Stasi Prison, Berlin (with its original 1951 furnishings, eerily chipper)

Once you understand the nature of color, space and design, your prison will reflect good planning and radiate a personality only you can give it. Play smooth surfaces against rough. Reserve brilliance for accent pieces. If you keep it simple, serene, with a minimum of clutter, you’ll find it warm and friendly, and most easy to keep.

Malmo

We met each other on swings and mattresses in a big bright metal treehouse… At TED India I met Freeman Murray who gave a talk about his pallet rack building and invited us all to check it out in Bangalore. Using standard warehouse storage pallet racks, he and other creative locals built Jaaga, a three-story collaborative community space for art exhibits, dance performances, film showings, lectures, parties, and anything else you can think up. It’s super flexible and relatively low-cost ($15,000 for 3000 square feet). Coincidentally a few days earlier I was chatting about flexible spaces with Adam Greenfield in Helsinki and he put Cedric Price on my radar – a British architect who, in 1961, came up with the idea of the Fun Palace, a flexible community space of moveable and modular units whose only fixed element was a structural grid of steel columns and beams. It was never built, but when I saw Jaaga I thought ooh it is now!

Thanks to good neighbors I’ve shared wi-fi, chairs, a large pot, a bike, design books, a corkscrew, a ladder, an iron, professional studio lights, an inflatable bed, wine, and food. And this is only amongst a few neighbors because I rarely bump into most and have no way to break the ice. In a time where SMS has made phone calls seem invasive, a door knock feels nearly violating. My neighbors could be in their pajamas, eating dinner, fresh out of the shower, or making out, and suddenly I’m banging on their door…

So when the good people of GOOD Magazine invited me to contribute to their Neighborhoods issue (April 2010), I wondered if I could take advantage of the format and make something that could be torn out of the magazine and used as a tool. The Neighbor Doorknob Hanger is a simple, double-sided sign that provides a friendly platform for residents in dense quarters to offer and request things at everyone’s convenience. One side says “Please Disturb” and makes space for you to list offerings and choose how you prefer to be contacted – a knock at specific times that are good for you, by phone, or by email. The other side of the doorknob hanger says “Can I borrow?” and provides the same format for requesting things and resources. Think of it as an invitation, a validated request, or a low-tech status update for your door, so we can share more resources without frightening each other at a bad time!

The doorknob hanger was printed on fine card stock in GOOD Magazine in April 2010, but if you missed the issue you can print your own at home with these fine pdf files of side 1 and side 2.

Bangalore, India

Johannesburg, South Africa

Somewhere in North Carolina, USA

Medan, Indonesia

Panama City, Florida, USA

Placencia, Belize (I’m partial)

Tallinn, Estonia

Nice, France

Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Johannesburg, South Africa

Yrjonkatu Swimming Hall (est. 1928), private pool, floor 3B, Sunday April 11th 2010. 15 naked girls with champagne and the run of a private 1920s sauna, pool, and hot tub.

“Rosemary felt that this swim would become the typical one of her life, the one that would always pop up in her memory at the mention of swimming.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

While walking around Prague we stumble onto the Hervis Prague Half Marathon. Each runner is given a rectangular piece of foil to help stay warm, and behold the range of beauteous fashions they conjure up:

Oversized Scarf

Double-tie Cardigan

Tube Dress with Bow

Volumous Vest. Layered Shawl & Skirt

Superman Cape

Gas station in North Carolina

I ask James for movie recommendations.

“Mannequin.”

“Schindler’s List.”

“House Party 3.”

Finding old projects is always fun, or at the very least entertaining. While digging through an old external hard drive I found this one which takes me back to a time when I was consumed with kneeling on my apartment floor groping toys into the late hours of the night. This is what happens when design students don’t go to class ha… In 2001, James Reeves, Steve Baker and I holed up and made this stop-motion animation for the fun of it. Construction workers and spacemen build a space station, send faxes, and find friendship, all to a very soupy electronic soundtrack. After all these years this low-fi copy is the only surviving version, but the fuzziness probably adds to its janky charm. Direct YouTube link here.

Finland offers free local maps in choice public spaces like Helsinki’s train station and outside of Turku’s tourist office (above, demonstrated by the lovely Suvi). Just push the button and out pops a handy guide and a welcoming feeling.

“Every design process is incomplete unless it takes into careful consideration what could be done with the product by a dictatorial megalomaniac in command of a national economy, a secret police, and a large army.” – Bruce Sterling

“You know, after people complained that elevator rides took too long, someone had the clever idea of putting mirrors on the walls. People didn’t complain after that.”

“Oh that’s clever, so people had something to — oh, we’re here.”

