#designwriting

[jhavelikes]

At a moment when scholarship can be shared before publication (through preprints on ArXiv and MediArXiv), archived digitally, and often circulated through corporate services like Academia.edu and ResearchGate, there has been a tendency of these existing dissemination methods toward presenting one essay at a time, often without the context of the site-specific platforms and collective publications and conversations where a given essay may have originally been published. As a contrast to the decontextualized and ahistorical approach to presenting essays, ebr is now in the process of gathering together essays whose authors (or readers) have self-consciouslyI linked their own essays with others in the ebr archive, encouraging what can be described as an ebr intertext. Like most scholarly journals, ebr regularly updates its archive across different versions (we are currently in version 7.0), so that past essays are accessible in current formats. In this way, the designwriting from the mid-1990s are recast in the current format. But here, too, we risk losing the intertext that is as much a part of our publication as the essays themselves. Over the past three decades (and seven versions) the changing formats and page designs

ebr historical intertext › electronic book review

[drawdownbooks]

Talk Magazine, Issue 03⁣ www.draw-down.com⁣ ⁣ Talk is a magazine about commercial art focused on the politics of style.⁣ ⁣ Featuring Alexis Beauclair, Andy Pressman, Angela Dimayuga, Berton Hasebe, Biba Koŝmerl, Christina Janus, Culturesport, Dafy Hagai, David Brandon Geeting, Devin Kenny, Dinamo, Elizabeth Karp-Evans, Erik Carter, Eva O’Leary, Franci Virgili, Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski, Jarrod Turner, Joey De Jesus, Lauren Francescone, Mike Devine, Piaule, Wei Huang & Wing on Wo.⁣ ⁣ #graphicdesign #talkmagazine #designtalk #designwriting #HarryGassel #RafRennie⁣ ⁣ (at New York, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/CAStbi4HjlH/?igshid=1c98aqca71o8u

[ianlynam]

One of my favorite pet projects since joining @vcfadesign has been putting together “Huh?”, a series of over 40 interviews with folks helping to shape contemporary design culture. It’s worth a dig through https://perpetualbeta.vcfa.edu to check out interviews with @surfacepodcast @jarrettfuller @rknakamura @oliverklimpel @laurarossig @edgarbak @houseindustries @teamyacht @andrea.tinnes @lulusandhaus @lullatone @seanaadams @nikkijuen_soofficialrightnow & so many others, all kicked off by a chance meeting with the creator of Photoshop at a party... more Huh? coming soon! #vcfa #vcfaedu #designwriting #design #graphics https://www.instagram.com/p/CKWI7b3hcm_/?igshid=v8r6inplcdat

[relativeopacity]

[malesha-r]

First Post! And it’s about time.

That was a pun... It’ll all make sense later. *cryptic science fiction movie main character voice*.

I’m here because I saw a really beautiful project and I need to say some things about it. 

THE PROJECT

Designer: @syhyin.design, a recently graduated product designer, created a new way to tell time specifically for people with nearsightedness or glasses when they wake up/

HOW IT WORKS

A little box where the clock face resembles a dainty fan folded 60 times, one for each minute and I'm not entirely sure of the schematics but it would make sense that it tells time mechanically much like old analog clocks. The gif in her blog should give you a good idea. Another feature is that there's a small drawer in the box to pick up your glasses when you wake up for the day.

WHY IT'S SO INTERESTING

From the get-go, I loved how she made me realize how strong of a visual a clock is. That a simple paper cut in different sections can let us know the time of day at a glance. It reminded me of how powerful of hold time has on all of us, and how much power we unknowingly give it. It set a great tone for me understanding the other layers of the project.

The second aspect she shed light on was the anxiety linked with time, something that is extremely relevant in today's fast-paced lifestyles. By removing the numbers and the little minute dashes, we are no longer instantly aware of the exact time. This was a bold choice that really makes this project shine. Suddenly this small device doesn't just give you the function of telling the time... it changes the way we wake up in the morning! How many of us wake up to looking at our phones and with the exact time blaring in our eyes? This also further justifies the design in that, although a clock's basic function is to inform us of the exact time of day, we do not need accuracy as soon as you wake up. 

