emenel

designer, cyclist, musician, and food lover

works at Normative in Toronto

@emenel
last.fm > mn-l
flickr > emenel
Hybrid Moments (music)
mn-l (music)

My band has our first EP out today! We’re also playing tonight at The Silver Dollar in Toronto.

We recorded this ourselves with a very DIY setup and mixed it over the last couple weeks.

Comments (View)
mmilan:

Taken with Instagram at Normative Inc.

mmilan:

Taken with Instagram at Normative Inc.

Comments (View)
Comments (View)
Comments (View)
Comments (View)
Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.

Thanks to Dave Gray for pointing this out to me during a conversation about service. This is the best and most simple rule for any person in a service position. If the police, TSA, and others used a guideline like this we would all be much better off. It really relates to a great post by Lukas Neville about autonomy and being a decent human being… 

Nordstrom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Comments (View)

My issue with “Design Thinking” this morning

I occurred to me this morning that one of my issues with “design thinking” and the way that it has been adopted is that it’s turned into the ultimate post-modern device. It has an uncanny ability to claim credit for, or apply itself to, any type of creative or unusual thinking after the fact. 

I’ve seen a number of conversations, including one on CBC radio this morning, about Occupy as a design movement, or a design thinking solution to a wicked problem. To me this feels like imposing a framework on something once it’s already happened… Occupy is what happens when people are pushed to their limits and are disenfranchised. We’ve seen this before and it will happen again. Just because the approach is different and people are thinking about how to stage a protest in a new way does not make it “design thinking.”

Is every innovation “design thinking” now? Let’s be fair to real design, and to the people who are doing interesting things that aren’t design, and not diminish their creativity by lumping it all under this new philosophical umbrella, that was intended as a business tool more than anything. 

</rant-and-run-on-sentences>

Comments (View)
Comments (View)

This song, which came out in the late 90’s, is true now more than ever. 

“Publicly subsidized! Privately profitable!”
The anthem of the upper-tier, puppeteer untouchable.
Focus a moment, nod in approval,
Bury our heads back in the bar-codes of these neo-colonials.

Our former nemesis, the romance of the nation state,
Now plays fundraiser for a new brand of power-concentrate.
Try again, but now we’re confused; what is “class war”?
Is this class war? Yes, this is class war.

And I’m just a kid.
I can’t believe I gotta worry about this kind of shit.
What a stupid world.

And it’s beautiful,
No regard for principle.
What a stupid world.

Born, hired, disposed.
Where that job lands, everybody knows.
You can tell by the smile on the CEO,
Environmental restraints are about to go.

You can bet laws will be set
To ensure the benefit
Of unrestricted labour laws,
Kept in place by displaced government death squads.

They own us.
They own us.
Produce us.
Consume us.

They own us.
They own us.
Produce us.
Consume us.

Can you fucking believe?
What a stupid world.

Fuck this bullshit display of class-loyalties.
The media and “our” leaders wrap it all up in a flag, shit-rag, hooray.

Propagandhi - Nation States (by TheBenji979)

Comments (View)
Comments (View)
Our lovely little nook of cookbooks in the kitchen at home.. 
Cookbooks! (by emenel)

Our lovely little nook of cookbooks in the kitchen at home.. 

Cookbooks! (by emenel)

Comments (View)
mmilan:

#torontoculture (Taken with Instagram at Bathurst Skatepark)

mmilan:

#torontoculture (Taken with Instagram at Bathurst Skatepark)

Comments (View)
Punk rock might be for the young. But being punk rock is for everyone. (via You and What Army: PUNX NOT DEAD)
Once again, Michael Azerrad sums up my feeling about music and life better than anybody else.

Punk rock might be for the young. But being punk rock is for everyone. (via You and What Army: PUNX NOT DEAD)

Once again, Michael Azerrad sums up my feeling about music and life better than anybody else.

Comments (View)

Institutionalized

  • I was sitting in my room, and I was like staring at the walls thinking about everything but then again I was thinking about nothing, and then my mom came in and I didn't notice she was there and she calls my name and I didn't hear her and then she started screaming: Mike, Mike!
  • And I go: What, what's the matter?
  • She goes: What's the matter with you?
  • I say: Nothing mom.
  • She goes: Don't tell me nothing, you're on drugs!
  • I go: No mom, I'm not on drugs, I'm ok, I'm just thinking, you know, why don't you get me a Pepsi?
  • She goes: No, you're on drugs, you're crazy, normal people won't be acting that way!
  • I go: Mom, I'm all right, I'm just thinking, you know, so why don't you, like give me a Pepsi?
  • And she goes: No, you're crazy!
  • All I wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi, and she wouldn't give it to me, just one Pepsi.
Comments (View)
We understand materials not by reading about them, or assuming what they can do, but by exploring them, playing with them, sketching with them. Ideally, that sketching happens in the final material, but perhaps, like a sculptor sketching on paper, it happens in abstractions such as paper-prototyping. What matters is that you find a way. Sketching is not just about building towards a final work; it’s about building familiarity with a medium itself, working it into one’s practice.

This is one of the best short pieces about art, design, technology, and material that I’ve read. It aligns perfectly with my own thoughts on the subject, and expresses them in a way I haven’t been able to.

I found this originally through Russell Davies at http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2011/08/technology-as-a-material.html

Full Article: Infovore » Technology As A Material

Comments (View)