New Design Firms

Spring 2016, Parsons The New School of Design

Another One Joins the Kyu

In January 2014, I wrote an application essay for my Masters degree at Parsons. I wrote about my near decade of experience working in…advertising, independent vs. owned agencies, and, ultimately, my desire to study in the SDM program so as to elucidate a cloudy vision I had of the future model of creative agencies which, in a nutshell, was a proposal to decentralize powerhouse agency group resources and deploy them as nimble, curated teams to collaborate with clients, since these massive holding companies were becoming the antithesis of their creative subsidiaries’ roots: flexible, quick, innovative.

Jessica WongMar 8

Steampunk

How the Past Can Re-design, and Even Save, Our Future

Carly SeltzerMar 2

Storytelling as a tool for client engagement

Last class Trevor Haldenby, talked to us about his company The Mission Business (“TMB”). They combine user-centered design, technology…

Sofia FigueiraFeb 29

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Jasmin AujlaFeb 293 min read

What Do We Gain? What Do We Lose?

A few weeks ago in class, during a discussion about the innovations that have already occurred in…

Hadas DrutmanFeb 243 min read

Reframed Future

FRAME, noun

a rigid structure that surrounds or encloses something such as a door or window

Karen J WangFeb 233 min read

Design with /’empəTHē/

Different from many artists, rigidly defined ‘good’ and ‘evil’ dichotomies don’t really exist in Miyazaki’s films. What…

1 response

Loulwa BohsaliFeb 233 min read

Searching for Arab Sci-Fi

Science Fiction can be way off in predicting the future. In 1985, the movie Back To The Future portrayed the year 2015 as a shiny, exciting world of hover boards and flying cars. Although Sci-Fi literature, movies and other cultural influences aren’t always right, they do something…

2 responses

Isata YansanehFeb 234 min read

Design With Responsibility In Mind

I remember the first time that I truly recognized the power of design as I walked aimlessly through an Ikea and 45 minutes later walked out with a ton of ideas for the big house I didn’t own. Thanks to the gamified experience and elements of surprise along the pre…

2 responses

Jingyi LiuFeb 244 min read

Design for the Future

“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context — a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in…

4 responses

ashley liFeb 233 min read

So Much Jargon

When this semester first started, a classmate said to me: ”I have read the syllabus for three times but still don’t understand what we will learn or do in this class. So much jargon in there; or it could just be the wine I used before reading the syllabus.” Having worked in contexts that contained…

4 responses

Sarah KehoeFeb 103 min read

Have we stopped dreaming?

‘It is hard to say what today’s dreams are, they seem to have been downgraded to hopes’ — Speculative Everything…

2 responses

leeseanJan 285 min read

New Design Firms — Week 1

This semester (Spring 2016), I will be teaching a section of the New Design Firms class in the Strategic Design and Management masters program at the Parsons School of Design. Drawing on my work as co-founder and creative director of Foossa, a community-centered design consultancy…

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