I would like to invite you in my kitchen to answer your question ‘How does your practise and/or research inform your teaching and your thoughts of the future of design?’

1. In my kitchen
Presentation
University of Brighton
14.2.2011

12. [•] Test
[•] IN MY KITCHEN
[•] Vocal blues with guitar accompaniment: ‘Come on in my kitchen’, Robert Johnson
[•] Thank you for inviting me. In return I would like to invite you in my kitchen . . .
. . . No, allas, I do not know the mysterious lady in red, who seems to verify some kind
of experiment.
[•] From 1933 on the kitchen belonged to mrs Sonnenveld, [•] and her staf.
[•] It is part of an extraordinary villa by Brinkman en Van der Vlugt, [•] located in
Rotterdam, [•] like most of their projects.
[•] The interior design of the kitchen is by [•] Piet Zwart and produced by Bruinzeel.
[•] Zwart, who is best known as a [•] graphic designer, is in fact one of the first
[•] Dutch industrial designers.
[•] ABSTRACT
[•] I would like to invite you in my kitchen . . . [•] to answer your question ‘HOW
DOES YOUR PRACTISE/RESEARCH INFORM YOUR TEACHING AND YOUR THOUGHTS OF
THE FUTURE OF DESIGN’ indirectly, as if peeling a mineola, [•] to name a juicy hybrid.
Indirectly by presenting a number of motley but relevant examples, and some thoughts
and ideas concerning design & education. [•] Is n’t it a coïncidence . . ? The type is
called Futura!
I will skip a conclusion, [•] mainly because of time management: the slideshow will last
12 minutes maximum. I hope the presentation will stimulate imagination like a tastefull
dish might excite one’s senses. [•] However, of course, you will conclude after
considering all the information . . .
[•] One remark: I will not predict the future of design. I do not think the discours is
very fruitfull. Most talks prattle on till all latest futuristic gadgets – probably some
nanodevices or smart textiles products – are listed and described.

13. [•] In this context I’d prefer the edge of reality. ‘NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE’ – for
instance – expresses the dynamics of inimitable stylish Shanghai and did expand my
horizon.
[•] Besides Paola Antonelli’s introduction concerning historically wrong predictions about
progress, during the last century, in Design and the Elastic Mind – the most recent
available overview in print featuring innovating design – is rather hilarious.
[•] Anyway – I am quite sure a number of issues can be adressed to catch up and boost
design education here and now: construct collective student design teams, global co-
creation, and project based learning, to name just a few generic.
[•] Pay equal and fundamental attention to opposite skills: re-introducing manual
exercise and experiment, [•] and – be aware: this is a bolean equation – providing basic
courses in both Classic Logic and Lateral Thinking to structure Design Thinking – once
and for all – are two more specific examples.
[•] KEYWORDS
[•] Drawing, experiment, maven, mindset, neuro scientific, program, research,
sketching, skills, teamworking, thinking, USP, questioning.
[•] ONE
[•] In The Tipping Point – an excellent study, and wonderful guide, which should be read
by every design-student – Malcolm Gladwell is introducing three kind of people who
matter in a social epidemic.
[•] Connectors: ‘people with a special gift for bringing the world together’, and ‘who
know everyone’. [•] Mavens – the word comes from the Yiddish, and it means one who
accumulates knowledge – ‘information brokers, sharing and trading what they know’.
Mavens are data banks. They provide the message.’ [•] ‘Connectors are social glue:
they spread it. [•] But there is also a select group of people – Salesman – with the
skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing [. . .].’
[•] Although it is not the task of a teacher to start, nor spread an epidemic, I am quite
sure something of a Connector [•] or/and a Maven – oops, some Bolean once more – is
in us all. Or to put it in Gladwells words: ‘To be a Maven is to be a teacher.’

