LETTER no. 69Week no.10: Making Things. SaturdayDesign 101 MOOC, Abadir for iversity

Greetings from Weimar, Germany,

Here we are at the Bauhaus, where Josef Albers was once a student and teacher. It was the very first design academy in the world... A very special school where students got basic training in the properties of colours, forms and materials.

By the way, did you know that Albers also taught at the Black Mountain College? Do you remember that day when we had a silent postcard and blank letter about John Cage? Well, it was sent to you from this Black Mountain College!

This was another very special school...Both the Bauhaus and the Black Mountain College were new kinds of schools exploring new kinds of ways for teaching and learning, new kinds of interactions...

The same thing we are doing now. Experimenting with new ways to share knowledge.We dont know if we will be as successful as our glorious grandfathers, but at least we are giving it a try...

Question of the day: What about colors?If we talk about design, we cannot bypass one of the main ingredients of the overall recipe. In color, we trust!

Josef Albers studied and explored colors and their interactions for years. He made so many experiments, and created so many beautiful ways to challenge ones eye. Experiments relating to perception and resulting into optical illusions.

Desig

n 101

0 69/10

1

Week 10

Saturday

By the way, here is a short video to explain you more on one of his famous Homage to the square paintings series.

A great teacher, most of Albers experiments were made together with his students. He had a true passion for playing and exploring... And he really knew how to transfer his passion and energy to his students.

He also transferred his observations and theories on colors into this beautiful (and important) book (heres a pdf with some extracts of it). Here is another nice link for you to enter the realm of colors.

A nice thing nowadays is that we have access to a series of tools and media that can help us remember and transfer nice stuff from the past (like the beauty, fun and simplicity of Albers exercises) to new generations.

Right now, at this time, we think that the Interaction of Colors application for ipad is done so beautifully and it got us playing for hours.

Our whole team is competing on who can make the best combinations for interactions! It truly gives us a lot of fun and learning.

Homework no. 69Today, we played with Josef Albers Interaction of Color application.

If you want, you could use it today to make your own experiments with colors...If you have an ipad and want to try out this nice app, go for it, have fun and share images. If its not the case, no big deal! Here is the link for a pdf to start fiddling. Here is the link to the whole book: it is a very special one, and you might consider to buy your own copy.

Another option is to read this well-written article on the subject. After that, you could cut-out and make some special color combinations.

But then, you could also use the day to relax and catch up on the weeks homework...

:-)

What will I learn today? By playing with Albers exercises, you will learn something that might seem obvious, but it is completely contrary to what we were taught as children in grade school. There are colors: blue, yellow, green, red etc. And we are told that blue is blue. Yellow is yellow. Green is green

But what this app shows us is that blue might not always be blue, it can be blue-green, blue-yellow, blue-grey...

Also, the same blue might appear completely different depending on its context and adjacent colors. This is what Albers named color relativity: A color has many faces....

Colors is about relativity. Design too, it is about relativity.

By the way, Albert Einstein already got ourselves on the right track...

Why do we do this? Albers once said that experience is the best teacher of color.

Yes, experimentation is the best teacher. If design 101 had a motto, it would be just that.

No one person or thing can teach you as much as you can teach yourself through iteration and repetition.

And by sharing with us and seeing what others do, this becomes exponentially powerful.

It applies to Albers colors, but it applies to any other exercise we did so far.You (we) learn because we do the same thing over and over.

From colors to shapes to vases, it is all learned from playing freely and (more or less) happily.:-)

Something to remember: Do it again. A little bit better than the previous one.

Further inspiration...The Magic and Logic of Color: How Josef Albers Revolutionized Visual Culture and the Art of Seeing.

You could check out the work of Johannes Itten, another one who was associated to the Bauhaus. He made lots of nice things and wrote this very nice book on color called The Art of Color.

And then, of course, J. Wolfgang Goethes Theory of Colors. Heres a nice article about it.

And now:A nice color matching game!

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

Josef Albers

Josef Albers stool

Todays postcardInteraction of Color application