Essays

What is good design?

Good design is innovative, useful, aesthetic, honest, and understandable. It is also unobtrusive, thorough, and “as little design as possible.” These principles sound twenty-first century. And they are. But they were articulated by a man who began his career in 1957, Dieter Rams. A visionary German designer, Rams may be best known for his elegant and minimal products such as the Braun Juicer, a revelation in 1972. His 1959 TP1 Radio/phono combination is eerily similar to the first ...

Artist Statement

Birch trees swayed in the gentle breeze, casting long shadows on the colorful wooden houses that were coming to life after a long, cold winter. Earlier, we had dug up trash from a dump by the pond and buried it in the sandpile by Igor’s dacha. Then we lit a fire in a rusty barrel and melted old plastic toys—typical pastimes for kids with too much free time on their hands in rural Russia. Earlier, we had played dodgeball on the beat-up road, and now we were looking for a way to retrieve the ...