikea Couch Reeks of Chemicals
Why are flame retardants required in furniture, anyway?
I happen to live in a state that does not have an Ikea. (I know! Shocking!) So when I found out about Cyber Monday, a newly anointed retail holiday on which many stores offer free shipping for Internet orders placed several weeks before Christmas, I ordered my Beddinge. It's a minimalist futon couch. It's dark gray and cost less than $300.
The couch came (freely) delivered in two large pieces: The mattress tightly rolled up in plastic, the frame in a flat box. Two guys hauled them into a spare room in the basement. After months of putting it off, I squared my shoulders and headed downstairs for some assembly combat involving a bewildering variety of Allen wrenches and spring-release hinges. Then I slashed the plastic wrap around the mattress. I was soon overcome by a sweet and pungent chemical smell.
Here, I have to tell you, my soldier's heart pretty much fell. Why was my sleek little Swedish couch reeking of something nasty? Wasn't Ikea the company with the long corporate reports about tree planting and forward-thinking policies on hazardous materials—and one of the first major retailers to discontinue the use of brominated flame retardants in furniture?
This was the reason I'd bought the couch. I know a bit about flame retardants because five years ago, I became one of a handful of women in America to measure them in my breast milk for a story I wrote for the New York Times Magazine. The European Union had recently banned two of the major commercial formulas of brominated flame retardants, called penta- and octa-BDEs. Produced in large quantities in the United States to meet furniture and other fire codes, they were poured into products—and quickly migrated into dust, air, soil, waterways, effluent, and food. Because flame retardants don't break down easily, they remain for years in the tissues of birds, aquatic organisms and mammals, including us, albeit in small quantities. An endocrine disruptor and neurotoxin, the retardants are linked to thyroid disorders and reproductive problems in animals and humans. By 2007, at least three states had enacted legislation outlawing their use, and the federal government asked for a voluntary phase-out across the country. The problem was that no one knew what would replace them. There weren't a lot of good options.
Why do we need flame retardants in the first place, you might ask? The first answer is that we build and then fill our homes with highly flammable petroleum products—plastics, finishes, and polyurethane foam, sometimes known as "solid gasoline." The second answer is that manufacturers make gobs of money selling flame retardants, and they've successfully lobbied for laws that mandate them. California passed a law in the mid-1970s requiring furniture to resist ignition for 12 seconds in tests with open flames and smoldering cigarettes.
The state law was well-intentioned, but many experts don't believe it's been very effective in saving lives. The flame retardants that meet California's standard only delay the ignition of a fire by a few seconds. But when the furniture does burn, stand back. "It takes several seconds longer to burn but generates five times the carbon monoxide and eight times the smoke. That's what kills people, so it's possibly more dangerous with it than without," says Arlene Blum, a chemist and executive director of the Green Policy Science Institute in Berkeley. (A bit more on flame retardants at the end of this New Yorker article by Jerome Groopman.)
Because national furniture makers want to sell to Californians, we're all sitting on flame retardants whichever state we live in. Americans, and Californians especially, have the highest blood and milk levels of flame retardants of anyone in the world. By a lot. We'd be better off with furniture made from wool and goose down. But as of yet, Ikea isn't offering any.
So what is in Ikea's couches? I wanted to know. For one thing, I'd already passed the 90-day-return mark on my couch, and even if I hadn't, I wasn't about to deconstruct it back into a flat box. After opening all the windows on a frigid night, and shivering and gagging through the last bit of assembly, I stumbled upstairs to canvass the Internet. Plenty of other Ikea customers were also unhappy with the smell of their futons. On a site called Green Living Q & A, people vented. One pathetic guy named Keith from New York said his couch had become "like Kryptonite" to him, causing him so much anxiety that his girlfriend left him.
I was pretty sure whatever was in there wasn't Kryptonite, but no one seemed to have a better explanation. The company's Web site and statements were vague. I called Ikea's corporate media division, but they never called back. I decided to cleave off a small piece of the mattress and send it to Duke University. There toils Heather Stapleton. A dedicated young environmental chemist and new mother, Stapleton has become something of a flame-retardant queen. She tested house dust from across the country and determined that it's the major pathway of exposure to flame retardants for children, pets, and adults. The chemicals in dust come mostly from furniture and electronics. She's currently in the process of testing 100 baby products for flame retardants. (Manufacturers are generally loath to offer any information on which chemicals their products contain and labeling is not required.)
