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How to speak like a designer...

prospero

A couple years ago, I remember seeing a table that was "how to speak like a designer" or something similar to that title.

It was a single sheet of paper that had a subject and a predicate and maybe an option for an adjective and you could mix and match one subject an adjective and a predicate to create some random sentence (that really didn't say much) that "sounded" like something a designer or an architect would say.

It's a humor piece. Does anyone else remember seeing something like this floating around the internet?

Many thanks in helping me trying to find it again.

 
Feb 24, 11 12:00 pm

Nope, but here is my friend Rebecca Uchill's Random Exhibition Title Generator.

Feb 24, 11 12:04 pm  · 
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elinor

hehehe...regarding a comment i just made on the 'stress in the studio' thread, another effective tactic cults use to manipulate their members is apparently the creation of specialized jargon....

Feb 24, 11 12:07 pm  · 
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Hi elinor! ;-)

Feb 24, 11 12:12 pm  · 
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BOTS

to approach this from the listening side I prefer to play
Architect bingo. Many an odd look at a design meeting when i dab the last box and shout appropriately... 'house!'

Feb 24, 11 1:44 pm  · 
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jmanganelli

reminds me of Poe's, "How to Write a Blackwood Article." Amazing how much of this remains true even 170 years later. Here are some excerpts:

"Then there is the tone elevated, diffusive, and interjectional. The words must be all in a whirl, like a humming-top, and make a noise very similar, which answers remarkably well instead of meaning. This is the best of all possible styles where the writer is in too great a hurry to think.

"The tone metaphysical is also a good one. If you know any big words this is your chance for them. Talk of the Ionic and Eleatic schools--of Archytas, Gorgias, and Alcmaeon. Say something about objectivity and subjectivity. Be sure and abuse a man named Locke. Turn up your nose at things in general, and when you let slip any thing a little too absurd, you need not be at the trouble of scratching it out, but just add a footnote and say that you are indebted for the above profound observation to the 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft,'7 or to the 'Metaphysische Anfangsgr&uumlnde der Naturwissenschaft.'8 This would look erudite and--and--and frank.

"There are various other tones of equal celebrity, but I shall mention only two more--the tone transcendental and the tone heterogeneous. In the former the merit consists in seeing into the nature of affairs a very great deal farther than anybody else. This second sight is very efficient when properly managed. A little reading of the Dial will carry you a great way.9 Eschew, in this case, big words; get them as small as possible, and write them upside down. Look over Channing's poems and quote what he says about a 'fat little man with a delusive show of Can.'10 Put in something about the Supernal Oneness. Don't say a syllable about the Infernal Twoness. Above all, study innuendo. Hint everything--assert nothing. If you feel inclined to say 'bread and butter,' do not by any means say it outright. You may say any thing and every thing approaching to 'bread and butter.' You may hint at buck-wheat cake, or you may even go so far as to insinuate oat-meal porridge, but if bread and butter be your real meaning, be cautious, my dear Miss Psyche, not on any account to say 'bread and butter'!"

As for the tone heterogeneous, it is merely a judicious mixture, in equal proportions, of all the other tones in the world, and is consequently made up of every thing deep, great, odd, piquant, pertinent, and pretty.

And yet above all things it is necessary that your article have an air of erudition, or at least afford evidence of extensive general reading.

PIQUANT FACTS FOR SIMILES. 'There were originally but three Muses--Melete, Mneme, Aoede--meditation, memory, and singing.' You may make a good deal of that little fact if properly worked. You see it is not generally known, and looks recherché. You must be careful and give the thing with a downright improviso air.11

We'll have some thing else in the botanical line. There's nothing goes down so well, especially with the help of a little Latin.

PIQUANT EXPRESSIONS. 'The Venerable Chinese novel Ju-Kiao-Li.' Good! By introducing these few words with dexterity you will evince your intimate acquaintance with the language and literature of the Chinese. With the aid of this you may possibly get along without either Arabic, or Sanscrit, or Chickasaw. There is no passing muster, however, without Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, and Greek. I must look you out a little specimen of each. Any scrap will answer, because you must depend upon your own ingenuity to make it fit into your article.

Here is a nice little Latin phrase, and rare too, (one can't be too recherché or brief in one's Latin, it's getting so common): ignoratio elenchi. 'He has committed an ignoratio elenchi'--that is to say, he has understood the words of your proposition, but not the idea. The man was a fool, you see. Throw the 'ignoratio elenchi' in his teeth, and, at once, you have him annihilated. If he dares to reply, you can tell him from Lucan (here it is) that speeches are mere 'anemonae verborum,' anemone words. The anemone, with great brilliancy, has no smell.15

In a Blackwood article nothing makes so fine a show as your Greek. The very letters have an air of profundity about them. In short, there is nothing like Greek for a genuine sensation-paper.

Feb 24, 11 3:29 pm  · 
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prospero

It was a humor piece, obviously written by a designer as tongue-in-cheek. It was hilarious, not actually meant to be used, but would be funny if a student busted out a sentence or two from the chart just to see what the professor would say.

I saw the bingo in my search on Google.

Still looking for the table/chart though. Thanks.

Feb 24, 11 6:01 pm  · 
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St. George's Fields
Feb 24, 11 9:03 pm  · 
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Die Scheiße
Do-it-yourself Architectural Dialogue

perhaps?

Feb 25, 11 9:18 am  · 
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prospero

YES!! THAT IS IT!!!! Thank you!

Feb 25, 11 12:19 pm  · 
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beekay31

Haha, so we all agree, then, that we all are full of __it. Agreed?

Good. Then we free ourselves to finally move onto things that actually matter.

Feb 26, 11 5:33 pm  · 
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I remember treekiller having a similar one landscape designers... I think it was a thesis topic generator or something

Feb 26, 11 10:05 pm  · 
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