LETTER no. 71Week no.11: Telling Stories. MondayDesign 101 MOOC, Abadir for iversity

Greetings from via Pastrengo, Milan.

Still at Design 101s homebase and more precisely at Pierluigis house.

A perfect day for casting some superheroes for our collective story.

Question of the day: Could it be that?This week is dedicated to storytelling.

Indeed, Eschers work was a game, a very serious game. Did you know about his impossible cube?

The impossible object he invented for Belvedere...

A curious illusion!

As were in Milan, we will share with you this nice reference.

Another illusion.

The choir of Bramantes Santa Maria presso San Satiro church.

Do you know about it?

If you pass by Milan one day, you really have to check it out... Its choir seems to be at least five meters deep, but in fact, it is deep of only ninety centimeters!

Bramante was a true master in telling stories.

Design

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Week 11

Monday

Homework no. 71Last week, we spent some time into vases. All kinds of them. This week, you will learn to tell stories in the best possible ways.

But first, today, you will start from completing the quiz and preparing yourself for the week.

This will be our schedule:

on Tuesday: you will write/design your own story with stones. Make sure you have a lot of nice stones to play with.

on Wednesday: you will write/design your own story with wires. Tue with lots of stones, Wed with a lot of wires. Metal ones are the best.

on Thursday: you will write/design your own story with hair. Make sure you have a pair of scissors...

on Friday: you will write/design your own story with string.

on Saturday: you will relax, get lost in a dream-like state of mind or catch up on the weeks homework.

on Sunday: you will relax, explore meanings and metaphors, or catch up on the weeks homework.

What will I learn today? There are many ways to tell stories. It can be analog, in paper, or digital, on screen, or even on your smartphone.

This week, you will have to choose your own medium.

By the way, do you have a thematic blog or do something like that? If not... why not?

Holding a blog is like holding an online notebook or diary. A perfect place to get an identity and to start to tell stories.

But then, it is a very special notebook or diary because your thoughts and observations and experiments are made accessible to the world through a click.

Here some people who are able to tell very refined stories with the projects they do:

Lisa CongdonJonas MekasIacchetti Coltelli InutiliThe EamesYona FriedmanDunne and Raby

Why do we do this? We already said this one hundred times, but... ...we like to repeat ourselves.

Design is first and foremost about narration.While a movie director shares his stories through movies, a musician with music, a poet with poems, a designer expresses them through objects, spaces and services.

Something to remember: Good Design tells good stories.

Further inspiration Can you recognize the people on our postcard? Here some hints...

Carl Barks, Donald Ducks father. One of our favorite superheroes of all times (Carl Barks, not the duck... although we like Donald Duck as well).

Try to get some of his old stories, the long ones, they are so nice! It was a world before the computer, at its best!

Next to Carl Barks, another chap we like very much is Maurice De Bevere. Have you ever heard about Lucky Luke? No? Come on... You better should... Here the link for you to see him in action with the Daltons Brothers.

Moebius and Jacques de Loustal are two other relevant characters in the set up of our imaginary world (by now, you understood that we like comics very much...).

Louise Bourgeois and Coco Chanel were two fancy girls. They were some of the ones who shaped the modern world in the way we know it. One was active in fashion field, while the other was busy redefining what is art...

To enter their world is a true experience...

Then of course, if you are careful you can find a lot of other references from art world. You can spot Marcel Duchamp and Paul Klee. Stanley Kubrick to avoid forgetting about cinema and movies and videoclips...

In the field of architecture, we have Le Corbusiers Modulor, Carlo Mollino (a crazy guy) and Kazuyo Sejima and her Sanaas office.

What else? Yes. Fashion! Fashion is as important as philosophy with Issey Miyake and Marimekko!

And then, John Maeda (or, design looking to the future) and our friend Duilio Forte. The one who built the curious wooden interiors where Pierluigi Anselmi lives...

And now...Imagination Just an Illusion

Design 101. A How-To.We know we have some late-comers, here are a few instructions on how the whole thing functions...

A typical Design 101 day:

We send you an email around 9 in the morning (Berlin time) with the link to our daily unit + some news, updates, cool Design 101 things we found etc.etc.

Note: you can find all of our previous emails in the Announcements section of Design 101 on iversity.

Once you land on the units page, you find our shipment (which consists of a video-postcard + a letter). You watch the video, read our letter, get to work and complete the assignment (or relax if its a weekend day). For even more fun, you can always refer to the Design 101 encyclopedia, which is updated every week.

Dont forget to take part in the conversations of the Discussions forum!

Now, going beyond the iversity platform, we have setup other places for us to meet and spread things we do.

On Facebook:the Design 101 page: to follow whats going on (in general terms)the Design 101 Exercises page: to check out picks (things that fascinate us the most)the Design 101 Arena group: to post your pictures, share your thoughts, emotions, references, lalala (as a complement to the discussions happening on the platform).

On Twitter,@design1o1: to follow whats going on + discuss with each other.#design1o1: to connect us all under a same hashtag.

On YouTube:the Design 101 channel: to view + share our video postcards (which is not possible to do from the iversity platform)

On Instagram:#design1o1: to connect us all under a same hashtag.

Regarding the hashtag, make sure to use #design1o1 with an o and not a 0...

:-)

PS Uploading your homework to the iversity platform is very important in terms of archiving. It is the only way we can collect all the things we do in one same place. Once the course ends, it might turn out to be reorganized into a wonderful book and/or exhibition

Marcel Duchamp

Impossible Cube, M.C. Escher

Todays postcard

Pierluigis house and studio