As a general concept, I'm not opposed to the idea of flame retardants. I was aboard an Airbus A330 recently that had to make an emergency landing because of a burning wire, and I was grateful for the chemicals. But it's one thing to have them in an airplane and another to have them marinating your home's furniture, including baby pillows.
Stapleton found that my couch contains a flame retardant called 1,3-dichloroisopropyl phosphate, better known as tris, or TCDPP. This was one of the notorious flame retardants used in children's pajamas in the 1970s, until Blum and other scientists showed that the chemicals caused DNA mutations. Public outcry forced clothing manufacturers to stop using them. Most of the scary research at that time was done on brominated tris, and the type in my couch is chlorinated tris. The theory goes that the chlorinated version breaks down more easily in the environment but is more volatile, meaning that more of it escapes the foam. It probably acts in similar ways to brominated tris in the human body. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission classifies TDCPP as a probable human carcinogen, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers it a moderate cancer hazard.
The first time Stapleton's mass-spectrometry machine identified tris, she couldn't believe it. "At first, I thought, no one could be using this after all the concern in the '70s. We were shocked." But recently, Stapleton has found tris in a lot of Ikea products as well as in some made by other companies, including an infant nursing pillow. (The flame retardants probably weren't causing the smell that bothered me, though—Stapleton said that was other nasties that come from making foam.)
To be fair, Ikea has few options. It does not put these flame retardants in furniture sold in any countries other than the United States and the U.K. Interested in what Ikea had to say about all of this, I e-mailed Bjorn Frithiof, a chemical specialist in the company's laws-and-standards department in Sweden. He responded as soon as the sun rose over Småland, the city where he works. He seemed both matter-of-fact and contrite. "IKEA aims to refrain from the use of chemicals and substances that could potentially be harmful to people and the environment," Frithiof wrote. "IKEA is currently phasing out all flame retardants of the chlorinated tristype from our products. This work is well on its way and will be completed during autumn 2010." In a later e-mail, he said the company would replace tris with "an organo-phosphorous compound which gets incorporated into the polymer matrix of the foam filling. It is a bit early to say if this solution will be the dominant one for our products."
There's nothing great about organo-phosphates, which can also persist in the environment. But if Ikea can figure out how to bind the chemicals to the foam, that would help. It would mean the chemical wouldn't waft out every time you plunk down on the couch.
A better solution one would be to get rid of California's outdated flammability standards, or at least exempt certain products, especially ones made for children, who appear more vulnerable to these chemicals. The best ways to save lives from fire are to install working fire alarms and to quit smoking, and enough Americans have done those to reduce fire fatalities by half in recent decades. In addition, most states in the United States now require cigarettes to self-extinguish. Reforming California's standard won't be easy, says Blum, who first published her findings on the health hazards of brominated tris as the lead article in Science more than 30 years ago. She has led the first American expedition to climb Annapurna and walked 2,000 miles across the Himalayas; she says both were easier than fighting the chemical industry over flammability laws.
I haven't decided yet what to do with my couch. Landfill? Hazardous waste? Gift for the childless brother-in-law? In the meantime, I'm still opening a lot of windows.
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Man who killed service dog in crash sentenced
A man convicted of a hit-and-run crash that injured a Waukesha woman and killed her service dog learned his sentence Friday.
Carlos Ward, 30, was convicted of the crash which took place June 8, 2012.
Ward struck and injured Debbie Schultz as she crossed the street near Broadway and Barstow around 9:45 p.m.
Schultz's service dog, Lexi, was dragged several dozen feet and died in the crash.
Ward was sentenced to four months in prison and two years of probation.
Ward left the scene and was arrested six days after the crash. He told WISN 12 News last year that he panicked and left the scene.
"It was something that, in the shock of the moment, I panicked and whatever," Ward said. "I understand how she feels about her dog, and I apologize for harming her dog. I'm cooperating and making sure that everything is getting taken care of."