Fun and classy signage in Helsinki’s Alkos that includes over 20 icons to help customers feel out potential food pairings. The duck with the holes? Game birds ha.

While in India I learned a new word – jugaad = making do, being resourceful, getting your MacGyver on. Sometimes this comes in seriously retooled forms like a floating bicycle by Mohammed Saidullah to fend off flood waters and cross the river. Other times it comes in small details like these magazine pages and flyers turned into street food containers. Neat! I asked vendors where they got the idea and they all said they saw another guy doing it. Cheaper than buying dedicated bags and more striking and customizable to boot. And imagine the bonus reading material and centerfolds customers could unfurl after eating…

Along a miracle mile in Georgia

I finally entered the 21st century and updated my website. No more table-tinkering in Dreamweaver like a caveman. Now it’s all Wordpress-ified (big thanks to James for the advanced moves). Plus, bigger pictures and bigger fonts for bigger fun.

The flash cards are also available at Project No.8’s new store No. 8a in the Ace Hotel! If you’re a New York store interested in carrying the cards, please contact Maggie@tandn.org.

3″ x 4″ die-cut cards are printed on 12pt coated cover stock by Colortone.
The word on the street: BLDG BLOG. Boingboing, Gothamist, FastCompany, Public Workshop

Download a pdf version!
Read my article about the process on the Urban Omnibus!

32″ x 22″ fold-out poster is printed on heavy 80 lb. Lynx Brightwhite Smooth matte paper stock by Westcan/Printcrafters Inc.
The word on the street: The New York Times, New York Magazine, TYPO Magazine, Communication Arts, BLDGBLOG.
This project will be featured in the 2010 National Design Triennial by the Smithsonian, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum!

Tickets from street vendors – mostly for parking their cart too far from the curb, parking on restricted streets, parking too close to a storefront, and not “conspicuously” wearing their license

Typical page from current regulation book. Snap!

Meeting with street vendors to develop the guide

Distribution event, 2009. Vendor photos by CUP

The team: Sean Basinski, Rosten Woo, John Mangin, and Candy Chang

And something Sean recently found from 1905:

“I think it would be a great advantage to all the peddlers to have a translated copy of the license issued. As it is, some of the Italians cannot understand the regulations of the road and the ordinances of the City. If it were printed in English…in Yiddish…in Greek, Italian and Syrian for the others it would prove to be a great aid to them.”
- Rev. Bernardino Polizzo, 1905, during a hearing on the pushcart menace

One of these posters I made will be in the exhibit Poster4Tomorrow, a global event highlighting the censorship that still muffles citizens around the world. I got a first-hand schooling from TED Fellow Esra’a Al Shafei who can’t have her picture taken/posted for fear of being identified by various Middle Eastern governments. Her organization MideastYouth.com is an unfiltered platform that facilitates freedom of expression and constructive discussion amongst youth in the Middle East (with provocative video mashups to boot), but they have to constantly get their nerd on and rewire their internets in order to keep their lines open to the rest of the world. At least not as bad as in China, she said, where the internet police are even more sophisticated in their nerdy ways. Spread that. The exhibit of 100 posters from designers around the world launches December 10th in 20+ cities including Beirut, Belgrade, and Buenos Aires. Latest news here. If you want to print them out you can download big versions here and here.

The Idiotic Building is a miniature book about following all of your “idiotic” dreams, as told through the story of New York City’s first skyscraper. At 13 stories tall, the Tower Building seemed so ludicrous to people that they nicknamed it the Idiotic Building and waited for it to fall. It never did, paving the way for greater heights for decades to come. I felt compelled to make the book after hearing its brief mention in New York: A Documentary Film. The 53-page book also ends with a flip-book-like timeline of the world’s tallest buildings through history and serves as a fun introduction to architecture.

Idiotic story and select spreads from the chronology of the world’s tallest buildings through history

Read my article about the process on the Urban Omnibus!
54″ x 54″. Installation assistance by Kay Cheng.
The word on the street: Gothamist, Utne, The Design Studio for Social Intervention

More images on Flickr

Results:

All Post-it notes on final day.

Post-it notes whittled down to ones with responses (half of total).

