love-la

Having graduated from a curiously disparate graduate program at the Parsons new School of Design, New York, I am always on the look out to see what new programs emerge at Design schools as time goes by and technology evolves. (I graduated with an  MFA in Design and Technology and was an adjunct faculty for some time too with the Design and Management department)

These two new graduate programs caught my eye recently.

Parsons has launched an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design. The website says- Emphasizing collaborative design-led research, the MFA Transdisciplinary Design in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons will serve as an academic laboratory in New York City for graduate students seeking to define the next phase of design practice globally.

The complex problems that confront a networked 24/7 global culture call for broad design approaches. Parsons created the MFA in Transdisciplinary Design (TransDesign) for a new generation of designers who want to address pressing social issues using new ideas, tools, and methods. Students work in cross-disciplinary teams, consider issues from multiple perspectives, gain insight from industry leaders, and emerge with a portfolio of projects showcasing design as a process for transforming the way we live in the 21st century.

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Very exciting! I’m jealous and will keep an eye on the kind of work coming out of there.

The other program that recently caught my eye was SVA New York’s MPS in Branding. Being a big branding evangelist, I’m rooting for this one. Let’s see how the students shape this program. One of Smart Design’s founders Dan Formosa is on the faculty. Having spent hours wrestling many design problems with Dan, I can vouch that the students are in for a treat!

From the website-

The Masters of Professional Studies in Branding is an ambitious one year Advanced degree program from the School of Visual Arts…The required coursework for this degree program will be organized into five progressive segments: Culture, Behavior, Business, Commerce and Creative. Each discipline will work independently and cohesively with the others, but rigorous attention will be paid to each field to determine and define the modern practice of Branding.

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I’ve been working on a kalamkari book for some time now…here’s a sneak peak of a portion of a page. Very painstaking and laborious! More on this, as the book progresses.

I have to admit despite my many years in this country, I don’t understand American Football much! I’m glad I’m now in the city where the Lakers are big. At least I used to play Basketball and can support a home team and follow the game! (Yeah, I know there were the Knicks back in NY, but I never felt the need to go watch them!)

So every year when the Super Bowl rolls along, all I want to do is skip the game and watch the new, expensive, sometimes outrageous ads! And since I avoided the game this time, I trolled blogs today looking for the cool ads. wired.com sprang up this one that I actually though was clever.

As, us geeky designers would call it, it was a purely type driven ad by Google. Had just the appropriate use of sound and music made it come to life. Bing, suck this!

Watch the ad here

One of the major differences in my routine in LA is all the driving involved. I NEVER drove in New York (biked, yes) The subway was my absolutely favorite part of life in NY. Its consistent modular system, color coding, ease of use, easy access and of course reliability (!). Navigating the city, was never a problem, even when I visited the city for the first time as a tourist, I fell in love with the subway. The map and signage was originally designed by Massimo Vignelli in the 1972, and although he insists the map he designed was better, the iteration we use today is not so bad. (With Lella, this husband-wife team rank as my favorite design couple, and I heard them speak a few years ago…but I’ll save that story for another time)

Back to the subway…it is very well maintained. No, I don’t mean the subway is well maintained, I mean the subway brand and signage system is well maintained. Its been through some changes over the years, but there’s a consistent style that the MTA attempts to maintain. I came upon a case of typeface-misdimeanor at the Columbus Circle Stop once. The type was NOT Helvetica and I was so horrified!

LA does have a Metro, but I don’t know too many Angelenos who actually use it. I’m sure people do. I plan to try it one day. The buses look different in various parts of the city, coded by the individual city identities, as are the taxi cabs! How I miss hailing a cab on a night out! No wonder half of Hollywood is on TMZ in frequent DUIs. Too much driving required!

In LA you have to remember where you park as you traverse the city through the day…which level, which section, which street, which parking garage …and always having to decipher the parking instructions and the payment options. It once took me over half an hour to find my car in Park LaBrea! There’s a lot of reading of street signs too. Now, I come from India, where the best way to get directions is to keep stopping and asking people. Not here. My GPS, which is still just my iphone’s in-built GPS, is a life saver. Also, after my many NY subway traveling years I had finally memorized most Manhattan routes. I am proud to say I did not have to carry the subway map any more. (I said did not have to, but I still did!!) And now I have to learn all these complicated routes again, and oh I miss Manhattan. Streets went from 1 to the 100s from the south to north, avenues went from smaller to higher numbers west to east…and they ran perpendicular till Houston st. Hard to get lost. I circle neighborhoods in my car a lot these days…very very lost!

Finding parking takes up a major part of my day. And deciphering signs like this one- what is the rule and what is the exception?!!! These parking signs are crying for design help!

The New York Times website has had a huge edge over its paper version when it comes to the depiction of complex data. Whether it be timelines, spending habits, movie viewing habits or like this week the budget; the dynamic information gives you a far better understanding of the material. If the http://www.nytimes.com does indeed become a paid site as they hinted last week, I might consider paying for it to at least able to interact with their uber-well-executed info graphics!

Today the budget has been depicted department by department, in something that looks like this. i have to say i’m struggling with it. More, because I don’t really know a lot about what this country spends on or a lot about Obama’s recent decisions. But I’ll spend some time with it…

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