The judge said that Ward's panic was not a sufficient explanation for his actions.
Schultz said she was pleased with the sentence and believed that justice had been served.
"I hope somewhere we can change the laws so that if someone is, like a hit-and-run victim, that if they don't have insurance, it's automatic jail time. That's all I can think with the summer coming, I hope to God there's not more hit-and-runs. That's all I can say, and I feel like Lexi would be proud I'm here today," Schultz said.


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|Laguna Niguel, Calif.
|High School:
|Dana Hills
2011: Team captain...Named Honorable Mention All-Ivy…Named Ivy League Player of the Week on Oct. 11… Received 2012 Nellie Pratt Elliot Award, the most prestigious athletic award given to a senior female at Yale…Won three Ivy League titles while at Yale…Ranked 2nd in Ivy League conference matches in hitting percentage (.343)…Averaged 0.73 blocks per set in Ivy League matches…Recorded sixth-highest single-season hitting percentage in Yale history (.362)…Hit .538 without an attack error in 26 attempts in victories over Dartmouth and Harvard on Oct. 7-8…Posted eight kills, hit .467 and collected 7 total blocks against Delaware on Sept. 10.
2010: Appeared in 54 sets...Earned Fall Academic All-Ivy honors...Had a personal season-best 10 kills with a .667 hitting percentage in a win at Cornell on Nov. 13...Posted seven kills and hit .500 with four blocks and two digs in a win over Long Island on Sept. 11...Had a personal season-best five total blocks (2 block solos, 3 block assists) in a win over Dartmouth on Nov. 5.
2009: Appeared in 52 sets...Averaged 1.38 kills and 0.87 blocks per set...Hit .295...Had a season-high four blocks in the Sept. 5 win over Fairfield...Hit .615 (8-0-13) with a season-best eight kills in the four-set win at American on Sept. 11...Had nine digs and seven assists.
2008: Selected as Yale's Most Improved Player...Appeared in 80 sets over 24 matches...Averaged 1.45 kills and a team-best 1.02 blocks per set...Ranked second in the Ivy League in blocks...Recorded five blocks or more in six matches this season...Tallied six assists and 11 digs...Notched a season-high nine kills on Sept. 26 at Albany...Matched that total with nine kills on Oct. 4 against Brown...Picked up a season-best 11 blocks on Nov. 14 at Penn.
Before Yale: As team captain, helped lead Dana Hills to the 2007 CIF Quarterfinals...Earned Second Team All-Suncoast League and Third Team All-Orange County while also being named the team's best offensive player as a senior...Named Most Improved Player in 2006...Qualified for the open division at the Junior Olympics three straight years (2005-07) with the Laguna Beach Volleyball Club, finishing fifth in 2006.
Appleman on Taylor: "Cramm worked her way into the starting lineup last season and was a force at the net both offensively and defensively. I am excited to get her on the court with a year of experience behind her."


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You can't beat a system you can't understand
Those who make a living writing fiction, editorial opinion, or columns about life and its many problems, have a common fear. That is - revealing too much of themselves. This is common knowledge within the trade.
I admit that I am sometimes guilty of venting frustrations and revealing my position on sensitive issues and controversial subjects in my writing. It might not always be detectable to readers, but, and I believe I can speak for my colleagues, when we do it, we usually know. However, sometimes we don't realize that we've done it until we see our work in print. Then, of course, it's too late, and our fear that everybody will eventually figure out what nut cases we are is realized. Being unbiased is not an easy task.
Today, I'm going to reveal quite a bit about myself in a story that I want you all to know is true. I am not imaginative enough to have made this up. To the best of my knowledge, this is the way it happened.
I was suffering from insomnia. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night feeling anxious and couldn't go back to sleep. So, I went to the doctor. Instead of prescribing something to help me sleep, he gave me a phone number and a name. "I want you to make an appointment," he said. "Is this a psychiatrist?" I asked. "He's a therapist," the doc replied. "A little professional help never hurt anybody."
