Towson Mall

Today I stopped by the mall and went into several high end stores that I thought maybe carried fur. To my surprise I found nothing but faux fur. I decided that I will have to go to a furrier if I want to distribute these. Too bad I didn't make any cow ones because leather is still quite abundant.

http://nothoney.com/2006/12/12/hsus-investigates-burlington-coat-factory-for-animal-fur-fraud/

I did find a very interesting atrical when trying to research the stores that carried fur. Burlington Coat Factory was advertising real fur as faux fur. I find this really nasty. It's like giving a vegetarian a veggie burger with meat in it.

Fur Is Dead Postcard

Design Skills

Design Skills are the ability to design effectively. If you have very little design skills you won't be able to be successful. I think that design skills are something that you have to have naturally, but also something that you learn. At http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?613 they give a list of basic categories that all designers should have some skills in. Pattern Recognition, Story Telling, Visual Communication and even Empathy are listed. Empathy is an interesting point, to be a successful designer you should know about current events and publish your opinion on them.

Social Issues

I was at work tonight and was very bored. I decided to use this time to compile a list of possible social issues I could use for the Geurilla Tactics. Here is my list, hopefully I can give you guys some ideas. I plan to edit this post and add my ideas for each topic that I'm interested in. I may also try and group some of these together.

1. Hunting or Leather and Fur
Ideas:
a.) Print pictures of animal corpse and put it in leather or fur product at a store, so that when someone buys it they will open it up and see what the real cost of the bag was.
b.) Make an illustration of a reverse situation(Ex. Human head mounted on wall) and post it in a hunting area.
2. Road Rage
3. Smoking
Ideas:
a.) Create a fake advertisement that after 100 cartons you can get a free voicebox.
4. Drinking or Drinking and Driving
Ideas:
a.) People are laughing at you, not with you on poster with a drunk person that was written on while he was passed out at a party.
5. Little girls acting like sluts (Hannah Montanna)
Ideas:
a.) Print a gorilla face and put it on Bratz dolls. (idea taken from class discussion)
6. Sexism (No fat chicks)
Ideas:
a.) Create a "No fat dicks" shirt.
7. Financial Equality
8. Political differences
9. Healthcare
10. Sex (Young pregnancy)
11. Divorce
12. Racism
13. Littering
14. Recycling
15. Over reacting (Swine Flu)
16. Economy (Gas prices)
17. Violence
18. Censorship
19. Parenting
20. Bullying

Aid in Dying

I find this to be a really interesting issue. If you were suffering and were critically ill, is it okay for a Docter to help you kill yourself? In Montana their is a strong case going on. Robert Baxter, a 76-year-old lymphocytic leukemia sufferer asked for aid in killing himself because he was in severe pain. He has already passed away, but his case is being used to push for the legalization of assisting death. This brings me to the issue of when someone is in a coma and they will never wake up again. Is it okay to take away life support? I think the answer is yes, if someone is going to die anyway or if they are brain dead I think they should be allowed to decide. If they can't decide a close family member should be able to know what they would have wanted. In my case I think that if I was suffering or if I was pretty much dead anyway I would want to have assistance in killing myself.

DIY Galleries

I went into the Arts section of the New York times to see what is new in the art world and hopefully gain some inspiration. I found something interesting. I will refer to them as DIY Galleries. Artists in London are taking vacant stores or homes to make a temporary gallery. Last month the government in Britain gave $5 million dollars to areas that had a large amount of vacant stores to make into showrooms for local artists. I think this is a great idea because people will be more hopefully if instead of seeing an empty boarded up store they see an artists gallery.

Walk Around

We recently moved into a new house in Finksburg. This is a brand new neighborhood with white picket fences and freshly mowed lawns. Security is installed just incase someone from the next street over decides they want to break in and steal a plasma TV.

That's our current residence on the right side of the road, this may surprise you, but it's probably the smallest of the houses in this neighborhood.

They cleared away the forest and farm land that was once there. Their is a little bit left, so the residents don't feel too bad. I wasn't able to get a picture of it, but their are always deer walking around at night and other creatures that have lost their homes during construction.

Then if you go down the street you see the houses that have been their for years. I noticed this house because they actually dug out the front yard to make a dirt path so another car could park in the middle of their lawn. I find it really sad that we have a garage and a huge driveway with only 3 people living in a 5 bedroom house. I feel like this is wrong. The point of this is my issue is that their is to much of a gap between rich and poor in America.

Social Design

I immediately googled "social design" and the first webpage that popped up was http://socialdesignsite.com, so I checked it out. These keywords may sum up what social design can be about. The slogan of the webpage is "We cannot not change the world." I think this is a great quote because even if you aren't doing anything, you still are affecting the world. I don't really think their is an exact definition on it because it can be several things. Social design is about making your imprint on the world.