Peter Roth conceptual design

Analog or digital? — A culture of gifts

A client confronted me with an odd opinion: He doesn’t want his work (music) to be released online. No MP3! Bad quality! Pirate copying! No. Never. No!

Let’s face it:
Anything that can be digitalized, WILL be. And anything digital that can be copied, WILL be…

Time to take it to the extreme – just imagine: Digital stuff, everything that can be converted into ones and zeros, will be available for free. RIAA or GEMA won’t stop it. The publishing houses won’t stop it. Hollywood won’t stop it. Apple won’t stop it.

Only »analog« experiences, like concerts, meeting people (yes, in the real world, not on facebook), painting/drawing (yes, material matters), products (clothes, porcelain), etcetera, can be monetized.

Scary, right!? But I think it’s worth it to think about this ‘vision’ for a second. Can your business, your art be digitalized? May be it could be reckless to ignore it. The record industry can tell you a thing or two about it.

Why don’t try this one:
You should give away a digital version/part/piece of your art as a gift.
Share it. And it will multiply.
Also it will enhance the value of the analog experience of your art. You will surely receive interest and appreciation for it.

Foodnote:
The notion »art« refers to Seth Godin.
Check out his book: »Linchpin – Are You Indispensable?« (Affiliate link) and his blog post
»The hidden power of a gift«.

Apply Dieter Rams' ten principles to your business

With his ten commandments for good design Dieter Rams created the most remarkable, and I think, the most commonly broken design principles known in the 20th century. He originally derived them from his work in the fields of industrial design, the creation of products you can use, touch and feel.

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.

I deeply believe his ten principles are kind of universal. Their implementation is not only limited and reasonable in the contexts of industrial or visual design. I think they should also be applied to processes as well! And to business in general. More ›

Gero-Codex exhibition catalog

The »Gero-Codex« has been created at the famous scriptorium of the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau around 969 on behalf of the Archbishop of Cologne. Since 2003 the codex is part of the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage. In 2009 it was shown at an exhibition at the Premonstratensian Abbey of Wedinghausen in Arnsberg, one of its long-term repositories. More ›

On conceptual design, emptiness and coming up with questions.

I profoundly believe something has to change. Now. Today. It’s time to change the game. To think bigger. It’s time for a restart.

But first let me outline how I got here.

My creativity has always been energized by simple words. Words like structure, texture, surface, uncertainty, emptiness, error, imperfection, irritation, alignment, etcetera, form some kind of a blurred field I’m navigating in. During my studies at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund I have created numerous works which try to measure this constantly meandering space. Reviewed from now, works like »germs« (2007), »between shores« (2007), »transform« (2005), »eigenzeit« (2006) and »schonung« (2006) appear like maps, each of them representing one part of this space. I derived, and still do, my inspiration from observing natural and/or everyday phenomena – small impressions from the edge of common attention. I’ve always been attracted by the pure beauty of simplicity, naturalness, profundity and solitude. But underneath, there has always been more: a fuzzy feeling I wasn’t able to phrase adequately. More ›

Restart.

Time to restart… (Location: Houstrup Strand, Nørre Nebel, Denmark)