The Theater of Making

Videos depicting the hand-making of various objects have become a genre. They look great, and seem to speak to a hunger for thing-transparency. But the story that matters is not that of a thing made, it's that of a thing desired.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (4)

Managing Digital Durability

Digital things can seem definitively less durable than physical ones, but that's misleading. In reality, digital stuff can linger on both by design, and by default. The question becomes: How to deal with that? This stuff is already here; maybe it can be made to be here in a better way.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (3)

Assignment Creativity

A recent book on "the art of the art assignment" offers a pleasing antidote to recent discourse on the subject of creativity. It's messy, open-ended, inspiring, chaotic, useful, and gave me a new appreciation for the assignment as a form.

READ MORE | COMMENTS

Dancing About Ruins

Remix culture often points to quoting creativity — making art out of other people's art. But what about making art with junk, detritus, debris? It seems harder and more satisfying to make something from what had appeared to be nothing. I've been hunting for examples, large and small, of projects and expression that draw inspiration from "the great big mountain of garbage."

READ MORE | COMMENTS (1)

Where We Work

People are fascinated with the artist's studio, the writer's desk. But if you think about the space where creative labor actually gets done, and what writers and designers really look at all day, the relevant framework is probably not a room, or a window. It’s a screen.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (4)

What To Make Of It? A Contest.

Is there a word for creativity inspired by junk? There ought to be. I’d use it to describe the short story contest being run by Studio360 and Significant Objects right now, inviting the imaginative to dream up tales about cheap stuff picked up from a thrift store. It's a fun excercise, but an instructive one, too.

READ MORE | COMMENTS

"Screenshots of Despair"

A newish Tumblr collects "screenshots of despair." These are stand-in messages, and they are designed very specifically to be done away with as soon as possible. Practical on one level, they can be crushing on another.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (4)

Stealth Iconography: Pinwheel of Death

The "pinwheel of death" familiar to Mac users isn't quite at the level of Twitter's Fail Whale as an icon of not-working. But presumably Apple would prefer that it weren't so widely known that it could serve as the basis for an Improv Everywhere comedy bit at TED.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (9)

The Ekphrasis-y Critique

What I was trying to get at, writing on "dancing about architecture" the other day, was my enthusiasm for creative responses to creativity, in general. Possibly ekphrasis is the concept I was grasping for without knowing it. And possibly an off-Broadway show partly inspired by indsutrial design is a nicely ekphraksis-y example.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (3)

Dance About Architecture (Please)

"Dancing about architecture" is supposed to be a dismissive swipe at a certain kind of writing. The problem, to me, has always been that “dancing about architecture” sounds perfectly awesome. What a great thing to do! If the dancing, or the writing, results in genuinely fresh expression, that’s not pointless or invalid — it’s creativity.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (12)

Rob Walker is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. His writing has appeared in many magazines and newspapers.

Recent Book

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are
Rob Walker
Random House, 2008
More Books >>

Design Observer Archive

2012
March
February
January

2011
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
April
February
January

2010
December
September
July
April
March

2009
December
June
May
February
January

2008
December
October
September
May
March
January

2007
December
November
October
April
March
January

2006
April
March
February

2005
March
February

2004
October
August

2003
December
November

Other Essays: 2010-2012

MakerBot's Meta-Tools
Fast Company, January 2012

Politics As Entertainment
The New York Times Magazine, January 4, 2012

The Dog Ate My Paycheck
Marketplace, December 16, 2011

Recognizably Anonymous
December 8, 2011: Slate

A Visual Object for the Digital Era
December 2011: The Atlantic

What Percent Are You, Really?
November 29, 2011: Marketplace

The Machine That Makes You Musical
October 23, 2011: The New York Times

The Cult of Bang & Olufsen
October 2011: Wired

4CP Friday: Effacement
September 2011: HiLobrow

Replacement Therapy
September 2011: The Atlantic

Not All Consumers Are Equal
August 18, 2011: Marketplace

The Trivialities and Transcendence of Kickstarter
August 5, 2011: The New York Times Magazine

The Swan Song of the Top 40
July 15, 2011: The New York Times Magazine

Foursquare's Branding With Badges
July 5, 2011: Slate

Failure Chic
June 16, 2011: Marketplace

Hiring "the crowd" for a design job
May 31, 2011: Slate

Advertising that's "relevant" — but to whom?
May 23, 2011: Marketplace

Disliking "Dislike"
March 31, 2011: Marketplace

The Propaganda of Concern
March 22, 2011: Slate

The Sound of Radiolab
The New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2011

Disliking "Dislike"
Marketplace, March 31, 2011

Fun Stuff (Digital Collections)
The New York Times Magazine, February 11, 2011

Go Figure (Scalies)
The New York Times Magazine, February 4, 2011

Ghosts In The Machine
The New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2011

Collecting: Bicentennial Quarters
DesignObserver.com December 9, 2010

Go Figure (Scalies)
The New York Times Magazine, February 4, 2011

The Hidden: Filtering "Friends" On Facebook
TheAtlatntic.com, October 4, 2010

Hearing Things (Music Objects)
The New York Times Magazine, September 10, 2010

Taking Lulz (Sort of) Seriously
The New York Times Magazine, July 16, 2010

Brilliant Mistakes (Digital Antiquing)
The New York Times Magazine, July 25, 2010

Valuing $0 (Gifts)
The New York Times Magazine, May 13, 2010

Rewind (The Cassette)
The New York Times Magazine, April 23, 2010

Slightly Used (Best Made Ax)
The New York Times Magazine, April 3, 2010

Clutter, Objects, Joy
Murketing.com, March 4, 2010

Shopping Our Way To Safety (Review)
The Journal of Industrial Ecology, February 2010

The Unlikely Success of Boing Boing
Fast Company, December 2010/January 2010

Site and Sound: One Home, Sixteen Objects and the Things We Listen to Now
Essay for Rewind, Remix, Replay exhibition at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, January 20, 2010

Complete List >>