ashtary design

I don’t have an i-Pod (I know I must be one of the last people on Earth… but I have never felt really safe totally shutting out the world around me), but I still play most of my music on my computer. I love finding new ways to combine my music such as alphabetically or by play count. My new favorite is to choose a random word. In the case of this list, I chose “there” and look at this amazing set:

I’ll Take You There, Staple Singers, City In The Sky
Harry Connick Jr. - With Imagination (I’ll Get There), Harry Connick, Jr., Blue Light Red Light
Who’s There?, Guru, Streetsoul
Reach Out I´ll Be There, The Four Tops, Soul ! - The Very Best Of Motown CD3
There She Goes Again, The Velvet Underground & Nico
Monday, Wilco, Being There
There Is A God, Staple Singers, City In The Sky
Harry Connick Jr. - Blue Light Red Light (Someone’s There), Harry Connick, Jr., Blue Light Red Light
There’s More to Life Than This, Björk, Debut
Smithereens, Annie Lennox, Songs of Mass Destruction
Without Love (There’s Nothing), Tom Jones, TOM JONES
If There Is A Hell Bellow, We’re All Going To Go, Lou Donaldson, Say It Loud !
There Will Never Ever Be Another You, Chet Baker, The Best Of Chet Baker Sings
I Saw Her Standing There, Beatles, Please Please Me
Kodachrome, Paul Simon, There goes Rhymin´ Simon
There Will Never Be Another You, Count Basie And Joe Williams, The Greatest!! Count Basie Plays, Joe Williams Sings Standards
There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart), Eurythmics, Greatest Hits [Europe]

Tori is moderating a series of lectures for the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. The blog for the lectures is at this link, if you care to join our conversation. You can read about the lecture topics here. You might ask yourself why this information is not available on the Rietveld’s own site? Well, this is the topic of my first rant. I have discovered that Dutch art and design sites are about as hard to link to as specific scenes in movies or tv shows. They are more concerned with accurate pixel placement than conversation. It’s been frustrating for me to link to projects and information because they are hidden in flash sites that have, you guessed it, exactly one url.

So much of the Dutch art and culture internet presence is a long and controlled lecture that is at times lovely and fascinating but keeps its distance from us and what we might want to say about it. Isn’t it time for a change? I ask you…

And an apology to all those folks who got emails from me… And a plea for better INFORMATION DESIGN.

Okay, I am a complete idiot. I hope some of the designers of Stumble Upon read this so that I can tell them how angry I am. I read something like: “add your contacts and see who else is on stumble upon.” SU showed me a page of people I knew. I clicked on “add” or something like that and it added every single contact in my address book.

Years and years of effort to avoid sending spam, automated emails, and other annoying crap down the drain. I’ve avoided opening viruses, avoided sending on chain letters, avoided joining endless annoying viral networks only to have all my credibility ruined by a misleading interface. Am I alone?

Where can I complain about the horrific information design?

Where: Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. In the basement of the new building, room K-18
When: October 31, 2007, at 4 pm

Description

In the Netherlands, the evidence of thoughtful design is everywhere: the bike paths, the traffic crossings, the newspapers, the garbage collection, and the café menu, to name but a few. Here, design has become a habit, a way of life. The belief in its power is fundamentally unquestioned.

Yet even here, there are pockets of doubt. Imagine how much more difficult it is to come to a shared agreement when the value of design has never been firmly established and in a culture where the fundamentals of communication differ dramatically.

The speaker found herself in that situation when she did design work in Iran. For four years, she lived and worked in Tehran: a city that has forgotten design after just thirty years of explosive growth. There are no orderly traffic crossings, no thoughtfully organized neighborhoods, and few carefully designed restaurant menus. (There are, however, great posters.)

In this talk, Tori Egherman will discuss some of the communication issues that arose when she and her husband did work with Iranian companies and civil servants.

About the speaker: Tori Egherman is a partner with her husband in Ashtary Design. She is an American who has lived and worked in the U.S., The Netherlands, and Iran. You can read about her experiences in Iran at viewfromiran.blogspot.com.

Following the success of Rembrandt in Iran [link to Flash slideshow], the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands commissioned Ashtary Design to do a follow-up exhibit that places Rembrandt in the context of his era. That era is commonly known as the Dutch Golden Age.

In the 17th century, when Rembrandt was painting, the Dutch were the world’s most active merchants with ships and traders all over the world. The evidence of that time also makes its way into the paintings of the time. This exhibit will examine the social and economic conditions that made the Duth Golden Age so notable.

The exhibit will travel throughout Iran starting shortly after the Iranian new year which falls on March 21st. For more information contact us at tori AT ashtarydesign Dot com.