Project M Lab

For more info on the Project M Lab, please visit http://www.projectmlab.com.

For the love of Nic

“Proceed and be bold”

Its been 10 days of sweat, bug bites and cockroach filled streets here in Greensboro, AL. This is truly one of the most rural towns that I’ve ever visited and it makes you wonder if anyone actually lives or wants to be here. The best way to describe it is how one of my fellow M’ers described this town (and many towns like Greensboro as a matter of fact) - “The life of this town is not in the buildings but its in the people.” Since being here we’ve discovered and seen some truly amazing things about this town but we’ve found that in order to discover these hidden gems you have to look just a little below the surface to find it. Hopefully with our time here we can share that shared experience to others.

As for our project, we’re considering establishing a design center whose goal is to identify the social needs of a community, to provide truly innovative solutions through design to make things happen and to educate designers that design can have a positive social impact on communities. So stay tuned, more to come as Project M literally heats up!

Design and the Letter M

As most of you know, I am in Hale County, Alabama on a wonderful and thoughtful program called Project M. The goal of Project M is to prove that design can have a significant impact on society and communities around the world. Before going on this journey I very much questioned the role and validity of design, why I’m in it and more importantly should I even be a part of this industry. Graduating in 1996 from Syracuse University, I had the notion that I had to climb a ladder to be successful. That ladder being getting a job with a big firm, winning all of the prestigous awards, making money, and leaving a legacy that would somehow impact the world of design. But, in the past few years I began to question that ladder so I began to look left, right and sometimes even back down from whence I came.

I’m not really quite sure where this train of thought changed and its taking me out of my comfort zoner but I’ve got faith that its all for the better. For now I’m trying to keep my mind open and “think wrong.”

(Originally posted on www.nexusexperiment.com)