Thirdly, I found a super detailed clock online - one that shows the day, time, date, month and year all at once, blinking as each minute ticked by. These clocks are made for people suffering from dementia, to reduce disorientation and confusion as quickly as possible. That makes sense to me, but digital clocks now showcase room temperature like a casual add-on feature, some have neon light readings and USB ports. It brings home the fact that we have all the information now, it's about the curation of this vast info-chunk we need to sift through to get the most out of things. Anxiety in relation to electronic clocks has not been quantified yet but perhaps this direction of curiosity could open up a whole other section on the wellness industry, maybe it already has and I haven't learnt of it yet.

All in all thoughtful design like this pushes the idea that as things technologically improve and our everyday devices become faster, more accurate and dense in detail - we must hold onto our humanity and keep up with our intuitiveness and our moral/ emotional capabilities. As many designers hear and say: Empathy is always the way forward.

THOUGHTS & QUESTIONS THIS PROJECT INSPIRED:

What are the daily rituals I follow (waking up/ shower/ breakfast) when I wake up? How does it affect my mental state by the time I start to work?

I need to look more closely at the devices I choose to use and assess whether all the function provided are beneficial to me, and actually putting a cost or CON to having additional features for the sake of it.

[radmemahamud]

Este es nuestro último color antes de revelar a nuestro ser!! Léanlo y ahora si imaginen mi ser o creen el suyo propio! #escritoresdeinstagram #escrituracreativa #covid_19 #aislamientocreativo #creativewriting #designwriting #illustration #creativity #colorful https://www.instagram.com/p/CAyizMhpv68/?igshid=qj6wjipdp8nf

[anushanarayanan]

[eyecontact]

Because I’m speaking next month at the Typographics conference, they asked me to write an article for their blog, about GIFs, neon and my process. It’s called Electric Letterland: Building neon GIFs in homage to the real thing.

Also, my talk has is up on the Type Lab schedule for June 16th at 12:30. Come see me walk through my GIF building process !

[bostonstylehub]

Free “Entertaining Ideas” Digital Banner

For use in digital media. (Website articles, newsletters, etc.) A free resource from Luxury Homes TV

[destroyyourbinder]

