Learning from St Louis

Image courtesy of CityRiverArch.org

Turnstone has recently been interviewed about the role of storytelling in placemaking, for PBS’s current affairs show, Stay Tuned, on KETC, Channel 9, out of St Louis, Missouri.

This week’s episode, broadcast on 4/4/2013, was about the St Louis Gateway Arch Grounds 2015 renovation project, specifically the vote that narrowly passed to support a controversial earmarked “Arch tax” increase, to be levied locally to support the renovation of the famous St Louis monument and its surrounding grounds (technically a National Park).

Stay Tuned presenter, Casey Nolan, asked me about what it takes to get a city behind a redesign of public space, what other international precedents there are that St Louis could follow and what steps it takes to win public hearts and minds around big ideas for shared spaces. There’s a good background panel discussion at the top of the show, then Turnstone talks sense from around minute 16. Click the clip above to watch the full show.

New Walk (and Bike) City

Image courtesy of the NYC Dept of Transportation

So Turnstone’s updates here were scare during a chunk of 2012, and here’s my excuse: I took an 8-month walk around New York, a bit like Phyllis Pearsall, tireless authoress of the London A-Z, did in the 1930s. I went analog and on secondment to join a larger design team for a really special project:

Transportation Nation and Brooklyn Spoke explain exactly what for in these previews of the NYC Department of Transportation pedestrian and bike share wayfinding systems, projects that are set to appear across the city in 2013. More about those to follow here in the coming months as the projects get off – and on – the ground.

Meantime, if you look lost at any intersection on or off the grid, the person approaching you to give you directions, whether you’d asked for them or not, is probably me.

Oh IXD, Oh Sandy

Back in Fall 2012, I taught this class on the Design of Systems to the first year Interaction Design MFA graduate students at the School of Visual Arts.

I was channeling, but not explicit enough about, the work of Durrell Bishop, and my work about his work – unpacking his brilliantly simple and complex notion that digital products should now embody the systems of our using them, since they no longer have to take the shape of the sum of the mechanical parts they contain. Shh, and think about that for a minute.

Annnyway, we did have guest lectures from Barry Richards of Rockwell Group, the designers of the Imagination Playground, that UNICEF just launched in Haiti; Chelsea Mauldin, my erstwhile Design Trust collaborator and now Director of the Public Policy Lab; Nick Abadzis, comic book artist extraordinaire; and Noel Wilson, intrepid industrial designer with Engineers Without Borders spin-off, Catapult Design out of San Francisco. We also got ourselves properly paranoid reading Andrew Blum’s Tubes, and tiptoeing through Trevor Paglen’s incredible photography of undocumented military and industrial installations, right before Creative Time launched his Last Pictures exhibit. We even had a field trip to IKEA. It was not a boring syllabus.

Then Superstorm Sandy became not only the disruptive force that diverted us from showing up in Week 6, and from starting then completing the deep and wide class blog, but also became the focus of the final projects. Those are summarized by the students here and were critiqued by Ian Spalter of Foursquare, Scott Peterman from Parsons and Tony Moulton from Occupy Sandy.

“That was more the philosophy than the design of systems” said one student in the last class, not unhappily. Anything to make makers think and thinkers make, I say.

On air, up in the AA air

American Airlines’ inflight business show, Talk Business 360, interviews Turnstone Consulting in its latest episode, talking about visual scribing. If you travel on an AA or US Airways flight anywhere in the world during April and May, business or coach class, you’ll be able to listen to the whole program from your seat, on Channel 9. That’s on air to five million passengers up in the air. And, for terrestrial listeners, Turnstone’s 3-minute segment is available here:

.

Graphic Novelists/Novel Graphics

Images for AIGA NY courtesy of (top) Nick Abadzis and (below) G.B.Tran

Get your Hallowe’en costume sorted early and get excited for this:
Super-honored to announce that on Tuesday Oct 30, Turnstone will be moderating a very special conversation between two titans of graphical storytelling: Eisner Award-winning Nick Abadzis (Hugo Tate, Laika) and G.B.Tran (author of Vietnamerica, one of Time Magazine’s all-time Top 10 Graphic Memoirs).

The event is organized by AIGA New York and co-hosted by MoCA, the Museum of Chinese in America, to tie in with their current exhibits, Alt.Comics/Marvels and Monsters. Alt.comics showcases an incredible, poignant, funny, beautiful array of comics by Asian American comic book artists and graphic novelists. Marvels and Monsters looks at depictions of Asians in (ahem, stereotypes perpetuated by) American comics since the 1940s.

