Advice to Sink in Slowly: Designers Share Wisdom with First-Year Students in Poster Series

Unpacking the secrets of happiness and creativity one poster at a time.

What better way to kick off the new year than with words of wisdom from those who have threaded before us? That’s precisely the premise of advice to sink in slowly, a wonderful project enlisting design graduates in passing on advice and inspiration to first-year students through an ongoing series of posters — part Live Now, part Everything Is Going To Be OK, part Wisdom, part something completely refreshing, based on the idea that we all have subjective wisdom we wish we’d known earlier, but often don’t get a chance to pass it on to those who can benefit from it in a way that makes them pay heed.

Advice is subjective. But, by passing on advice in a creative way, it is possible to create something that lasts, that people will want to live with and which can let the advice sink in slowly and help out later on.”

'to create ideas is a gift, but to choose wisely is a skill' by Ryan Morgan

'Do what you love' by Andy J. Miller

'Take Time' by Temujin Doran

'Use your library…you'll miss it when you leave' by Rebecca Cobb

'Finish what you start* *it may seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.' by Irina Troitskaya

'Ignore both of them' by Eleni Kalorkoti

'Go and look outside' by Robert Evans

'You have to leave your room to get there' by Ben Javens

'if in doubt, make tea' by Owen Davey

'trust your gut instincts' by Carys Williams

'Don't be afraid, everything will be alright' by Ben Javens

'collaborate' by Simon Vince

'Believe in the marks that you will make' by Stephie Ginger

'how to make friends in your first term' by Temujin Doran

'eat breakfast' by Always With Honor

'Be free!' by Anna-Kaisa

'don't keep your worries to yourself' Rebecca Cobb

'Find some place to stop & be quiet' by Lizzy Stewart

'everything is possible' by Lee Basford

Free posters are available to first-year students across the U.K. upon request. Four of the posters are available for purchase in a fundraising effort, with 100% of the proceeds feeding back to support this wonderful project — so go ahead and grab one, then let its wisdom sink in slowly.

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PBS Off Book: The Magic of Book Art and Papercraft in 5 Minutes

The architecture of whimsy, or what the progression of time has to do with embracing the possible.

After their fantastic micro-documentaries on typography and generative art, the fine folks at PBS Off Book turn their lens to book art and papercraft — something I’m quite fond of myself. The film features artists Carole Kunstadt, Matthew Reinhart (of Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy fame), and Andrea Dezso (whose forthcoming Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses is looking wicked delicious.)

Books in general are really good at showing time and progression, a ton of books are very good at showing something happening right here, right now. They are depicting these worlds that are almost like a dream, and everything seems very real and very possible… I like to create scenes that want to be explained, because I think about them almost as these springboards for the imagination — you long to go there, you long to be there.” ~ Andrea Dezso

For more book art and papercraft magic, see Spike Jonze’s terrific recent stop-motion love story for book lovers, David Carter’s whimsical pop-up books, the beautiful trailer for Going West, and Gestalten’s excellent fond of Papercraft 2 compendium.

In 2011, bringing you Brain Pickings took more than 5,000 hours. If you found any joy and stimulation here this year, please consider a modest donation.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Fashioning Apollo: How the Spacesuit Was Designed

What Neil Armstrong has to do with combinatorial creativity, underdog innovators, and sports bras.

On July 12, 1969, only 21 layers of fabric, most gossamer-thin, stood between Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and the lethal desolation of a lunar vacuum.”

So begins UC Berkeley architecture professor Nicholas de Monchaux’s Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo — a fascinating voyage into the sartorial history of space flight through the parallel history of one of its key technologies: the spacesuit. Blending material science, iconic photography, and intriguing trivia (did you know that the Apollo mission’s computer-backup system was crafted into a binary pattern that was then physically woven into ropes?), the book itself is cleverly constructed as a series of layers corresponding to the 21 layers of the Apollo spacesuit.

The story of the Apollo spacesuit is the surprising tale of an unexpected victory: that of Playtex, maker of bras and girdles, over the large military-industrial contractors better positioned to secure the spacesuit contract. This book tells the story of this victory, and analyzes both the Playtex suit — a 21-layer, complex assemblage — and its ‘hard’ competitors. It is the clean lines of the latter that have traditionally captured designers’ imaginations: one noted critic described the AX-3 ‘hard’ suit as ‘the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.’”

For more on these competitors, as well as the evolution of the spacesuit over the following decades, see The Smithsonian’s excellent Spacesuits: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Collection.)

One of the most fascinating aspects of the spacesuits is its testament to combinatorial creativity and the idea that everything comes from what came before. Monchaux writes:

A space suit is made out of a flight suit, a Goodrich tire, a bra, a girdle, a raincoat, a tomato worm. An American rocket ship is made out of a nuclear weapon, and a German ballistic missile; a ‘space program’ — a new organization with new goals — is made out of preexisting military, scholarly, and industrial institutions and techniques.”

The Los Angeles Review of Books has a closer look, and BLDG BLOG has a wonderful interview with de Monchaux.

Meticulously researched and captivatingly written, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo is a fine addition to the year’s best history books.

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In 2011, bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings took more than 5,000 hours. If you found any joy and stimulation here this year, please consider a modest donation.

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