After the week-long installation it was a pleasant surprise that 1) nearly all the Post-it notes stayed in tact after multiple rain storms and 2) people responded! 151 notes out of 300 were filled out. What a fun and easy way to collect neighborhood info… The results are tallied below:

Nearly half of responses came from people living in their apartment for 2 years or less – a reflection of the temporary-ness of many New Yorkers/renters? The winner of Cheapest Apartment goes to someone living in a studio in Carroll Gardens for 43 years that costs $146/month (!) And the Most Expensive goes to someone in a 4-br in Cobble Hill for 4 years that costs $3,720/month. Some other interesting responses about monthly rents:

3 br in Red Hook for 13 yrs – $200
1-br in Brooklyn Heights for 1 yr – $3315
1-br in Jersey City for 3 yrs – $1000 (”w/ a backyard bitches!”)
3-br loft in Chelsea for 30 yrs – $1095
1-br in Cobble Hill for 11 yrs – $893.45
1-br in Carroll Gardens for 21 yrs – $350
2-br in Clinton Hill for 14 yrs – $700
2-br in Williamsburg for 10 yrs – $800
2-br in Carroll Gardens for 55 yrs – $350
2-br in Bethlehem, PA (the only non-NYC-area response) for 1 wk – $730

52 responses came from people living in 1-br apartments in Carroll Gardens. Below are the range of costs depending on the number of years people have lived in their apartment:

A few lifers are getting some good deals, but it seems like some costs have caught up with time. I printed “cost(s)” on the notes to invite input from both renters and owners, but the responses were mostly from renters. Now I see that I still botched the wording – most Brooklynites buy complete brownstones/houses rather than apartments. The only owners who entered info were people who I met while tending to the project – one guy has lived in a two-apartment house in Carroll Gardens for 30 years and it cost him a mere $125,000 (it’s worth $3 million now). He also happened to know my old landlords around the corner and said their family was “trouble” (agreed, ha). And a woman named Deborah bought three homes in Bed Stuy from 1988-2003 and never paid more than $250,000. They put her two sons through college and will allow her to retire early. “Like they say,” she said, “they’re not making any more of it. Get yourself some real estate!”

View pdf of final report.

Credits: Project Director: Laura Kurgan. Project Coordinator: Steven Caputo, Research Associates: Johnna Cressica Brazier, Deborah Grossberg Katz. 2006 Fellows: Candy Chang. Andrew Colopy, Derek Lindner, Leah Meisterlin, Julia Molloy. This work builds upon a two year research project: Graphical Innovations in Justice Mapping, a collaboration between the Justice Mapping Center, the Spatial Information Design Lab and the JFA Institute. Project Team: Laura Kurgan, Eric Cadora (Project Directors), Sarah Williams, David Reinfurt. Invaluable research and thinking was also provided by the students in the GSAPP Advanced Studio, Spring 2007: Johnna Cressica Brazier, Steven Caputo, Jane Estrada, Laura Lee, Catie Liken, John G. Lloyd, Annemarie Scheel

Percent persons living in poverty per block group, 2000

Percent adults admitted to prison per block group, 2003

Prison expenditures per block in thousands of dollars, 2007

Justice reinvestment network in Central City, 2007

The word on the street: BoingBoing, DailyCandy, Spacing Magazine, Geez Magazine

The tenant flash cards can now be purchased online for $10! The boxed set makes a handsome and righteous gift for anyone living in New York state, and all profits go to the good work of non-profit Tenants & Neighbors. It was great fun creating them and now you can enjoy good times learning the law on security deposits, privacy, repairs, eviction and more. Learn more about the project and buy them in Tenants & Neighbors’ online store!

Team: Bongani Baloyi, Lucky Mkah, Lungile Maphumulo, Tebatso Lebotsa, Selaelo Chuene, Phumlani Suka, Warren Mabona, Lawrence Matshidiso, Sam Sikhosana, Anja Bredell, Jennifer Graeff, Belinda Kanpetch, Crighton Nichols, Elonah O’Neil, Dr. Marc Aurel Schnabel, Michelle Tabet, Candy Chang

In addition to the event, I designed a local resource guide made for and by recovering female drug addicts. During peer support meetings the women would scribble down and xerox a recommended event and pass pages around; they had no easier way to keep track. To help remedy this, the guide includes a blank calendar to help maintain a positive schedule for peer support meetings and more. It also includes a map of female-friendly organizations, key of services, and list of phone numbers for crisis, legal and recovery help. The pamphlet is easily xerox-able at community facilities and, as suggested by VANDU members, the pamphlet folds down to wallet-size for easy portability. 2006.

Temporary park on Hastings Street

The team, minus VANDU Women’s Group (for privacy)

Entire Global Studio Vancouver family, working with other community groups in the area

Thanks to university support and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, equal numbers of students from both developed and developing countries have been able to participate in the month-long program. As a student in Vancouver 2006 and a project associate in Johannesburg 2007 and 2008, I’ve worked with recovering drug addicts and a community news group and helped the team on projects that focus on information-sharing, the environment, housing, and the arts. I’ve also worked with cofounder and convener Anna Rubbo to develop and design many things along the way, including a website and exhibition (pdf of the panels, some below). It’s involved over 30 countries, 50 universities, and 10 disciplines – and is the reason I have so many Facebook friends. Get a glimpse from the images below and check out the website for more information.

