Milieu: Communication Design Discourse

What You Can’t See, Can’t Hurt You.

What follows is a discussion between David Brody, Assistant Professor of Design Studies in the Art & Design Studies Department at Parsons The New School for Design, and Thomas Jockin, Founder of Milieu and student at Parsons.

What started as a conversation over the growth and decline of the facebook group If this group reaches 100,000 members My Girlfriend will have a Threesome became a passionate discussion about privacy, and design’s role in perception.

Designism

the guys over at core77 give a excellent overview of the night with Militon Glasser, George Lois, James Victore, and Jessica Helfand— which I had the pleasure to go to.

read it here. ( You can see a photo of me on the bottom of the page— I'm in the photo of the crowd, on the bottom front.)

Looking back on the night a few days later, I have to say that my overall feeling about it are wheels that are metaphorically spinning in the mud.

More Facebook

Screen Captures of some interesting developments over at the Facebook group discussed prior.

What's going on over at Facebook?

In case there are people who do not know what Facebook is, it is a social networking site, much akin to Myspace— but only for students specificaly as the audience. One feature of facebook is Groups, social clubs based on various ideas or themes. Some of these groups can become quite massive, such as:

So here is the NEW deal:

We NEED 300,000 MEMBERS, According to my gf, if you can get the group to that amount she will allow pics of our threesome to be taken.

And, if by some crazy way, you all are able to make this the largest group on facebook, she will allow video footage of our glorious three-person sexy-time.

So what are you waiting for, INVITE your FRIENDS.

So here WAS the deal:

If I can make a facebook group with over 100,000 people in it before the end of the semester (Dec 31, 2006), I can have a threesome with my gf and a girl of my choosing.Like any red-blooded college guy, I've come to the conclusion that the idea of a threesome is perhaps one of the greatest things imaginable (right behind midget tossing).

Naturally, I have bugged my girlfriend, Holly, to partake in this dream of mine on multiple occassions... sadly, she has declined every single time.

The other day (September 4th, 2006 to be exact), she and I were talking about Facebook for some reason or another and she mentioned how she's a member of some group called the "Largest group on Facebook" and she mentioned how hard it must've been to get a group that size together.

I promptly slapped her (jk darling)... and told her that anyone, given the proper idea, could make a facebook group of larger than normal size.

And just like that, the bet was formed. So INVITE everyone you know and help me on my quest for sexual salvation.

PLEASE HELP. My manhood thanks you in advance.

9/5/06, 2:45 PM (EST)- Group created.
9/5/06, 7:11 PM - 184 members strong.
9/7/06, 2:19 PM - Wow, 7,000.
9/8/06, 1:02 AM - 50,000 members. This is insane.
9/8/06, 1:27 PM - 83,300 members. This is bonkers.
9/8/06, 4:05 PM - 100,000 members. Success!
9/11/06, 12:18 AM - 245,175 members.

Intro

Started as a idea over at a Blogger blog called Communication Ecology, Milieu is the result of the discussions that have resulted in a realization of the Graphic Design community— specifically the writings about it, which can be summed into two categories:

1) Production Discourse: How things are made, What's hot right now, etc., etc.

2) The Digital Revolution Discourse: The same generation of designers have been shaping the conversations for the last 20 years. Pick up a design book or magazine, the chance of finding Steven Heller in it somewhere is very high.

Milieu is nether of those.