A few more very interesting things from that well-researched Medium piece, about the pharmaceutical world's investment in hormone replacement therapy and the timing of transgender advocacy's inroads into public activism, including a connection to the controversy about menopause-related HRT which ended the widespread marketing of Premarin to aging women that I had failed to notice, the lucrative dynamics of promoting and prescribing drugs off-label (all transgender HRT is given off-label), the absolutely absurd amount of money in hormones for pediatric transition (the author gives numbers for Lupron from age 10 to 16, which in the US costs multi-thousands of dollars), and the entanglements of some of the most notable pediatric transgender doctors with pharmaceutical companies producing these drugs : The most common use for HRT over the 20th century was instead [of treating transgenderism] to treat menopause. That particular train derailed in 2002, when the National Institutes Of Health’s Women’s Health Initiative, a large clinical trial to test HRT’s safety and efficacy, found out that HRT in women led to raised rates of strokes and breast cancer among other deleterious side effects. Lawsuits, particularly against the pharmaceutical company Wyeth (purchased by Pfizer in 2009), quickly followed, and the number of prescriptions of one of Wyeth’s most profitable medications dropped 66%. Overnight, HRT for menopause was no longer understood to be the automatic course of action. It later emerged that Wyeth and other drug companies marketing HRT had known about the risks but had deliberately concealed them to continue selling profitable drugs. This caused some issues for pharmaceutical companies. Premarin, manufactured by Wyeth, was the best-selling drug of the 90s. HRT became accepted by women and physicians alike, and HRT was encouraged as safe and effective for menopause — which was untrue. It has been described as a time when patients request the medication, and physicians prescribed it, without checking on whether this medicalization of a natural process was needed or not. 42% of American women between the ages of 50 and 72 were on some form of HRT in 1999. Yet clinical trials instead proved that HRT was dangerous, and that the risks outweighed the benefits. And the prescription of HRT for menopause ended almost as quickly as it started. Pfizer, which makes the estrogen drug Premarin after purchasing Wyeth in 2009, is a major corporate partner of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and received a 100% score on the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index. Wyeth was no stranger to targeting minorities for drug experimentation. [...] Wyeth again engaged in unethical behavior with Prempro, another estrogen hormone replacement therapy drug, which is also used for transition. Wyeth used ‘medical ghostwriters’ to build a brand around Prempro and various off-label uses of the drug. What’s medical ghostwriting? Essentially, it’s a pharmaceutical company producing a peer-reviewed article promoting use of a drug it makes, often for off-label uses.This is done by hiring a commercial medical writing company to produce papers that can then be published in academic journals. An academic is attributed authorship, even though they have not written the paper. The paper contains conclusions that support the pharmaceutical company’s marketing desires for a particular drug. In the case of Prempro, legal documents that emerged from a lawsuit brought by 14,000 patients were released to PLoS Medicine, an open access journal (viewable here). It revealed that Wyeth hired a medical communications company, DesignWrite, who then produced a first draft of a paper, received advice on a second draft from Wyeth, then sent it to an academic who would ‘author’ the paper by attaching their name and claiming authorship. Typically, the papers are review articles — they review a body of literature on a particular drug, then draw conclusions on its use. While the academics weren’t paid, political currency in academia has become the number of papers published in journals, so it added to their credentials. DesignWrite sold over 50 articles to Wyeth about HRT and produced conference posters and symposia materials. The material produced by DesignWrite promoted off-label uses of HRT. DesignWrite also promoted its advisory board creation and management capabilities to pharmaceutical companies. While medical ghostwriting is clearly unethical, it’s not illegal. Because academic publications aren’t considered promotional, it does not fall afoul of off-label marketing laws. Pharma companies can ghostwrite as many articles as they like, building a message that the off-label use of drugs is safe, acceptable. They then publish that in an academic journal. Wyeth would produce studies that sang the praises of HRT for things it could never market it for, like curing wrinkles. Because the fact that the paper is ghostwritten is never disclosed, it means that people could potentially be receiving biased information that favors a drug company and using that when making decisions around patient health. If a large body of ‘research’ is promoting a use for a drug, then it must work, right? How prevalent is medical ghost-writing,? The New York Times estimated in 2009 that 5–11% of medical articles are ghostwritten, though this ultimately depends on the drug. With one drug (sertraline), between 18% and 44% of articles on the subject were funded and ghostwritten by Pfizer. But without disclosure, we do not know how prevalent the problem might actually be. Disturbingly enough, similar evidence is beginning to come out regarding HRT in men, who have been sold similar stories about ‘Low T’ and testosterone therapy. Unlike HRT in women, this has not come through a large drug trial, but nearly 7,000 lawsuits, directed at the makers of low testosterone treatments. Side effects include strokes, elevated risk of heart attack and blood clots. In fact, the makers of Androgel, AbbVie, were ruled against in a lawsuit brought by one Jesse Mitchell, described as a ‘bellwether’ case, to the tune of $150 million, for misrepresentation of the safety of their testosterone gel, Androgel. Mitchell suffered a heart attack after four years of using the gel, which was ruled to be directly caused by the Androgel treatment. AbbVie aggressively marketed Androgel on television, despite the fact that testosterone treatments were causing elevated rates of heart attacks. The $150 million lawsuit was later tossed, but a second trial again ruled against AbbVie, awarding Mitchell $3.2 million . 