Of course, I think the doc believes he has a nut on his hands, but I didn't say anything and made an appointment. I went to the office and sat with the receptionist while I filled out compulsory paperwork. Then she ushered me into a well-appointed office where I sat in a comfortable leather chair and waited. After about 15 minutes, a stereotypical shrink soundlessly walked in and sat behind his desk. He spoke in calm, measured tones that made me suspect that he was taking his own prescriptions for the mood of the day. If he were any more relaxed, he would've been snoring.
At the first session, we quickly established that 45 minutes of the good doctor's time would cost me $150, and he thought coming to visit once a week was a fine idea. He also assured me that this kind of therapy was not an exacting science and that it was not possible to predict the precise amount of time before my "condition" would noticeably improve. This revelation brought my comfort level to an all-time low.
After a few sessions of nothing much happening because every time he asked if I had anything I wanted to talk about, I said "no," he finally decided to ask some real questions.
"Do you dream?" he asked. "Not much," I replied. "I'm an insomniac, remember?" That answer appeared to amuse him, and with a beatific smile on his face, he said: "Of course I remember. But sometimes you sleep, or you'd be dead. Do you ever have recurring dreams?" Now we're getting somewhere, I thought. He asked me to reveal a secret. So, I told him, "yes," and he asked if I'd tell him about it.
"I dream about sitting on a beach on a tropical island," began. "I don't see another soul in either direction. After a while, cow and a duck walk along the beach in front of me. As they get closer, I can hear them talking. However, the cow is quacking while the duck is nodding his head in agreement. Then the duck replies to whatever the cow said, but the duck moos. They're having a conversation, only the duck speaks cow and the cow speaks duck. I realize they can communicate and I think that is incredibly cool. Then the dream ends."
To this, the shrink said: "It's obvious you have issues with communication." Now I think: I just told shrink, who has $750 of my hardearned money, that I regularly dream about a duck and a cow having conversations in each other's language, and all he cantell me is that I have issues with communication? He's nuttier than I am. Of course I have issues with communication. That's my job. have to worry about communicating with readers every day.
Then I had an epiphany. It finally dawned on me why the only metric measurement that sticks in the average American memory is 9 millimeter. However, I remained calm and told the shrink I wouldn't be coming back.
That night I slept like a baby. And I haven't had any problems since.
I don't know if he cured me with his ridiculous analysis, or if just thought the entire experience was so absurd that it wasn't worth the money to keep putting myself through the pain. Whatever it was, I chalk it up to just being part of that system I can't understand. Nonetheless, once in a while I do stay up wondering what the duck and the cow were talking about.


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Dancing With The Stars fans have been wondering if daredevil Steve-o would be returning after suffering a back injury. Well we have the update, and Steve-o will indeed be back and dancing tomorrow night.
Steve-o told access hollywood, "I am going to be fine" while also confirming that he will be dancing again come Monday. He claims to have a hematoma, and says his back is sprained.
Source- AH


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Please note: You are viewing an archived Bucknell University news story. It is possible that information found on this page has become outdated or inaccurate, and links and images contained within are not guaranteed to function correctly.
By Andy Hirsch
LEWISBURG, Pa. — When Quinn Blanco '15 first heard a typhoon was headed for his hometown in the Philippines, he wasn't too concerned. "We get them all of the time," Blanco said, "so I didn't understand why this was a big deal." But as Typhoon Haiyan moved in and meteorologists started describing it as one of the strongest storms the world has ever seen, he started to worry.
"I was chatting with my mom on Facebook, and she was talking about having to take the TV antenna down and making jokes," Blanco said. "But then the storm got closer, and we started to realize how strong it was going to be. Around 2 or 3 a.m., my mom went offline ... the power got cut off."
For a scary few hours Blanco lost contact with his family in Iloilo, a city just south of the storm's path. He relied on pictures and reports from the internet to try to stay up-to-date on what was happening. Later that morning, he received a text message that his family was okay.
"It was a huge relief. Then all of the sudden it hit me. I had seen the pictures, I knew the extent of the devastation — I needed to do something to help," said Blanco, a chemical engineering and management major.
He reached out to Judy Romero '14, whose home in the Philippines was a good distance from the track of the storm, and spared any damage. Still, she was having similar thoughts and wanted to help the people back home.
