love, violence and mastering the joy of design

Design. Oh design how I love you. I hate you so much because my love for you makes me hate myself. I love being a designer but I hate design. I love designing but I hate talking about it. I love talking but I hate people who talk so much. I hate designers but I love to master designing. I am a designer, I love people. I am a designer, I am people. I am passionate and violent, I make and destroy. I want to be a revolution. I am a designer, I am.

Crazy am I? 

A little girl who came to Toronto from Tehran, leaving her childhood in the land of fertility. Iran with my mother. Iran with my father. Iran with my brother. I just ran far away from everything, out to explore a new reality. 

I tried to define myself so many times. I fell in love easily. Not with boys. No, boys didn’t come into the picture until late in the game. I fell in love with the energy of joy. Joy was all I ever wanted, really. Am I any different from you for craving joy? It was my best friend and I’m sure you are best friends too.

First joy came into my life through the piano. Memorizing notes and completion free of mistakes was joy. I took lessons for a year and learnt all the notes. My teacher loved me and she said I was a great student. I started hating it though. I hated it so I beat myself knowing I wasn’t going to be the best at mastering piano. It made me mad. Others were better, I just wasn’t good enough.

So I left piano and found joy again through sport. It was the start of a very long and brutal relationship. We broke up many times. Joy wasn’t very nice to me, even though I visibly invested energy into joy over anything else. I gave my heart away for the joy of sport. I cried when winning, cried when losing. I would practice for joy. But I hated myself! I hated not being able to master it. I would try so hard but  got rejected so many times. Sport wanted it to work too but demanded too much from me. I felt like shit. I felt like I was trying hard and not getting mutual love in return – like as if he could never understand my love for him. I now think the reason for our breakup was because I wanted to master the sport over mastering the joy of the sport. Through my process of mastering, I killed my joy in sport. Others were better, I just wasn’t good enough. I broke my own heart.

The computer. Oh the joy of the computer was there for as long as I can remember. Commodore 64 in Iran was the favourite childhood toy. Gaming was joy. We came to Canada in 1996 and the computer became more embedded in our lives since my dad had always been ahead with computers and software. My brother and I had the advantage of being raised with computers. I still remember the dial-up days, with Yahoo Chat and ICQ. Not that many people in middle school were tech saavy back then. I still remember the computer labs very limited with their computers programs and barely any of them had access to internet. All-the-Right-Type was a speed-typing program that I will never forget. I had a joy for mastering that too. Type fast! Free of mistakes! That was joy.

What about art? Well drawing was fun. I liked drawing things. But hell no, I was by no means the best artist. I was decent but it didn’t give me deep joy and I never thought about doing any masterpieces. I didn’t draw for fun for that long. I forced myself to do it because I wanted to master it. I couldn’t. I wanted to draw from my imagination, but couldn’t. Someway or another, I ended up in a program that was starting in a middle school called CyberARTS. My grade 6 teachers recommended that I go there. So I got in. I think that’s when my life began to take shape. I started dating art and computer fun, but I was still in love with the joy of sports.

From grade 7 to grade 12 (1998 – 2004), I continued getting to know computers and art. I was already in the pot to become a graphic designer. I had no choice, it picked me. Graphic software was fun for me to learn. It was a new language and I loved being given projects to work on using that language. I learnt so much about the life through the process of each project.

Writing? Well as you can see I enjoy doing it. Writing to me has always been the best way to express myself and articulate my thoughts. Writing was a joy for as long as I can remember. Did I ever dream of being a writer? Nope. Did I ever want to master writing? To some degree, but it didn’t bother me as much as my other mastering obsessions. I viewed it as a tool to be creative and expressive. It wasn’t until this past summer when I took a Creative Writing course (after OCAD told me I needed to take one last credit to graduate) that I confessed to myself I am a poet. Lillian Allen empowered me. She told me I had it. She said it to my face. I didn’t take my English teachers seriously in highschool when they would give me high marks and lots of comments on my writing. My grade 11 teacher used to go crazy over the poems I wrote in her class. I just never thought it was worth anything. I liked doing it for myself. It was my method of becoming my own teacher and mentor.