4,500 of the nearly 7,000 lawsuits involve AbbVie’s Androgel, which is considered the ‘Low T’ market leader. It is notable that AbbVie promoted the Androgel drug off-label. In fact, a former FDA head, David Kessler, told jurors in an another testosterone lawsuit, that he believes that AbbVie illegally promoted the testosterone supplement to aging men, without testing the safety of doing so. To quote his testimony: “What the companies in essence did was to take those indications of low testosterone in men for specific reasons [and] the company in essence broke that link,” “It was no longer [being marketed] for specific diseases; it was for low testosterone for a broad range of issues.” The drug companies pushed to market the drug off-label, regardless of whether ‘Low T’ was a scientifically valid condition or simply the natural aging process. What relevance this does have to the transgender movement? Hormone Replacement Therapy is the primary drug prescribed for the treatment of transgenderism. It has a long history of illegal marketing, medical ghostwriting, and unethical behavior towards vulnerable patients.Many of these same side effects have been reported in transgender people who take these drugs. For example, it is well known among female-to-male transgender people that after long periods on testosterone they require a hysterectomy, as they have higher risks for uterine cancer. They also frequently experience incontinence and vaginal prolapse. Many trans women experience heart attacks and strokes. These side effects have been dismissed as hormone therapy is ‘necessary’ — so that this population don’t kill themselves. [...] HRT is prescribed and intended for the patient to take for life as they begin a journey into being their ‘authentic self’. A transgender person expects to take hormones for the rest of their life. This is significant because every drug prescribed for transgenderism is prescribed off-label. There are no approved drugs for treating transgenderism. Not puberty blockers, nor HRT. For transition, many of the drugs used by transgender people are common brand name HRT drugs that are being used off-label. Premarin, Androgel, and others. All of these drugs have histories of off-label marketing. Androgel as aforementioned has thousands of lawsuits pending against it. This history of pharmaceutical companies using illegal marketing practices and ignoring deleterious side effects can’t possibly be the case with transgender use, can it? Stephen Rosenthal, former president of the Pediatric Endocrine Society and transgender scientist media star and one of the primary researches on transgenderism describes this off-label status as a hurdle for puberty blockers in an article in Endocrine Today: “One critical issue at this point in time is that none of the options for pubertal blockers on the market are FDA approved for transgender use. No pharmaceutical company has taken the steps necessary to change their labelling to include this category.” A look through the names of the scientists that study and promote transgenderism and the use of HRT to treat it, and you will see Rosenthal’s name repeatedly. You will also see other names repeatedly, particularly in transgender children research, and you will find the same group of people are always responsible for such research, such as Dr. Norman Spack, of Boston’s Children’s Hospital and Robert Garofalo, from Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. Many of them only began producing research on transgenderism, particularly in children, during the past decade. For example, Rosenthal’s publications are on topics such as insulin metabolism until 2012, when his entire output becomes focused around transgenderism. [...] Oh, here’s a fun fact the article [A PBS interview with pedriatric gender doctor Robert Garafalo] also includes: “Most of these treatments are still very expensive and often out of reach for people without the help of insurance. The cost of puberty blockers is approximately $1,200 per month for injections and can range from $4,500 to $18,000 for an implant. The least expensive form of estrogen, a pill, can cost anywhere between $4 to $30 a month, according to Simons, while testosterone can be anywhere between $20 to $200 a vial.”Using these figures, and taking a ten-year-old child, the total cost of transition for a ten-year-old who takes puberty blockers until they are 16, is $86,400. There are 725 children being treated for gender dysphoria at Lurie’s, which gives us a figure of $62 million dollars over 6 years in Lupron prescriptions were all those 725 children starting to take puberty blockers right now. Transition is an expensive business. [...] Let’s look at three doctors in particular. Their names are Dr. Diane Ehrensaft, Stephen Rosenthal, and Johanna Olson. Why?All three of those names have had a financial relationship with AbbVie, maker of Androgel and Lupron, amongst other hormone replacement therapies and GnRH agonists. All three have gone on to promote the off-label use of AbbVie products to treat transgenderism. Both Joanna Olson and Diane Ehrensaft attended an AbbVie advisory board on gender care, Olson in 2015 and Ehrensaft in 2014. Olson discloses this as a conflict of interest in the paper Care of a Transgender Adolescent Commentary, which was published July 2015 — she attended this advisory board after submission and was compensated for attending. Olson then continued promoting off-label use of AbbVie drugs. Diane Ehrensaft does not declare this as a conflict of interest on any research papers, but it appears in her Curriculum Vitae (scroll to page 16), which she submitted to court while an expert witness, and is hosted on her website. Her CV reports, that in 2014, she was a board member of the ‘AbbVie Trans Advisory Board’, while promoting their drugs for off-label use in transgenderism, both in academia and through popular science books she wrote, such as The Gender Creative Child. Was she compensated for being on this advisory board, like Olson? Stephen Rosenthal frequently discloses that he is a consultant for AbbVie as a conflict of interest in both interviews and research, and then continues to promote the dangerous off-label use of their medication in adolescents. Why is this concerning? The Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services advises that among the methods of spotting unlawful, off-label promotion, is paying physicians to serve as advisory board members.

