When Savannah College of Art and Design gave us an open invitation to conduct a series of workshops on a topic of our choosing for a mix of graduate and undergraduate Industrial Design, Systems Design, and Furniture Design students, we began our planning by asking ourselves a few simple questions:

“What kind of experience would be valuable to such a broad range of design students?”
“What sort of experience is our studio uniquely equipped to give to design students?”

Solution

These questions fueled a productive dialogue in our studio, providing opportunities for us to reexamine our own processes and assumptions. Our area of focus emerged as we identified a frequent gap in design education between instruction of technical skills and instruction of critical thinking.

It occurred to us that this relationship between craft and visual thinking is a common point of friction for students, design educators, and professionals alike. Despite the perceived difficulty of balancing these elements, our own attempts yielded the best results when technical skills and critical thinking were practiced together as an interrelated set of techniques.

We began referring to this practice as “thinking through making” and it became the foundation of our workshop pedagogy. We wished to convey to the students that design was both intellectual and physical; fetishizing either element would only result in thin blood.

To communicate this concept, we planned a series of exercises in designing and prototyping elemental objects (paper products and, eventually, simple lighting devices) as an armature for uptake of our “thinking through making” lesson.

The first part of the workshop was conducted over three days on campus in Savannah, culminating in a design competition with the prize being admission to the second workshop. That heralded second workshop took place two weeks later in our own studio in Atlanta.

Results

We sought feedback from the students (through video interviews) and many of them viewed our workshops as a welcome opportunity to step out of their ordinary routine and explore fundamental boundaries of their philosophies and processes.

We were also pleased to see the students emerge with new practical skills (book-making and prototyping) and, in some cases, portfolio-worthy product outcomes.

How did such an opportunity come about? Well, dear cartographically inclined reader, it all started when we received a rather flattering invitation from Atlanta art blog, Burnaway, to contribute work to an upcoming exhibition of theirs. The exhibit is called Lot & Parcel and it’s all about maps and Atlanta neighborhoods.

If it pleases you, do come peep it. The opening party will take place in conjunction with Burnaway’s first annual fundraiser and is scheduled for this Saturday, June 19, from 7 to 11 pm at The Goat Farm (aka the E. Van Winkle Gin and Machine Works, aka Murray’s Mill, aka 1200 Foster Street).

Our map is of our home turf: Poncey-Highland. Our description is below:

“Poncey-Highland is an unusually unknown place given its central location. Moreover, even most of those who are aware of it would find it difficult to describe its boundaries.

With that in mind, we decided to investigate the various definitions of Poncey-Highland that exist amongst those who call it home. To do this, we asked Poncey-Highlanders to make maps, from their respective memories, of the neighborhood. We culled our representative from two neighborhood institutions, one new, one old: Manuel’s Tavern and King of Pops popsicle stand.

Their responses are depicted in tinted transparent paper on our map. The actual neighborhood boundaries are indicated as black hairlines: Ponce de Leon to the North, Moreland to the East, Freedom Parkway Eastbound to the South, and the proposed Beltline to the West.”

To wit: “Although their forays into a wild variety of projects (furniture, interior architecture, products, web design, videos) could be mistaken for the experimentation of ebullient, wild-eyed youth, it is more likely that the firm is representative of a shift in the way that a new breed of designers is responding to the current economic climate.”

The spread features the photography of our good friend and frequent collaborator Jason Travis. The text and images were art-directed and assembled into a cohesive whole by MA Creative Director (and Armchair Art Director) Kevin Byrd.

We at People of Resource were pleased to debut our design exhibition, Yall & Us, on Saturday, June 5, 2010 at our studio in the historic Telephone Factory at the end of Modern Atlanta’s design week.

Although the focus was on design from all over the US, it was certainly our goal to put a bit of a Southern accent on the proceedings.

Toward that end, we sought to align every aspect of the event with that combination of scrappiness and hospitality for which the American South is known. In contrast to the typical trappings of the design exhibition world (wristbands, “no sit” signs, and corporate sponsors), Yall & Us attendees paid no admission and enjoyed complimentary Bourbon & Blenheims and Pimm’s Cups while admiring 40 design objects by 15 designers from across the US.