View pdf of all panels

The crew: Sarah Williams, Michael Wilkerson, Jennifer Kaminsky, Amanda Huron, Catherine Herdlick, Candy Chang. Stickers printed by Stickergiant.com.

Google map of sticker locations in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Guided tour, September 2007

Guided tour, September 2007

Work in progress

Project website

Photo credit: Evgene Belikov

Photo credit: Evgene Belikov

View pdf of facts page

]]> http://candychang.com/the-hair-district/feed/ 0 http://candychang.com/pedestrian-timeline/ http://candychang.com/pedestrian-timeline/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:36:19 +0000 admin http://candychang.com/main/?p=2125 Did you know squirrels didn’t arrive on Governors Island until 1931? That’s right. To bring local history to the streets, I stenciled 20 landmark events in the history of Governors Island along the sidewalk. From a bucolic nutfest to a military base to a future public park, the mysterious island just south of Manhattan has gone through a lot. As visitors walk along the path, they can easily get their learn on about the local area while enjoying a leisurely stroll. Created with temporary spray-chalk, the Pedestrian Timeline was part of the Figment public art event on Governors Island in June 2008.

Stencils in reverse order to emulate the stroll if you scroll up:

]]> http://candychang.com/pedestrian-timeline/feed/ 0 http://candychang.com/bike-map-covers/ http://candychang.com/bike-map-covers/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:28:09 +0000 admin http://candychang.com/main/?p=2230 Things are definitely on the up and up for NYC bikers as the City continues to add new bike lanes each year. They can easily find them thanks to the NYC bike map (free at any bike shop). I got a chance to offer the Department of Transportation some designs for the 2008 bike map cover. Alas they went with something in-house, but I thought I’d post the three design directions here so they can have a brief life beyond my laptop.

View pdf

View pdf

The original collage

Created for our design firm Red Antenna with production assistance by Kyra Porada.

Logos: Mobil, Nike, Texaco, Citibank, Wal-Mart, Exxon

Last year I got a generous grant from Sappi Ideas That Matter to create flash cards on tenants’ rights with the NY grassroots organization Tenants & Neighbors. After working together for months and sending them out to the printers, the cards have arrived! The boxed set of thirty cards translates NY state’s official Tenants Rights Guide document into good fun and layman’s terms on topics from security deposits and subletting to privacy and discrimination. It’s pretty awesome to see what was once a one-off turn into truckloads, and they’ll be given to members and made available in their online store soon – will keep you posted…

It’s a Skittle bag of colors! After stints and blips of various parties in the first century, it’s strictly been a two-player game since 1869. Since then, the ball has been passed between Democrats and Republicans 14 times (10 since 1900). The longest period in the Presidency goes to the Democrats with a 20-year reign from 1933 to 1953 (three terms of Roosevelt and two terms of Truman). And the longest period of a one-party dominant Congress goes to the Democrats with 26 years from 1955 to 1981.

These are substantial chunks of time, but all in all, our Presidents have come from both sides. Since 1900, we’ve had 15 Republicans and 12 Democrats in office. And to complicate things, the parties themselves have changed over time. So just when you think we’re all going to be burning our bras or teaching our kids that Jesus invented people, the system shifts back…

Sources:
U.S. House of Representatives
U.S. Senate
EnchantedLearning

October 2008

Track List

Serif side
a1. Telegram 41
a2. El Lissitzky’s Revenge

San Serif side
b1. Bravo Futura
b2. The Letterpress Express

The silkscreening good times continue… Newsprint posters wheat-pasted in downtown NYC

“Fiercely polished electro with rocked-out soul. Thick driving percussion, lowriding vintage bass for boomin’ systems, and sparkling analogue keyboard lines conjure sharp modernist grids, colorful scenes from tomorrow’s discotheques, robots with dirty minds, and half-forgotten night-drives through Babylon. Candy Chang is remarkably able to glance back at Prince and Cybotron, while keeping her designer’s eye fixed on a new style and sound all her own.” Released in 2003.

“From the hipshakin’ “Letterpress Express”, like a Russ Meyer soundtrack, to the all-in assault of “Bravo Futura”, as always the artwork is incredibly well packaged” – Syntax

“Bubbling stripped down acidic electro with swelling basslines and dark pop moods.” – Sonic Groove

Click here to see large seamless image!

Original sea monkeys ad