Abadzis and Tran come together to share with a wide audience of MoCA members, comic book fans, and AIGA members their inspiration, approaches to historical and personal research and pen-to-pixel working methods. It’s my privilege to introduce them. It should be a special night.

MoCA is at 215 Centre Street, New York, NY 10013 – between Howard and Grand Streets, a block north of Canal St. The event runs 630-830pm and tickets are available here. Come thru!

[Postscript: This event was cancelled due to the inauspicious arrival of Superstorm Sandy on October 29, and due to scheduling conflicts, it was not possible to reschedule later in the year, while the exhibit was still up]

On board at AIGA New York

I’ve recently accepted an invitation to join the board of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Graphics Arts (AIGA). For 30 years, the organization has been at the center of professional design practice and it’s an honor to participate at this stage. Led by Board Chair, Willy Wong and in esteemed company, I’m thankful to the team who elected us newcomers. Over the coming year, I look forward to contributing and to steering some of the ideas, issues and inspiration Turnstone has been gathering here, towards to new and familiar audiences.

Turnstone in words and pictures

Turnstone has returned to its drawing roots this year, inspired by collaborations with Ludic Group, the international innovation consultancy. By invitation, Rachel takes visual notes for corporate-level strategy meetings. Sample concept drawings and diagrams from closed client sessions can’t be shared, but more illustrative images are here on the Turnstone web site. Rachel also presented at  LaydeezDoComics in London in December 2011.

In September, QR This, Turnstone’s review of the Museum of Modern Art’s interactive media exhibit, Talk to Me, appeared in the Architect’s Newspaper.

Happy New Year! The 2011 Round Up: Turnstone inspired

Happy 2012. In 2011, Turnstone got the most out of

Tweeting more than blog posting. Follow @TurnstoneTweets.
Postcards from Penguin, 100 classic book covers
Sol Le Witt at Mass MoCA
The drawings of Kelsey Dake
Fifteen minutes listening to Nobel prize-winner, Leymah Gbowee
Symeon Brown‘s take on the riots at the London Policy Conference.
The Power of Making at the Victoria & Albert Museum
Christina Stampfli joining Turnstone
Graphic Details, female graphic novelists and cartoonists, exhibiting in NYC, touring in 2012
Steve Jobs, and many more, RIP
Ryoji Ikeda’s The Transfinite at The Armory on the Park, NYC (above)

Thank you petrolheads+systems thinkers: Envisioning the taxi of tomorrow

Turnstone is proud to have completed its pre-bid phase of work with Karsan, one of the auto manufacturers bidding to win the New York City Taxi of Tomorrow contract.

Due to hit the streets in 2014, the winning cab must remain a New York icon, but be much more fuel efficient (that is, a greener yellow), with a smaller footprint (no more 18foot Crown Vic canoes) and roomier on the inside (not just for wheelchair but stroller and suitcase access). A bit like Dr Who‘s Tardis, only for hire.

Karsan is paying close attention to all these requirements, and has put forward a built-to-suit solution, rather than modifying an existing model.

Turnstone joined the European consortium to specify how tomorrow’s cab communications might work. As we’ve discussed, tomorrow’s taxi will be more than just a car. It’ll be a personal wireless device on wheels, a way to access services on the go, on the way from A to B.

The project was an amazing opportunity to apply thinking from earlier discovery and definition phases of work to articulate an initial design proposal – drawing from research from the Taxi07 report, and months of independent lectures, Turnstone has reconceived, visualized and put forward what goes on those credit card payment screens, what public service announcements, maps and roof top ads look like inside and out, in a integrated package of passenger- and driver-friendly graphic signage and digital services.

The City is due to choose a winning design by the end of 2010. Meantime, Turnstone would like to thank the Karsan team and all those who shared enthusiasm, insights and recommendations (in an informal capacity) at our winter roundtable, at Google, Teague and Virgin America, social gamers Mudlark, screen technologists, Lumio, Transport Research Institute at Edinburgh Napier and elsewhere. Yes, we talked to in-flight entertainment aviation people. Because taxicab or plane cabin, city maps or in-flight snacks, it’s clear that user-centered designers in both fields have a critical brokering role, influencing the right kind of collaboration between the technologists and engineers to make the whole experience work, planes, trains and for-hire automobiles…

Not a drop to drink, desalinate, fish…

In June, as the oil splurge seeped on, global engineering firm, Arup, began – quite coincidentally – a round of international workshops on the future of oceans, for their Drivers of Change program. Turnstone was privileged to participate in the New York session and delighted to recommend Liam Young’s architectural perspective for the London roundtable. After all, the discussion pivoted on exactly what he does everyday, pondering Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today.