Hands-on interaction with the objects was encouraged and those who were especially intrigued were able to order prized pieces for themselves from their mobile phones thanks to e-commerce support from Subports.

The design of the exhibit itself drew on the utilitarian language of workshops: information about the objects and designers was displayed clearly on clipboards throughout the space. Illumination was provided by generic, everyday clamp lamps fitted with halogen bulbs.

FEATURED DESIGNERS

Craigton Berman, Chicago
Design Glut, Brooklyn
Et. Al., Etc., New York City
Jason Miller, Brooklyn
Joey Roth, San Francisco
Jonas Damon, New York City
Kiel Mead, New York City
Materious, Chicago
Object Group, New York City
Refined Sugar Studio, Cincinnati
Rich Brilliant Willing, New York City
Studio 1 AM, Chicago
Thoughtbarn, Austin
Von Tundra, Portland
Wintercheck Factory, Brooklyn

COLLABORATIONS

One exciting aspect of planning, designing, and producing this exhibition was the opportunity it presented to work with talented friends on various components of the show. We were pleased to commission Jason Travis to photograph the weekend’s events. In the weeks leading up to the show, we commissioned Farbod Kokabi of Armchair to create the exhibit’s bold, minimalist promotional graphics. Finally, we designed an e-commerce site filled with objects from the exhibit for Subports. For their part, Subports handled development of the site and provided their innovative text-to-buy platform as the e-commerce backend for both the site and the exhibit itself.

Melissa and People of Resource have a brief but vivid history together. When we’ve needed extra hands and brains on deck, Melissa has enthusiastically pitched in. Her talent and intelligence have been a boon to us and we were honored that she would trust us with the fabrication of her lamp prototype, a project many months in the making.

The video above details some of the work that went into bringing this piece to life. For more on the concept, see Melissa’s description below:

“I started out trying to create a lamp that would also function as a calendar. Wanting to get something that dealt more with form than numbers, I thought for a long time about the ways that we’ve marked time throughout history, and how we experience time in seasons. I also didn’t want to limit the accuracy of the lamp by location, and in the end what sifted out was the concept of the solstice. It’s just so wonderfully ancient, and the length of the day marks our lives in an innate way that transgresses barriers of culture and location.

From a form standpoint, it breaks the year into two segments of continuous movement as we move closer and further from the sun. The diameter of the nested hemispheres reflects the eclipsis, (the arc of the sun through the sky) which becomes measurably longer and longer, as the length of the day increases.”

It’s been a busy month for us, so we at People of Resource elected to leverage our 8×8 exhibitors booth toward a bit more progress on our many projects.

Depicted above is our attempt at a vertical studio. “Getting things done is the new black.”

Consider this your invitation to join us for a beverage or two at our studio in Poncey-Highland to see the result of Florian’s explorations of distance and contrast.

We were impressed by the students’ enthusiasm, ideas, and skills. On top of that, they are stellar people conducting their studies in some incredible facilities.

The first part of the workshop was conducted over three days on campus in Savannah, culminating in a design competition with the prize being admission to the second workshop. That heralded second workshop took place in our own studio in Atlanta.

We have to confess – we had a blast and the workshop was revelatory in terms of providing opportunities for us to reexamine our own processes and assumptions. We’ve gotten a lot of traction out of the conversations that have emerged before, during, and after.

We’re busy combing through the mountain of documentation we created, but as soon as we have a handle on it, we’ll be posting a more comprehensive study of this endeavor.

We have to say, what we witnessed was both humbling and inspiring.

From A&E: “I’m Heavy is an intimate look at the remarkable journeys of individuals whose daily struggle with their weight has overtaken their lives. Viewers will get unprecedented access into the lives of participants – who come from all walks of life but share the inability to manage their escalating weight – as they go through a six month program. The process will begin with an intensive in-patient treatment and therapy program where participants will learn the knowledge and techniques necessary to inspire dramatic results and we’ll continue to follow them as they transition back to their daily lives. Two individual transformations will be told in each episode, from the points of view of both individuals, and their friends and family affected. Will these overweight individuals be able to overcome behavioral problems and food addictions to achieve true life change?”

The show is slated to premiere in 2011.