When the athlete in me died, I was dead. I knew I had to fall in love again. So I gave it all to graphic design. I’m free baby. I’m out to love you. I had 4 years of professional loving at Ontario Collage of Art & Design to master the joy of design. I did it, and quite well actually. I mastered the joy of design and I’d like to take this time to thank myself for mastering this joy. I could not have mastered this joy if I didn’t love myself. So I thank me for loving myself and staying in this relationship. I continue to call myself a professional graphic designer but I thank myself for realizing that I am by no means the best at anything. Because the only thing I am is me. And that is the story I just told you.

I am love.

I seek the joy of mastering design because I am Ghazaleh. I want to learn. I want to apply my learning and I like to use my brain. I don’t want to be the best at anything that confines me because I want to be free of order. I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it. I learnt that being a graphic designer is a privilege so I used it to my advantage. I threw myself out to the world with it. Here I am world! I design!

I could have never learnt more about myself by letting go of what I thought was best for me. I broke up many many times. But I was me. I had only me, my two eyes, ears, and my gut. I went to Florida with it, Chicago, New York, UN headquarters and even the MIT and Harvard campuses, on my own two feet with my own money. I admitted that I had some things to figure out.

Here I am now. 2009. What can I tell you?

I am Ghazaleh, the girl you always knew — doing what I want, designing from what I learn. Because design is beyond what you ever thought was real. Design is the process of mastering joy for people. So in order to master the joy of design, you have to design for people, constantly. Design is the ultimate creative force in each human being. Design means taking responsibility to make something that impacts those who interact with it. Whether its one person, a neighbourhood, or a nation, design is not an object – it is energy. It’s not what you make but the people who it resides in. It is people.

Be a designer. Listen. Look. Think. Link. Plan. Do…and never stop.

The fancier you think you are, the further away you drift from being a real designer. Stay true. Stay real. Find joy. Suck it up and fight for it. You have to be mean to win the grand prize. And winning the grand prize of mastering joy takes a lot of designing, even the grand prize itself.

Filed under: design, education, experience, life, problem solving, student life

internetoflife – the collective language to simply learn

Anyone who is reading this is a part of the book. internetoflife is one word but it assembled of three other words that we know in English.

The final direction for my thesis after 1.5 years of research is internetoflife.com

I believe in the power of the collective to share wisdom and create links.

I believe in words to reflect identity.

I believe in words of wisdom, quoted by you.

So please visit the site and contribute.

First round of submissions for final presentation at my gradshow are April 12, 2008.

Anyone, anywhere you are, if you are reading this and you are interested in the concept of my network and want to support it into fruition, please click on the submissions page. I would also like to request for volunteer translators to translate the internetoflife questions into other languages, so we can get a universal network of words. Text and colour are universal languages — lets ’simply’ use them to broadcast ‘who we are’.

More information on how I arrived here will be posted soon.

You are also welcome to add me to facebook since I have nothing to hide about who I am.

Filed under: activism, art, community, creativity, design, education, humanity, life, love, music, philosophy, poetry, problem solving, quotes, school, social community networks, sustainability

nature is not a well-designed puzzle

“Have you ever seen a child take apart a favorite toy? Did you then see the little one cry after realizing he could not put all the pieces back together again? Well, here is a secret that never makes the headlines: We have taken apart the universe and have no idea how to put it back together. After spending trillions of research dollars to disassemble nature in the last century, we are just now acknowledging that we have no clue how to continue — except to take it apart further.

Reductionism was the driving force behind much of the twentieth century’s scientific research. To comprehend nature, it tells us, we first must decipher its components. The assumption is that once we understand the parts, it will be easy to grasp the whole. Divide and conquer; the devil is in the details. Therefore, for decades we have been forced to see the world through its constituents. We have been trained to study atoms and superstrings to understand the universe; molecules to comprehend life; individual genes to understand complex human behavior; prophets to see the original of fads and religions.

Now we are close to knowing just about everything there is to know about the pieces. But we are as far as we have ever been from understanding nature as a whole. Indeed, the reassembly turned out to be much harder than scientists anticipated. The reason is simple: Riding reductionism, we run into the hard wall of complexity. We have learned that nature is not a well-designed puzzle with only one way to put it back together. In complex systems the components can fit in so many different ways that it would take billions of years for us to try them all. Yet nature assembles the pieces with a grace and precision honed over millions of years. It does so by exploiting the all-encompassing laws of self-organization, whose roots are still largely a mystery to us.

…Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them.”

-From Introduction in Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Filed under: community, design, nature, problem solving, social community networks, sustainability

i care to DO

I’m frustrated with everything and I’m only saying this because I believe that I have answers for how to find the answers. I have a voice that I’ve made through listening and thinking. My voice is of DOING. I have a voice that cares to voice others because the voice of others is my voice.

I have never fit in, nor have I ever thought I had to fit in. Now people look at me and think that I’m too young to have answers, but I’m not telling you that I’M THE ANSWER, I’m telling you I know where the answers are and I care enough about them to bring them to the forefront of the conversation if we’re talking about answers. So don’t get intimidated by me or think that I’m self-indulgent. I just love what I DO because I do it for people and communities, hence I should love myself for doing it. I want to share the love with you all. You might see tears in my eyes if you catch me in a passionate conversation.

I just got home to my parent’s Thornhill condo suite, after a very important panel lecture series Manufacturing Neighbourhoods held by Toronto’s Architecture for Humanity at the Gardner Museum. The panel speakers included Bruce Hinds (my professor, close friend and project supporter) along with the highly reputable Ken Greenberg and other engaged reputable speakers just as concerned about community development in Toronto.

I thought it was a wonderful discussion and I just had to put my foot in there and talk about community activism since I know what that is about, because I practice it and preach it simultaneously. Sitting in the front row and having my hand up since the floor could ask questions, being dismissed about 5 times before the moderator came to hand me the microphone, I spilled my heart out on this topic of ‘building community’.

I’ve been at OCAD for 4 years and I have involved myself in its community and politics — because I care about making it a better institution with better education, more exposure to its possibilities and direction for building a unique community. Bottom line, I’m telling you, I know OCAD because I’ve experienced it and I care about its future. Everyone on the administration knows me. I have made myself and my voice visible, fearless and passionate. I have tried my best to speak for the majority of the population of the school and enhancement of its education for its students precisely with ‘building community’ and increasing student engagement, which mind you is not any different than doing something for a neighborhood. I have DONE things and that goes to tell you that I can speak about them and have a right to make a statement after doing something that people care about and don’t care enough to do something about.

Here is proof ONE and TWO of what I have done. Boom. Done. I’m publicizing myself because no one else on earth is going to do it for me. It’s not just two, it’s more! I care about my gradshow, so I care to get involved in making a structure for it so that the students are involved in the future. I put myself through challenges and hours of volunteering to initiate something I believe in. I care about the decisions made for the school. I care to speak up and give an input, because if I don’t, no one will know that I actually care. I want a better future for others and if I don’t act on what matters, then what matters will never have my voice in it. I know my voice creates vibrations and it’s those vibrations that I believe in, nothing else.

I’m fed up with people who don’t DO and sit and complain and complain and complain. There are people who talk about doing, tons of them might I add. In fact, that’s all we do! We (as in majority of Western society) just talk about doing and then the next time we do the same thing again. As much as I whole-heartedly agree the doing begins by having a conversation, but what about making the conversation HAPPEN? Who wants to take responsibility of that and who wants to invest their time in something that they’ve never done? Stop watching your damn television and stop listening to how hard it is to do things. It’s all built to scare you and turn you away. You’re not MEANT to have a voice; that’s what you’re meant for through the media.

Media yourself for goodness sakes! I’m a nobody and I’m media-ing me and through that I want to media my values and beliefs. Does that make sense? Ofcourse not, because you’ve never heard of it. You think that media is supposed to come to you because media is so far away and hard to reach.

It’s not though; it’s really not. Internet confuses us, because we’re confused with ourselves so when we enter a digital world with confusion of ourselves, we are even more confused and don’t know how to translate anything into reality. Hence we talk about it.

I’m also working on a community project as you should know by now if you’ve talked to me or know me, because it’s really my life. You cannot do a community project if you don’t fall in love with the community. It simply will not work. You will fail miserably and become pessimistic about doing anything ever again. I’m in love with this project and I’m in love with it because (here we go again), I simply GIVE A DAMN. Research on an area with statistics, numbers, assumptions and politics is the easy part. Understanding what the community has to offer is the most important and the most time-consuming part. This requires listening, observing, making friends and showing appreciation for what exists. If you don’t show appreciation for what is already there, you will again, fail miserably and continue to go the wrong way to make change.

