Letter 063

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LETTER no. 63Week no.9: Christmas Greetings. SundayDesign 101 MOOC , Abadir for iversity

Greetings from Astana Cemetery , China,What are we doing here?How did we end up in here?

Well, its rather easy. We are herefor this fabulous image of a womanplaying Go. More than 1000 years ago.To be precise, 1269 years ago!

Yesterday, we were in the world of chess, today we go fancierand get into the world of Go. In case you dont know much aboutit, here are some few quotes to put you in a proper mood...

Go uses the most elemental materials and concepts: line andcircle, wood and stone, black and white, combining them withsimple rules to generate subtle strategies and complex tacticsthat stagger the imagination, Iwamoto Kaoru

While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have beencreated by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic,and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms existelsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go,Edward Lasker

Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entryaccounting, Trevanian

Whether you win a game or lose it is a matter of fate at thetime. What really counts is whether or not you played goodmoves, Kajiwara Takeo

Go, is probably the coolest and most fascinating game onEarth. Since designing is very similar to playing, we cannotlive without knowing how to play Go...

The rules are simple: its about positive and negative forces.

One absorbing the other.Which one will win?Only time will tell...

e s i g

n 1

6 3 / 0

W e e k 0 9

S u n d a y

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Who is Anne-Sophie?Anne-Sophie is the Caryatid standing on our

Design 101 Acropolis!

One fine day in July, she sat down with Stefanoand started to imagine what a massive open onlinedesign course could be. As we know, onlinecourses for the teachings of design are stillat their beginnings. It was and still is anexperiment. A formulated hypothesis: one thattoday has been tested for over two months, and

dare we say it, has been proven true.

At this time of giving and receiving, this isyour gift to us. And we are all the more grateful for yourdedication and commitment to the Design 101 philosophy!

A way of life... Anne-Sophie would say, my life to live .

...just as our superhero Confuciusonce said, Everything has beauty,but not everyone sees it.

:-)

A little black dress?Well, as you understood, this week we had quite a simple rule.

Each day we were in a different place, playing a differentgame. And then, because of some magic trick, some otherelement would enter our playing field.

Today, it was not easy at all.

If we start from Go, finding a design reference as good asthat, wasnt easy at all...

We browsed the history of product design. Nothing good. Wewent into graphic design and then architecture. A lot of goodstuff, but nothing as good as go game.

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Finally, we asked Anne-Sophie, What would youlike for Christmas?

Without thinking, she said: If I were to

choose freely, I would go for a little blackdress. A Coco Chanel one.

Then, we all froze because we knew it was whatwe were looking for .

Yes, in the world of absoluteness, the LBD iswhat were searching for.

In the design world of the XXth Century,there were two stunning and absolute breakthroughs:

Henry Ford coming up with the Ford T, and Coco Chanelpulling out the Little Black Dress.

It was about putting together technology, production,style, mass-production and democracy. All those things(aka design) in one thing. In our case, in our littleblack thing.

As the Duchess of Windsor said: When a little black dress isright, there is nothing else to wear in its place.

Very impressive, isnt it?

Why Go?Apart from the reasons explainedat the beginning of our letter,there is one more thing that makesgo game very special to us.

Yesterday, we spoke about computersbeating humans at chess.

Well, in the game of go humans are still superior, and the

computer cannot match our brain .

If you are not convinced yet, then please read: The master ofGo. It was written the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata

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(a chap who won the Nobel Prize forLiterature), and it is one of those books that should be mandatory read by anydesigner.

Well, another week has finished.To celebrate it, here we go with a specialpresent: Audrey Hepburns Breakfast atTiffanys opening scenes . A special design by Hubert de Givenchy ...

In case you like to read, a final link for you!

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Design 101. A How-To.We know we have some late-comers, here are a few instructions

on how the whole thing functions...

A typical Design 101 day:

We send you an email around 9 in the morning (Berlin time) withthe link to our daily unit + some news, updates, cool Design101 things we found etc.etc.

Note: you can find all of our previous emails in the

Announcements section of Design 101 on iversity.

Once you land on the units page, you find our shipment (whichconsists of a video-postcard + a letter). You watch the video,read our letter, get to work and complete the assignment(or relax if its a weekend day). For even more fun, you canalways refer to the Design 101 encyclopedia, which is updatedevery week.

Dont forget to take part in the conversations of the Discussions forum!

Now, going beyond the iversity platform, we have setup otherplaces for us to meet and spread things we do.

On Facebook:the Design 101 page : to follow whats going on (in general terms)the Design 101 Exercises page: to check out picks(things that fascinate us the most)

the Design 101 Arena group: to post your pictures, share yourthoughts, emotions, references, lalala(as a complement to the discussions happening on the platform).

On Twitter ,@design1o1: to follow whats going on + discuss with each other.#design1o1: to connect us all under a same hashtag.

On YouTube :

the Design 101 channel: to view + share our video postcards(which is not possible to do from the iversity platform)

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On Instagram :#design1o1: to connect us all under a same hashtag.

Regarding the hashtag, make sure to use #design1o1 with an oand not a 0...

:-)

PS

Uploading your homework to the iversity platform is veryimportant in terms of archiving. It is the only way we cancollect all the things we do in one same place. Once the courseends, it might turn out to be reorganized into a wonderfulbook and/or exhibition

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Coco Chanel

LBD by Coco Chanel

Todays postcard

Anne-Sophie as Audrey Hepburn in her LBD

Go game