Hello! I'm Alex, an incoming Visting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. I come from the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh where I received my M.Des. in Information Design. Areas that I'm most interested in are theories and philosophies of design, information design, design for interaction, and the wide applications of design thinking. My direction is always being rewritten and my place in design always being reëvaluated. Having studied design theories at Carnegie Mellon, I feel like it will be an ever-changing career with so much to see and do.
Additional interests include technology, politics, news and media, higher education, urbanism and architecture, industrial design, photography, travel, books and writing (creative non-fiction, in particular), the outdoors, and cycling. I wanted to become all sorts of things as a kid—inventor, teacher, scientist, journalist, and New Yorker cover artist — and as a designer I get to study and work in all the interesting fields I once thought to specialize in.
I’m a New Yorker who cheers for the Red Sox. I also like milkshakes and bagels. Browse as long as you'd like and drop me a note to say 'hello!'
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The New York Times has long been associated as the “paper of record.” In recent years it has faced economic changes that has forced them to rethink their means to disseminate information. The fields and interests of design have changed in similar ways to the Times by moving from the creation of tangible artifacts to broader areas of studying and designing for human interaction and systems design. In this paper I use the Four Orders of Design to study the changes at the New York Times, and explore the four orders as they overlap with the concern for knowledge. In spite of all the changes at the Times, information is still their product and knowledge its by-product. They have created new objects of communication and interaction, forming new possibilities for their readers to connect and creating new pathways to information. This builds into their by-product of knowledge, which I propose as a “fourth order” concern — a value to both the Times and its readers made possible today more than ever integrating their three primary design activities of communication, construction, and interaction.
Human Experience in Design (CMU Q)
Communication Design Fundamentals (CMU, CMU Q; Grad and Undergrad)
Typography II (RIT School of Design)
Information Design (RIT School of Design)
So you're an information designer? You must be good with computers!
Yes to both, but they are mutually exclusive.
How do you get your protein?
I'm vegetarian and protein is what I'm always asked about. I eat well and protein is never a problem; a recent check-up told me I was tip-top. The second thing I am asked is what would ever posess me, so I frequently cite this drawing.
What kind of camera do you have?
Nikon D200, recently upgraded from a D70. As you browse my flickr photos, just look at the metadata on the right to find out camera type, lens, and in some cases, location. I rigged up a GPS to the D200 body which tags my photos with coördinates — the sort of thing that really excites me.
Carnegie Mellon! How do you like Philly?
Philly is nice, but we're actually in Pittsburgh. The people here love Steelers football and fries on their salad. I live in the hood, which keeps things interesting.
What's a good font for my resume?
There's no perfect or universal answer to this. There are many wrong answers, though. Just realize that what you choose will be a significant visual representation of who you are. It also has to be professional looking (no novelty fonts, no matter how rad you are). Serifs: Garamond, Baskerville, Bodoni; Sans-serifs: Univers, Frutiger, Gill. Whatever just email me.
The New Yorker
Politico
Jason Kottke
Visual Complexity
Information Aesthetics
Apartment Therapy
Mid-Century Modernist
materialicious
The Sartorialist
TasteSpotting
Freakonomics
Gothamist
Bitten
Wonkette
Best of the Web Today
David Brooks
New York Mag
Daily Beast
Blogrunner
The Consumerist
Arts & Letters Daily
Strange Maps
Brand New
Design Observer
SawxBlog
Innerspaeth
Inform Yourself
Que Ricco
Elliott Williams
Melissa Cliver
Kyle Vice
Kip Lee
Phil Robinson
Paul Robare
Lindsay & Rachael
i am neurotic
Inherent
Cityofsound