14. [•][•] Actualizing assignments, [•][•] and keeping all information up to date,
[•][•] is always required in education . . . Helping students to connect, linking them
with the actual ánd the past – [•] yes, its a Bolean! – seems to be
another main task . . . [•] Put importance to the history and tradition.
[•] TWO
‘To describe the problem is part of the solution. This implies: not to make creative
decisions as prompted by feeling but by intellectuel criteria. The more exact and
complete these criteria are, the more creative the work becomes. The creative process
is to be reduced to an act of selection.’ (‘Designing Programmes’, Karl Gerstner)
[•] ‘To describe the problem is part of the solution’, Karl Gerstner [•] states in [•]
Designing Programmes. (Please be aware of the subtitle: instead of solutions for
problems programmes for solutions.)
Alas rather late, [•] at the start of the new millennium in 2001, I discovered the
compact but influential title, at [•] TOTAL DESIGN the famous identity agency in
Amsterdam. [•] The book, first publicated in 1964, had not lost its impact.
‘Designing programmes: why is it so difficult to define what is meant in a
nutshell. The subtitle: instead of solutions for problems, programmes for for solutions
is more exact certainly but scarceley more graphic. The position is probably this: there
can be no clear concept of something [...].’ (‘Designing Programmes’, Karl Gerstner)
[•] I am used to de-compoze and atomize, because Design is driven by [•] [•] vertical,
as well as [•] [•] horizontal thinking and practised by [•] deducting and [•] combining.
[•] If a division in approaches on protocol analysis can be made in ‘formal’ and
‘informal’ like Barbara Tversky, professor of Psychology at Colombia University and
emerita at Stanford University, is suggesting in ‘What do architects & students perceive
in their design sketches?’, [•] I’d stick to the first catagory. I quote:

15. ‘In formal protocol analysis, design is seen as a rational problem-solving search process
through a “solution space”. [•] Its main focus is to describe design in terms of general
taxonomy of problem solving [. . .]’.
[•] ‘In informal analysis, on the other hand, design is seen as a proces in wich each
designer “construct his/her own reality” by his/her own actions that are reflective,
reponsive and opportunistic to the design situation, as Dorst & Dijkhuis characterized it.’
[• ] Indeed, my motto is already for quite sometime: ‘Ordening. Structuring.
Programming. Simplifying Complexity’.
[•] You might spot some evidence in the next three examples.
[•] First: a series of covers wrapping up [•] Louis Couperus (1863-1923), a quite
famous Dutch novelist of the late 19th and early 20th century.
[•] The design, [•] from 1981, [•] is infact not much more [•] then a color scheme. [•]
[•] Second: a magazine production – for number ten of 2007 – on the public
appearances and the body language of George Bush. [•] First my notes, [•] then some
selected studies [•] concerning sequence, [•] format and rythm.
[•] Third (last): a commission by Royal Dutch Post. [•] This is a very special stamp,
which is distributed [•] only in the beginning of december, [•] just before X-mas.
[•] These early digital sketches, [•] are made with Degas, [•] the popular, much
cheaper rival of Mac Draw, [•] because I could not afford a Mac as a starter at that
time.
[•] So we mainly used Atari those first years . . . [•] Besides the (German) machine
was quite good, [•] especially because the ST was ‘open’ & all ports were easy to
program.
[•] The final sketches, however, are again just plain framed papercuts: precize, accurate
and effective.
[•] But apart from illustrating a specific mindset, these early examples show the effects
of a powerfull research driven methodology, caused by curiosity, beyond questioning and

16. expressed by the urge to investigate: on color, on rythm, on technology.
[•] They also show experiment might produce valuable result within any laboratorium,
any designkitchen.
[•] THREE
I assume the general agenda concerning design education will be the same in most parts
of Western Europe. When I left [•] Willem de Kooning Academy those issues were:
– [•] Globalisation, co-creation and [•] cross cultural design
– [•] Students teamwork and multi-di-sci-pli-na-ri-ty
– Crossovers: beyond up-to-date technology driven education
– [•] Talent development and excellence
– As always: the link with the industry, and the link with the profession
– [•] And finally: how to connect design theory and practise?
‘Design has its own intellectual scope besides theory & practise. [...]
[...] Design transcends theory & practise, and presents not only a new reality, but
also fresh insights.’ (‘die welt als entwurf’, otl aicher)
But apart from those generic issues I would like to add another much less known . . .
Although recently, now and then, a feature on ‘the brain’ [•] might appear in one of the
Science sections . . . (The translation of the heading is ‘Digital reality breeds
indifference’.)
[•] After visiting the Shanghai International Fashion Culture Festival in 2010 and
listening to a stunning lecture titled: What guides the designer’ hand? Inside the
ultimate design studio: the brain by Art Historian John Onians [•], I am prudently
concluding every design programme might need some tuning, re-introducing the manual
experiment to equalize subjects like ‘concepting’, ‘design thinking’ and ‘strategy’.
[• ] Recent neuroscientific insights seem to confirm not only the eye and the hand need
training, also the designers brain needs manual feed to keep in optimum condition.
[• ] The key concept to grasp is that of neural plasticity.

