Reid Beels is studying this semester at The Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY as part of the AICAD mobility program which allows PNCA students to study at select schools across the country. He's blogging his thoughts, his work and his search for a proper Portland-style coffee shop while in the Big Apple. Email Reid your thoughts at .

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Nov 05, 2006

Under the Streets, Part 1

Subway Speed 2 on Vimeo

With 468 station, more than 700 miles of track, and over 6,400 cars, the New York subway is one of the largest and most complex transportation systems in the world. As someone who has long been fascinated with railroads, maps, and public transportation in general, interacting with the subway on a daily basis has been a highlight of my stay here.

Time has worn heavily on the subway but even in the deteriorating spaces created by years of lacking maintenance, the iconic simplicity of Massimo Vignelli’s wayfinding system shines through. Each line is represented by a letter or number in a circle or diamond. Lines that share a route are grouped by a common color.

This color coding is arguably the system’s most powerful component. By breaking the network down into chunks that serve a similar function, the colors place the incredibly complex network within the paradigm of The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.

I assumed people would refer to these lines by their color codes, but they don’t. It’s not “the blue line”, but always “the A-C-E.” I don’t know where this naming convention originated, it actually ends up increases the usability of the system greatly by providing a nemonic device for the contents of each group.

All of this wayfinding is great on its own, but is tied together by the ubiquitous subway map. The map has taken many forms over the years, which I’ll be discussing in my next post.

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Nov 02, 2006

Art Parade!

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, shortly after I arrived in New York, I headed to SoHo to take in the Deitch Projects Art Parade. Arriving early, I milled around the starting point where final preparations and last-minute rehearsals raged at a frantic pace. Soon it was time for the parade to begin and the highly varied mix of entries streamed forth. From art world bigwigs to a high school marching band, each participant turned the parade in a new and interesting direction.

No blow-by-blow account that I could write would possibly capture the content of this parade, so I’ll let the photos tell the rest of the story.

View the slideshow or take a look at the parade program.

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Nov 01, 2006

Connections: The Nature of Networks

Last week, I got the chance to head out to the New York Hall of Science hoping to gain inspiration from their signage for a museum project I’m working on. Their wayfinding system was effective, but didn’t provide me with too much enlightenment. The museum offered a nice assortment of hand-on exhibits, many that I had seen elswhere (I think I was spoiled by OMSI and the Exploratorium as a child).

By far the thing that stood out most to me was an exhibition called ‘Connections: The Nature of Networks’. It deals with many kinds of networks that exist in the world, from rivers to the internet, and the theories behind them. A bit of research shows that it was designed by Jeff Kennedy Associates who has a fascinating site up on the early development of the project.

I was quite impressed with the variety of networks that the exhibit managed to cover. You could see what happened when a break occurred in a power grid, scrub through video showing social interaction of various creatures, and visualize node interaction in a network of ropes and pulleys. Among the other geeky wonders showcased were a giant version of Conway’s Game of Life, Internet Arm Wrestling, and a touchscreen GIS viewer turned exhibit showing the paths of subway, telephone, major roads and cable TV throughout Queens.

My personal favorite installation was a video processor that tracked the paths of visitors through the exhibition space (shown above). It wasn’t the most accurate, but it did a pretty good job and definitely had that “wow, this is cool” factor. You could scrub through about 5 minutes of path history with a trackball and switch between the path-only view and a live video feed from the cameras above the space.

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Oct 31, 2006

On Costumes: The Obligatory Halloween Post

I stopped by the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade earlier this evening and caught these amazing pumpkin-headed puppets before the crowds got so thick that I couldn’t see anything. At school, the Halloween celebration came early with a costume contest sponsored by the Communication Design department. A pair of students with wheeled hands and feet, representing “The Spirit of the G Train” (the notoriously-late subway that runs near campus), won the grand prize.

The design department’s sponsorship of this event got me thinking about just how much a well-conceived costume can communicate. While many are archetypes of the season (zombies, witches, etc) or distinct fictional characters, I find costumes that are based on more abstract concepts or on unexpected physical objects to be the most interesting.

Outside of the holiday, a living representation of an idea can sometimes be the most effective way to communicate, yet designers are often hesitant to move away from the ‘flat’ world in which they work. Only rarely, in select advertising campaigns and theme parks do we see companies taking their brands off the page and into the real world. While I’m not saying that costumes are necessarily the best way to solve most problems, they are often overlooked.

For more conceptual (and incredibly witty) costume ideas, I’d recommend taking a look at Jane Asher’s Costume Book (especially the later pages).

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Oct 31, 2006

Salutations!

New York City. It’s the stuff of legends, both good and bad, and I was about to experience it firsthand. It was a bit of a scary prospect, but mostly just exciting. On August 21, early in the morning, I boarded a plane that would take me to spend the next four months studying at The Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY as part of the AICAD mobility program.

Fast forward to October. I’m just over halfway through my stay here and leading a busy life. I’m taking six classes, four studio and two liberal arts. I’ve attended art festivals, gallery openings, and an impromptu tech conference. The moments that remain are quickly eaten up by the perpetual search for a proper Portland-style coffeehouse (I’ve found a couple, but they all close early) and other exploratory wanderings around the city.

My hope is that this blog will be an interesting mix of my experiences, my work here, and my occasional musings on design in general. I’ll be going over some highlights of my time here so far, as well as writing on current happenings and excitement. I hope you enjoy what I have to say. If you happen to be hungry for more, you can also check out my website and my flickr account.

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