Month: March 2018
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Pay or Play?
This week the UK government announced a proposal to encourage recycling of bottles and cans by creating a returnable deposit scheme funded by increased prices on drinks. Scotland have already announced plans for such a scheme and the Welsh Assembly are also considering this. Such schemes, for glass bottles, we around from early in the […]
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‘It’s OK, to want to be ordinary…’
Recently one of my colleagues, for the purposes of this blog let’s call her Helen, is nearing two notable landmarks in her life. One is her fortieth birthday and the second is her final ophthalmic consultation to register her as blind. For most of her life, Helen has been visually impaired, but she then became […]
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Facing austerity with clever design
Braving a snowstorm and impending TMA deadlines, three students and a visitor joined us to explore the Imperial War Museum’s exhibits in the North. We investigated the effects austerity measures had on the designs and designing throughout the 20th century. The scarcity of materials and resources, and resulting inventions of new materials and production techniques, was […]
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A fairground of ideas in Milton Keynes
Sometimes, you just have to do it – get everyone in one place and bounce ideas, share inspirations and motivations. So what was the Milton Keynes Design Fair like? Three tutors, three central academics, seven students across the Design Innovation Qualification and two visitors made their way to the Open University Campus on a rainy […]
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Greeting Card Design for Mother’s Day
Throughout history and across cultures we have venerated and celebrated motherhood. Particularly the mother’s role in bringing forth and nurturing new life. The first greeting cards were designed by the ancient Chinese and early Egyptians. Much much later in the 20th century, we began to see the design of Mother’s Day cards celebrating motherhood in […]
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Memories of Lionel March (1934 – 2018)
Memories from friend and former-student, Chris Earl: Lionel March was a scholar and artist. He inspired generations of students and colleagues to combine the formal and the creative in planning and design. His contributions to theory and practice ranged from mathematics to painting, from computation to stage set design, from architectural history to architectural practice […]
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Farewell Trevor Baylis -Inventor, Designer and Engineer
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On Lionel March and abduction
Design at the Open University, has a history that brings together different research traditions and thematic areas. One of those research traditions is focussed on mathematical and computational studies of design and can be traced back to Lionel March who was appointed Design Chair at the OU in 1976 and founded the Centre for Configurational […]