"It felt wrong looking at the news, seeing what was happening, and then being here just going through my daily routine," said Romero, a biochemistry major.
She and Blanco started to conceive an on-campus benefit to raise money for the relief effort there. They began reaching out to performance groups and individuals on campus to see if they could help. The response was overwhelming, and within two days plans were in place for "Passion for the Philippines: A Fundraiser."
The event, co-sponsored by Bucknell's Filipino Club, Bucknell Student Government's Committee on Diversity and Sigma Chi, will take place on Thursday, Nov. 21, at 9 p.m. in Hunt Formal. It will feature performances by the Bison Chips, the Offbeats, Two Past Midnight, Silhouettes and several other groups and individuals. || Click here to see an event poster with more information.
The event will also feature images of the destruction caused by Typhoon Haiyan, along with brief intermissions during which the emcees will discuss the current situation in the Philippines, the ongoing relief efforts and the ways in which people can help.
"Passion for the Philippines: A Fundraiser," is free and open to the public; attendees will be encouraged to make a donation to the American Red Cross, and designate that donation for relief efforts in the Philippines. Donations are being accepted through the International Student Services office. For more information, call 570-577-3794.
"We're not sure what to expect," Romero said, "We just want to help however we can."


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TOKYO (Reuters) - The deadline for Hon Hai Precision Industry Co to buy a stake in Sharp Corp lapsed Tuesday without any deal, ending an agreement forged last year that would have made the Taiwanese firm the No.1 shareholder in the Japanese TV maker.
Talks for Hon Hai to purchase as much as a 9.9 percent stake stalled after Sharp balked at its demand for a degree of management control. Hon Hai also sought to lower the $708 million price tag after Sharp's shares slumped in the wake of losses that prompted a bailout from its banks last year.
Those banks, which include Mizuho Financial Group Inc and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, had not been expecting a revised deal with Hon Hai, sources told Reuters last month.
As talks with Hon Hai unraveled, Sharp concluded smaller investment deals with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Qualcomm Inc. It may also have to find other ways to raise money to repay a $2.1 billion convertible bond due in September.
Sources at Sharp and its banks, as well as analysts, have told Reuters that they expect the Japanese liquid crystal display pioneer will resort to equity financing to make up any shortfall in funding after it adds up available cashflow and gains from asset and stake sales.
Possible asset disposals before September include the sale of its TV assembly plant in China to Lenovo Group Ltd and the sale of its Mexico factory to Hon Hai.
Sharp remains tied to Hon Hai through their joint ownership of the world's most advanced LCD plant in Sakai, western Japan. The two companies are also cooperating in smartphones in the Chinese market.
Sharp's shares fell 1.7 percent to close at 290 yen in Tokyo on Tuesday, ahead of Sharp's announcement that the deadline for the deal with Hon Hai had lapsed.
(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Ryan Woo)


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COLLEGE STATION, Texas - Three upsets highlighted the third day of play in the Big 12 Tennis Championships at the George P. Mitchell Tennis Center. When the dust settled No. 1 seed Oklahoma and third-seeded Baylor survived to face off in the men's final, while No. 3 Texas A&M and fourth-seeded Texas advanced to tangle for the title on the women's side. First serve for both championship matches is noon on Sunday.
For only the second time in Big 12 history their will be four schools represented in Sunday's finals, after the same feat occurred last year. In previous years at least one school had a representative in both the men's and women's final.
[1] Oklahoma 4, [5] Texas A&M 1 | Results\Quotes
The top-seeded and 12th-ranked Oklahoma Sooners secured a second straight appearance in the Big 12 Tennis Championship final with a 4-1 victory against fifth-seeded Texas A&M (13-14). OU (17-3) got off to a quick start in the match by claiming the doubles point. The Sooners used an 8-2 win by 57th-ranked Tsvetan Mihov and Peerakit Siributwong over Niall Angus and John Lewis at the No. 2 spot and then a 8-4 victory by Lawrence Formentera and David Pultr at No. 3 over Colin Hoover and Alexis Klegou to take the 1-0 lead. In singles action, Oklahoma jumped out to commanding leads at spots two through six to tally five first-set wins. OU converted two of those into straight wins by No. 63 Guillermo Alcorta and 97th-ranked Dane Webb to build a 3-0 lead. The Aggies, however, did not go down without a fight as they pushed courts three and six to third sets. The final clinching point for Oklahoma came at the No. 4 spot as Sirbutwong won a first-set tiebreaker 8-6 and went on to claim the second set 7-5 to seal the Sooner triumph. Oklahoma has now won 11 straight matches. The Sooners had never advanced to a Big 12 final, before last season when they fell to A&M 4-0 in Waco.
