Part of the American Poor Farm System—a social welfare institution for the care and management of the impoverished and destitute—Vinalhaven’s Poor Farm is part of a diffuse geography of social reform and agricultural rehabilitation.  Now home to Design Inquiry for one week of the year, Poor Farm served as the spatial platform for investigations into [...]

As a university design student “making” was my raison d’être. It was a ritual to trek up to my studio (in any form of weather) to meet a quota of the somewhat unrealistic number of explorations I aimed to meet daily early on in my career. I felt spiritually satisfied if I met my creative [...]

At Vinalhaven, my own norms for staying connected–emailtextsvoicemailblogsnewsthephonethescreenthecar–were dropped. To my surprise, the theme ‘design-less,’ resulted in genuine connection, experimentation, and possibility.
The letterforms presented here are constructed based on points of cell phone reception that the group discovered across the island, and includes the shared landline at the Poor Farm. Strokes are drawn across the [...]

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for the typographic layout and images, please see
http://www.imaginarycountry.org/DI.html
Scott Townsend
In response to the Design Inquiry prospectus: “Design-less:”
“Sometimes the best thing for a smart designer to do is LESS than was expected. And increasingly, as in the design of games, playgrounds and syllabi, the design is about creating a set of conditions for something to happen, rather [...]

shack

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satoru2

laurie

annmcdonald

Their forms overlapped.

mmhfromscratchbutton

Each one was unique.

Each one was Unique.

flamenco2

The only markers on the horizon were the bouys.

The only markers on the horizon were the bouys.

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