17. I quote: [• ] ‘Another is that the laying down of those memories is associated with
structural changes in the brain. [• ] We have always known that previous experience is
important for artistic success, but we never knew exactly why. [•] Now we know that it
is because each experience we have actually changes our brain’s structure, leaving us
with better resources for dealing with that particular experience if we have it again.’
And: [•] ‘Each trained artist or designer acquires over time a brain whose structure helps
him or her to perform the particular tasks he or she is engaged in. [•] The process by
which this happens is one that only recently has been understood. [. . .]
[•] By concentrating on a particular activity we re-design the area of the brain that we
use for it. [. . .] [•] Of course those neurally based motor skills will then influence his
own work, [•] and they will do so without him being conscious of it.
[•] This is one of the most important insights yielded by neuroscience.
[•] In a field like art or design you can have lots of bright ideas, [•] but if you don’t
have the required motor skills with pencil or mouse your work will not be a success.’
Distinguishing sketches from prototypes
Sketch Prototype
Suggest Describe
Explore Refine
Question Answer
Propose Test
Provoke Resolve
Tentative Specific depiction
‘What sketches (and prototypes) are & are not’, Bill Buxton
With reference to John Onians, [•] and with the help of Claudia Mareis (Forschungs-
dozentin für Designtheorie at Hochschule der Künste Bern), recently, I have been
reading quite a number of scientific papers concerning the significance of sketching to
the profession.

18. [•] Most studies carry sturdy titles like: ‘The Dialectics of Sketching’, or ‘What does
drawing reval about thinking’, or ‘Sketches for design, and design of sketches’. To share
a few insights:
– [•] ‘Designers sketch to expolre design solutions, to record their ideas, or to illustrate
them and communicate them with others.’
– [•] ‘The ambiguity of design sketches, rather than promoting confusion, promotes
innovation.’
– [•] ‘I see the real causal factor as taking the time to focus and make what is seen
conscious.’
[•] In this context I’d like to recommend a short vimeo on drawing by Pentagrams
Daniel Weil (via http://pentagram.com/en/new/daniel-weil/). [•] Like many designers,
Weil uses sketching to visualize, generate and refine his ideas. [•] He is a passionate
advocate of imaginary notating, and a true collector. Daniel Weil has, by his estimation,
more than 375 sketchbooks, going all the way back to 1978.
[•] ‘In a way the books become both a diary and record for my thoughts:
the things I see, the things I think about, and the designs I’m designing,‘ says Weil.
‘Drawing is a designer’s most fundamental tool; it is design thinking made visible.’
[•] FOUR
[•] Already some time ago, on the streets, and in the fields, all my beloved friends
wore hats . . , high boots . . , and a gun on every hip . . .
Of course, at the time, I was not aware [•] of my very first USP . . .
[• ] Luckely, as you may spot, I am listed in ‘Dutch Graphic Design. A century of
innovation’ [•] which was published in 2006.
[•] An early example of my work, presented on page 378, is from 1991.
[•] The same bookcover for ‘The Shock of the New’ by Robert Hughes is on the next

19. slide, but now surrounded by some of my designs out of the same period, which seems
to be exactly twenty years ago!
[•] My recent updated and extended portfolio is available via www.slideshare.net/
swsaaltink
[•] My educational specialities can be listed . . .
[•] On special request I might even present The Very Best Of . . .
[•] When possible, in my spare time, I am studying LOGO – a LISP-dialect – producing
simple pen-up-pen-down Turtle Graphics . . .
[•] . . . Yes, I think programming – writing code – should be part of every up-to-date
curriculum to offer students another perspective and influence design-methodology.
[•] So, at the end of this presentation, I’d like to quote Harold Abelson – [•] a
mathematician and professor of Computer Science at MIT – who is stating in the Preface
of ‘Turtle Geometry’:
[•] ‘It is our hope that these powerfull but simple tools for creating and exploring richly
interactive environments will dissolve the barriers to the production of knowledge as the
printing press dissolved barriers to its transmission.’
[•] ‘This hope is more than our wish for students to experience the joy of discovery and
the give and take between investigator and investigation that typifies scientific research.
[•] Like Piaget, Dewey, and Montessori, we are convinced that personal involvement
and agency are essential to truly effective education.’
[•] Thank you!
[•] Any questions?