[3] Baylor 4, [2] Texas Tech 3 | Results\Quotes
A four hour and 39 minute match resulted in a 4-3 Baylor win over No. 2 seed Texas Tech (15-8). Diego Galeano pulled off a three-set tiebreak win against Vitor Manzini, 6-7(5), 7-6(2), 7-6(3) at the No. 4 position to complete the Baylor comeback. The third-seeded Bears trailed 2-0, after No. 19 Texas Tech (15-8) won the doubles point and then got a straight-set win at No. 3 singles. BU (17-10), ranked No. 28, responded as Julian Bley and No. 100 Roberto Maytin tallied victories at No. 6 and 2 singles, respectively. The teams then traded wins at No. 1 for Tech and at the No. 5 spot for Baylor, leaving the match tied at three points apiece to set the stage for the freshman Galeano. In his match, Galeano trailed 30-love down 5-4 in the second before turning the match around. He also was behind 4-3 in the third set. During the regular season, Texas Tech got its first win over Baylor in Big 12 Conference history, 6-1. Baylor earns its 11th trip to the Big 12 Championship final, but its first since 2009. The Bears are 7-3 in their previous10 appearances.
[3] Texas A&M 4, [2] Baylor 3 | Results\Quotes
The 19th-ranked Aggies (18-4) garnered their first Big 12 Championship final appearance since 2004 with a 4-3 win over 12th-ranked Baylor (23-7). The win by Texas A&M is its first over Baylor since 2004, which stops a string of 12 straight losses. A&M earned the doubles point as No. 38 Cristina Sanchez-Quintanar and Wen Sun upset the 13th-ranked tandem of Ema Burgic and Nina Secerbegovic, 8-2, at the No. 1 spot. The Aggies followed that win with an 8-6 triumph by Janelle Cuthbertson and Nazari Urbina over Megan Horter and Diana Nakic at the No. 2 spot. In singles play, Baylor evened the score at two points apiece with wins a No. 4 and 6, after Texas A&M had captured the first match off at No. 3. The Aggies would retake the lead as eighth-ranked Sanchez-Quintanar downed No. 15 Nakic, 6-4, 6-0, before Baylor's Jordaan Sanford evened the contest with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Cuthberston at the No. 5 position. When that match wrapped up the No. 2 match between 61st-ranked Urbina and No. 22 Secerbegovic was heading to a third set. In that set, the Aggie would close strong for a 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 win. The loss by Baylor ends a streak of six consecutive Big 12 Championship titles and seven straight final match appearances.
[4] Texas 4, [1] Texas Tech 1 | Results\Quotes
The biggest upset of the day in terms of seed difference came as fourth-seeded Texas (16-7) got past regular-season champion Texas Tech, 4-1. The Longhorns had already beaten Tech once this season, but the Lady Raiders (19-5) got off to a good start by claiming the doubles point. However, that would be prove to be the only point for TTU on the day. UT won in straight-sets at singles positions four, one, six and two to claim the victory. The 67th-ranked Krista Damico claimed the match at No. 2 with a 7-5, 6-4 win over No. 104 Samantha Adams of Texas Tech. With the victory, the Longhorns advanced to their 15th Big 12 Championship final in the last 16 years.
Stadium Club reserved seating all-session tickets are $30 each and general admission all-session tickets are $15 each. The all-session tickets are available for advance purchase anytime at AggieAthletics.com, or by calling the ticket office at 1-888-99-AGGIE or in person at the ticket window located in The Zone at Kyle Field between 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Single-day tickets will be sold on site on the day of the event.
For complete results, photos and quotes for all of the matches at the 2012 Big 12 Tennis Championships visit the championship central page on Big12Sports.com.


