Restrained beauty Braun design had a beauty that was more than skin deep. It would be wrong to say that because the Braun approach spurned fashion in an ongoing quest for functional and useable perfection, it ended up with this beauty by accident. There is a very strong aesthetic sense in both the proportion and materials of nearly all the products of the Rams era. They have a ‘restrained beauty’, he admits. Braun products designed by Rams and his team have a haptic aesthetic as well: when you pick them up, handle them, and use them as the tools they are supposed to be, you become aware of the effort that has gone into making them sit comfortably in the hand, of the texture, weight and balance they possess, and of the satisfying click of the control buttons. Sophie Lovell & Dieter Rams, Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible Such an unholy alliance beautytouchtexture
This tactile form of doodling Paper clips have also served as objects of more inwardly directed aggression by providing something for the fingers to twist grotesquely out of shape during phone calls, interviews, and meetings. This tactile form of doodling may consume only a fraction of the twenty billion paper clips produced each year, but it underscores the almost limitless functions to which a single form can lead. Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things In ways you didn't anticipateAll sorts of ways to use the machineStretching the product drawingtouch
What is this static modernism? Why can't office buildings use doorknobs that are truly knob-like in shape? What is this static modernism that architects of the second tier have imposed on us: steel half-U handles or lathed objects shaped like superdomes, instead of brass, porcelain, or glass knobs? The upstairs doorknobs in the house I grew up in were made of faceted glass. As you extended your fingers to open a door, a cloud of flesh-color would diffuse into the glass from the opposite direction. The knobs were loosely seated in their latch mechanism, and heavy, and the combination of solidity and laxness made for a multiply staged experience as you turned the knob: a smoothness that held intermediary tumbleral fallings-into-position. Few American products recently have been able to capture that same knuckly, orthopedic quality. Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine The door handle is the handshake of a building modernismdoorstouchobjects
Time turned into shape A pebble polished by waves is pleasurable to the hand, not only because of its soothing shape, but because it expresses the slow process of its formation; a perfect pebble on the palm materializes duration, it is time turned into shape. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses timetouchform
Vision reveals what the touch already knows Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses touchvision
Crown A Poem by Kay Ryan www.poetryfoundation.org Too much rain loosens trees. In the hills giant oaks fall upon their knees. You can touch parts you have no right to— places only birds should fly to. naturetreesmelancholytouch
To see, to caress A Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The hands want to see, the eyes want to caress. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses touchseeing
Thinking in terms of outputs In our use of digital and analogue filing tools, we classify information through folders. An article about railway construction gets filed under ‘infrastructure’ or ‘transport’. In Evernote we tag it with ‘rail’ or ‘construction’. This is thinking like a librarian and not like a writer. We are classifying the information as an input. The reason you take notes as a writer is to produce content. It makes sense, then, to take notes in line with this goal. Traditional filing like this tends to fail when you attempt to write your content. You are stuck trying to figure out which categories will be relevant for your proposal, paper or blog post. Interesting writing often comes from connecting separate fields through a common idea. By revealing the common denominator. By unifying two seemingly-contradictory ideas. How can you possibly achieve this if you’re looking in the same category for your information? The categories simply do not fulfil the function required by the writer. The notes you take and indeed, the way you process information, should be with a specific project or idea in mind. You must classify information in terms of its outputs. When you take notes on a book, think about how this could apply to a specific idea you had or how it argues against a paper you read last week. The premise is that you should be organising by context and always trying to connect the dots between the content you're consuming. Will Darwin, How to Think About Notes www.willdarwin.com How to be a genius notetakinginformationwriting