Is there value in spending time on something with no practical application whatsoever? Josh Lewandowski reckons so. The Minneapolis-based architect-designer has a blog where he has been posting an architectural doodle every day (save a brief hiatus after he fell ill). The sketches are beautiful, colorful, and, in his own words, almost completely pointless. — fastcodesign.com
12 Comments
What a shock! Never before has an architect made drawings that are purely speculative, with no connection to an actual built project.
What's next? Books with stories about made-up people?
(Score another one for the "we've got lots of space to fill, so nothing rejected" editorial policy.)
Citizens point notwithstanding, I love the idea of sketching every day! Like anyuscle the sketching muscles - brain and hand both - need to be worked out frequently!
As usual, Donna makes a good point, and much more nicely...
FastCo only has content because it needs something to display alongside its ads.
Haha, Amen Citizen, I am aghast that people have given my silly doodles coverage as well (and stunned that there aren't more critical remarks in the comments sections, I might have to go on and start slamming them myself) There is no need to be nice, I am laughing the hardest of all.
I started the blog mostly because I keep losing all my drawings and I can at least keep track of them this way. The first week after I started the blog my daily visits were around 20 people a day, higher than the 3-4 I had figured on. Then Dezeen did a feature on them and I had 14,000 views one morning. I promptly contacted WordPress to inform them that the statistics tool was surely broken because clearly there couldn't be that many people so desperate to kill some time.
I was happy to note that fastcodesign published my doodles in between an article about camouflaging your tweets and a scarf that doubles as a tie, how embarrassing it would have been if they had been right next to the work of a truly talented designer. Sadly, the "we've got lots of space to fill, so nothing rejected" editorial policy is alive and well.
(Stay tuned for the Pointless Diagram Generator App, you won't be able to believe how you lived without it!)
Josh,
Know that my critique is not of you or your drawings at all. This is what we do as architects and designers; some of us have to do it. Kudos for finding a nice outlet, and the press. (Some nice sketches, by the way, and it's a good thing for civilians to see us work in this format.)
My beef is less about the voracious demand for content than about the "gee whiz, this is so amazing you simply MUST click on it" headline mentality--applied to ordinary things--of so much online media.
Just an old guy rantin.'
Josh, nice drawings! I like that furniture too....
Take all the promotion that you can get. At least you did something creative. Some people get publicity for just showing up at a club or exposing their vagina upon exiting a vehicle.....
Previously on Archinect: Pointless Diagrams-I make my own Arch-Porn and it feels great!
Quondam,
You didn't ask me, but I remember seeing this on Dezeen before I saw it here.
I thought the diagrams were fascinating and should maybe be published as a book, once enough of them had accumulated.
I started a Tumblr for my 10yo son's awesome piranha comics for exactly the same reason, Josh. Now they all exist somewhere that is not the kitchen counter, the couch, his desk, my desk, the backseat of the car, the bathroom...
Quondam:
The Dezeen article came before I posted the giveaway as a joke. I actually never got around to giving away those drawings due to mostly laziness and the annoyance I quickly discovered in social media. However, I am happy to declare you the winner of the giveaway and I'll mail you an original drawing if you send me a private message with your address.
It seems a much better plan than picking a twitter follower at random and also manages to lessen my guilt at having posted that and not actually given any away.
Not sure what the problem was but I just got the email, I'll mail the drawing tomorrow. Sorry for the confusion.
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