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Friday, April 10, 2009
Book Review: Star Trek Countdown
With a great deal of trepidation I opened up my copy of the Star Trek: Countdown trade paperback a few nights after receiving it in the mail. I've been staying away from as much plot details regarding the new movie as possible. I've been so excited about the new Trek that I promised myself I wouldn't let spoilers ruin the experience of seeing the film and being surprised by the storyline. Temptation kept rearing it's ugly head until I finally succumbed to it and decided on reading Countdown. Most of the book is devoted to introducing the character of Nero and presenting us with the event that leads to his actions on the film.
The book raises even more questions than it answers. One of the few questions it does seem to answer has to do with the big debate as to whether Nero truly is a Romulan. The answer to that question comes accompanied by a major event in trek lore, something I never thought they'd do, which makes me wonder if it will be mentioned in the new film and considered canon.
For those who do not want to be spoiled please stop reading now. Countdown tells the tale of the destruction of Romulus after the explosion of one of it's neighboring stars spreads across Romulan space. Nero -- a miner with a great deal of loyalty to his homeworld, a loving wife, and a baby on the way -- discovers evidence to this potential catastrophe at the same time as the Federation ambassador to Romulus. The Federation ambassador -- who happens to be Spock -- brings word of his discoveries to the Romulan council where Nero also voices his concerns. When the council ignores their warnings they both decide to work together in order to save Romulus. Unfortunately their efforts are not enough and Romulus, along with everything Nero loved dearly, is lost forever.
The character of Nero, is introduced in a very compelling way and is one that by the end of the story has changed a great deal, but with some very clear motivations. My only concern is that he doesn't look like other Romulans. There's still something about his ears and forehead that seems odd to me. Many fans have also said the same based on what we've seen thus far.
The storyline in Countdown takes some big risks. Some work quite well, while others just don't. The good news is that the big majority of them are quite exciting and compelling and I truly hope they get picked up and further explored in the film, especially all the elements that have to do with Spock's and Nero's relationship. The one thing I found rather weak is the use of the characters from The Next Generation.
Worf shows up for no good reason and Data is introduced as the new Captain of the Enterprise-E, which to me just doesn't work, especially after the events in Star Trek Nemesis. I also didn't enjoy seeing Picard as an ambassador to Vulcan instead of the man in the center seat of the Enterprise, where as Captain Kirk once told him, he would always be able to make a difference. You would think that he'd follow Kirk's advice and not take any promotion that would take him off the bridge of his ship.
Geordi also shows up as the man behind the development of a new type of ship that will allow Spock to complete his mission. Based on all the trailers for the film it seems like Nero's beef is with Kirk, but by the end of Countdown all Nero truly wants is revenge on Spock for not being able to help him stop the destruction of his homeworld. At one point in Countdown we do get to see Nero do a bit of research on Kirk during his stay aboard the Enterprise-E, but it's pretty clear his anger is directed at the character of Spock. Is countdown worth reading? I think so, especially since it does a nice job at making us see that the new movie is not a reboot or a reimagining by placing the seeds from which the film will grow in the Star Trek universe we've come to know. It would be tough for this movie to ignore canon if the countdown storyline is the true prequel tale to the film. Everything that leads to the events in the new film happens in the 24th century some years after Star Trek Nemesis.
By the end of Countdown both Spock and Nero are in a very interesting dilemma, one that leaves them at the threshold to the latest cinematic Star Trek adventure. I for one can't wait to get the answers to all the questions Countdown raises.
Posted by The Nostalgic Gangsta at 11:21 PM
3 comments:
the movie better feature the romulus situation in detail, i wanna see the 24th century!!ReplyDelete
Provided the film is contextualized with "Countdown" as you hope, then you've just bolstered my interest in this project. (I decided I'm really just going to see it for the return of Leonard Nimoy, and if it isn't terrible, then that's just a bonus.)ReplyDelete
- AnonymousNovember 21, 2009 at 12:58 AM
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Sandy Michel, managing broker of Real Living Vandalia Real Estate, recently was inducted as the 2012-2013 chairman of the board of the Greater Gateway Association of Realtors.
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