[f0restpunk]

"Why is this blocky, streamlined design style seeing a comeback? Is it a sign that we’re returning to futurism? That form is following function again, in visual design? Is it a suggestion we’re returning to Cold War paranoia? Is it just more historic appropriation, mining the dustbin of history for irony and inspiration?" I write about Boston City Hall, designed by architecture firm kallmann McKinnell and wood architects, and a bit about brutalism in general, in todays Design of the Day. Written in honour of Mike McKinnell, a brilliant architect we recently lost to coronavirus/covid-19. As discovered via @99percentinvisible. Click the #linkinbio to read the whole article! . #bostoncityhall #brutalism #brutalist #architecture #modernarchitecture #concrete #modernarchitects #mikemckinnell #coronavirus #kallmannmckinnellwoodsarchitect #kwmarchitect #boston #bostonarchitecture #classicarchitecture #masterpiece #architectualmasterpiece #60sarchitecture #architecturelandmark #greatbuildings #1001buildings #design #designoftheday #designinspiration #99percentinvisible #designwriting #architecturephotography #builtenvironment #jsimpson #masteringmodernity (at Boston City Hall) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_01PwEhzQP/?igshid=1rjustetuof3m

[le-graphisme]

le-graphisme is now 10 years old!

When I started this blog in October 2010 I was still a university design student in Tempe, AZ. Now, I’m a creative director and senior designer in San Diego, CA. In the interim, I’ve had the chance to be an art director, junior partner, and design instructor as well—not to mention a live musician! Who knows what the next 10 years have in store! Thanks to anyone who still follows this ode to design inspiration. I plan to keep posting these visual delights!

[drawdownbooks]

BACK IN STOCK! ⁣ Frontier: A Graphic Design Education Reader⁣ Available at www.draw-down.com ⁣ ⁣ A publication that collects together essays and texts that reflect on the future of graphic design education. ⁣ ⁣ With topics ranging from graphic #designhistory in the design studio; to a typography course based on computer programming; deep learning in design education; funding; #designwriting , healthy #creative processes; physical computing and design; virtual reality; and much more.⁣ ⁣ A series of open letters from #JulietteCezzar —an essay in four parts—shares a series of reflections and thoughts on the current state of graphic design education in the United States.⁣ ⁣ Other contributors include Helen Amstrong, Meaghan Barry, Lilian Crum, Jack Henrie Fisher, Matt Greenwell, Derek Ham, Jonathan Hanahan, Dae In Chung, Zach Kaiser, Jiwon Lee, Jay Margalus, Dan McCafferty, Rachele Riley, Sarah Rutherford, Joshua Singer, Alan Smart, Dimitry Tetin, #AggieToppins and LeAnne Wagner.⁣ ⁣ Produced from content submitted to the AIGA Design Educators Conference in Montana in 2016, co-organized by Meta Newhouse (professor in graphic design at Montana State University) and Colin Frazer (founder of Common Language and The Service Bureau). ⁣ ⁣ #graphicdesign #designeducation https://www.instagram.com/p/B3wlCOMnu3-/?igshid=1f4qpu9t5b47v

[ianlynam]

Repost courtesy of @brieflessons Our suggested book this week goes straight into upper-division territory. @ianlynam wrote The Impossibility of Silence to help creatives to learn how to write about their creative work and careers. Available from Onomatopee. . . . #designwriting #designers #photographers #artists #writing #designeducation #arteducation #arteducator #arteducators #art #books #lifelonglearning #brieflessons (at Tokyo, Japan) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHMWblXBRKp/?igshid=1m4sjqagoey2b