Media Lab creates Center for Future Storytelling - MIT News Office

Hollywood is moving East! Media Lab creates Center for Future Storytelling. This is an exciting time for rethinking the idea of storytelling and how people and objects may engage in creating and sharing stories. Another aspect that is interesting is the mutation of story through different people, as a method to promote and distribute academic/intellectual creativity within our society. Plymouth Rock Studios will be there to foster the next generation of movie creation. This story made the New York Times and also the Boston Globe.

Tad Toulis on Ugly Design

My buddy Tad wrote a treatise on Ugly Design. Ugly is a subjective term for the anti-mainstream embodiments of products. However, I aspire to accomplish more than a physical, visceral appearance, and visual reaction to my work. My goal is creative experience design, where ugly could be explored because it elicits something new in our experience of interacting with the product. I propose to answer the activity theorists question "what is the context of the purposeful action", through creating new contexts and new experiences for the user/customer.

Ugly is definitely a valid axis for design. Ugly in the visual sense could possess beauty in the other modalities, tactile and audio. Ugly can be beautiful if it is personalized. Ugly also embraces DIY culture, because the personal creation often possess an anti-professional aesthetic. Thanks to Tad for telling us "Ugly is the new 'cool kid'"