Here is the link to a brief description to TheStoreFront project and here is TheStoreFrontCommunity.com which I highly suggest you join if you are in Toronto since we are holding an inaugural festival in the area: The BIG Festival. I have now understood this community, and I realize still how little I know about what is going on and I’m dying to be a part of it — this is why I want to MOVE THERE and live there and experience the community — being a member of the community that I change.

Now what else have I done? I spoke up to this community! I clearly made the effort to show that I cared about them. I’ve understood what community groups exist. I KNOW who these people are now and they KNOW ME TOO! This is how you make a change! You come in as an outsider and see it your responsibility to be humble and listen. If you want to be a therapist — which is literally what urban planners and designers are for communities at large — you need to listen and understand. You need to realize that there are no fingers to be pointed. It is your responsibility to find out how to do it so that IT WORKS and that local residents and businesses ‘take ownership of their communities’ — the answer to the question Bruce Hinds proposed to the group.

Now listen to me, I’m telling you that I’ve done this and done the investigation alone. And I can speak about it for that very reason; because I have done it and I know how it needs to be done after going through difficulty figuring it out. I’m not done and I never will be, but I hope that someone listens and follows some of these steps that I’ve learnt by DOING what you’re TALKING about. Who am I kidding, no one will buy in until it’s all over the media, and then you can come and ask me, “how do you do it?” Ask me now because I’m always in the search for answers. Maybe what I say will be of value, despite my age.

Filed under: activism, community, design, education, life, love, problem solving, student life, sustainability, work

THESIS: 1.5 years – action time!

I’ve finally got it. After a year and a half of process, I’ve finally reached the process of execution, which will be a long and challenging process — I’m all up for it. It came out of last week’s thesis meeting with my prof Keith Rushton and in particular from Brian’s challenge — a former student of Keith’s working in the industry, who sits in on our meetings. I’m not saying that he revealed anything specifically, but he did make a spark go off. He challenged me to a point where I began to question my presentation for the grad show. I instantly rethought everything for my approach.

Brian said, “Web2.0 is dead in a couple months.” As much as I can argue and articulate what Web2.0 really means and explain O’Reilley’s 7 principles to inform people on the definition of the term, I realized that he had a great point.

My thesis is not about Web2.0, and particularly, I do not want people to have any preconceived thoughts on what my thesis is about. Immediately people will think about the social community networks that already exist on the web before they comprehend the intelligence behind my research and purpose.

I told myself, “You do ‘not’ want to be be compared to anything that is out there, so don’t present yourself that way and don’t set yourself up for that.”

The thesis started off with my vision for the web being used positively to connect people. The more I researched into it, the more I bookmarked social web, and the more I read about Web2.0 tools, theories, essays, opinions and research in technology, the more knowledgeable I became on how to measure success.

For over a year, all I did was research the web and read about the web. I bookmarked dozens of websites, rewrote my statement dozens of times, and exposed my thoughts to dozens of people, vocally repeating my purpose. The idea evolved, the focus changed, the strategies fluctuated, the passion transformed and the true purpose revealed itself to me through ongoing projects, involvements, and reflective experiential research. I am using my thesis to provide a unique and thorough experience through interaction and sharing of knowledge using a model that I create as a framework to facilitate productivity and interconnectivity.

Filed under: design, life, problem solving, school, social community networks, student life, work

Permaculture

“Permaculture looks for the patterns embedded in our natural world as inspirations for designing solutions to the many challenges we are presented today. Permaculture encourages individuals to be resourceful and self-reliant and to become a conscious part of the solution to the many problems which face us both locally and globally. Permaculture means thinking carefully about our environment, our use of resources and how we supply our needs. It aims to create systems that will sustain not only for the present, but also for future generations. The idea is one of the co-operation with nature and each other, of caring for the earth and its people.”

-Jan Martin Bang (Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities p. 49)

Filed under: community, nature, problem solving, quotes, sustainability