Christmas is close and whether you need to find a present for Secret Santa in the office or surprise a loved one here’s a list of fun things to gift (or buy for yourself) in different categories and price range.
What Does Work Mean?
“Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
If we analyze this quote, it kind of makes work a bad thing. Something to be avoided or changed by doing what you really love but still separate from the idea of work itself because they appear to be incompatible.
Or, on the other hand, it idealizes the thing you love with the idea that there is no work behind it, which is also not true.
Because actually, work is work, even if it is the thing you love.
But what does the act of work mean?
Cheerful design
What is Beauty?
Beauty and aesthetics, as we all know, are an ongoing concern in the world of design and art. But beauty is subjective and hard to define. What you may find beautiful, could be ordinary or even ugly to others. It's deeply linked with emotions and experience.
Isn't it what makes it all more special? Beauty is not a mere surface but a central part of what it means to be human.
DIY Materials
The Do-It-Yourself movement is now expanding beyond products to the materials that embody the products themselves.
In comparison to the industrial ones, DIY-Materials are "created through individual or collective self-production practices, often by techniques and processes of the designer's invention. They can be entirely new materials, modified or further developed versions of existing materials".
I had the opportunity to attend a lecture on DIY-Materials by Marta Gonzalez, PhD in Science of Materials and Metallurgic Engineering, and Senior Researcher in Elisava Research, and I'll share an outline of it here, with examples of their applications.
Design and society
Emotional Design: How to Design for Feeling
In creating a product, a designer has many factors to consider: the choice of material, the manufacturing process, the way the product is marketed, cost and functionality. But what many people don't realize is that there is also a strong emotional component to how products are designed and put to use.
What happens when we see a design for the first time?
How to Figure out What to do With Your Life?
Discovering the answer to this question is not an easy task. I have struggled with finding my vocation pretty much since I finished high school, and just until the last couple of years I can say I got more clarity about what I want to do next, and the kind of future I would like to build.
Since this is a frequent struggle not only for me, but also for lots of my friends, I would like to share some ideas and tools that have been helpful for me in this process.
I've made a big effort to simplify the process I've gone through and to put into words things I would have liked to know years ago, when I had no idea of where to start, just to give you a little push.
What to Gift the Designer in Your Life This Christmas
Design for Food
A perfect meal involves much more than how the food on the plate tastes. In the dining process, there is a lot going on inside our body in the appreciation and absorption of what we eat.
This is why the current generation of chefs is interested in going beyond the basic culinary science that they have been taught. Many of these chefs are really curious to learn more about the minds, and not just the palates, of their diners.
They want to know how does the experience feel. What is the diner's behavior? What elements make an impact on their enjoyment and decisions?