ever since working on this weblog for almost a year now I’ve published a total of some 125 postings. while the impact of these postings varies, some of them are worth to be reanimated again.
due to the nature of weblogs, postings ‘disappear’ since your browser only presents a maximum of the latest 4 weeks to you. well, in order to find older postings you may want to consider using the site integrated search feature. in return this requires that you have a certain idea of what you’re looking for.
on the other side part of the inspiration of surfing for weblogs and other interesting sites is to discover new things and issues of interest. therefore I can’t expect you to spend your time browsing for older topics of my blog which might be of interest to you.
therefore from time to time I will redirect you to older postings (this time about Virginia Postrel author of “The Substance of Style”) which are still relevant today. but I will add some new content to them in order to make them inspiring and interesting for you. very often I get inspired to refer to older topics during lectures. so in the future I will bring these live references back as a new posting rather than urging you to search for them ;-)
today I’ve visited the website of management guru tom peters. interestingly a part of the the site (the home page to be more precise) is also maintained as a weblog using the same piece of software than this blog ;-) in the ‘Cool Friends’ section of his site you’ll find an interview with Virginia Postrel author of “The Substance of Style”. Tom Peters interviews her about the content of her latest book:
“… It (the book) starts with the basic argument that aesthetics — the look and feel of people, places, and things — is becoming increasingly important as a force of economic value. And that economic value stems from social and personal value that is derived from aesthetics. Much of the book is concerned with the question, What is the substance of style. What is that source of aesthetic value? Why is it that we value something that’s as superficial as the way things look and feel? …
… I wrote this book now because I started noticing the trend, which has two parts. One is there tends to be more aesthetics in more places and more parts of our lives, even in products or places that no one ever thought of as more than purely functional before. The other is that there’s more aesthetic variety, more opportunity for self-expression. I write about toilet brushes for two reasons. First, because it is an example of something purely functional that has over the last five to ten years become a designed object, designed for aesthetic pleasure. And, second, because you don’t use a toilet brush to impress the neighbors. It’s not a status symbol. This is aesthetics for pleasure and possibly for personal meaning, not for status competition.”
while (as in most US edited books ) the book reflects a noticeable US perspective I think it can deliver interesting perspectives on how to use design and aesthetics for both designers and managers and most importantly ‘design managers’.
