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The Student Life an ongoing journal by Donald Lehman |
....who is Donald Lehman? |
June 30, 2003  by Donald Lehman A 16-hour car ride gets you from Rochester, New York to Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is where I am right now. No, I am not here to check out where all the filming locations for the Mighty Duck movies were. I am here to work at Blu Dot, the furniture design company, which happens to be based out of Minneapolis. Really, I got very lucky to find a summer internship where my design sensibilities and personality matches up pretty evenly with the companies’. I appreciate the combination of simplicity, affordability, and tongue-in-cheek humor that goes into the work they produce. Plus, I'm learning a ton. In the first week alone, I had picked up two new software packages (SolidWorks and Rhino. Take THAT Alias! Oh how I loathe Alias…), worked on some concepts, and built prototype tables for Crate & Barrel. Crate & Barrel you say? A little known fact about Blu Dot is besides producing their own line of furniture, they also do contract work with companies such as Crate & Barrel, Target, and Gap to name a few. I liken it to being an industrial design consultancy that specializes in furniture. My friend Chris, who just moved out to California to make inroads to the furniture industry, tells me he is finding a lot of companies are working in the contract market. It seems to be a secret everyone knew about except for me. As for Minneapolis… I LOVE this city. Maybe it’s the nice and easy Midwestern attitude of its inhabitants? Maybe it’s the open and clean feel of the city itself? Or maybe it’s the fact that I just turned 21 and I have been viewing everything in a constant drunken haze… Whatever the reason, I really like this place and believe it or not, it is a huge design town. No, really it is. Just down the street from me is the Frank Gehry designed Weisman Art Gallery on the University of Minnesota campus. The Walker Art Gallery is the major muesum in town and it is just phenomenal. I would put it on par with the MoMA in New York. In terms of industrial design it's not as well known, but it more than holds it’s own in graphic design (Duffy Design, Charles S. Anderson Design, etc.). But anyway, I see that the bars are open for another couple hours and being that under U.S. law I can now handle my liquor more responsibly than I could a couple weeks ago…  Shameless Thought at Work Update: The conference is moving along great. At our website (www.thoughtatwork.com) you can see we already have Steve Portigal as well as Duane Smith and Stefane Barbeau of Vessel & release1 fame signed on to speak. Two others we can now tell you about are John Christakos (co-founder and president of Blu Dot) and Cameron Sinclair (founder of Architecture for Humanity). “This Franchise Better Open In Rochester By The Time I Get Back” Design of the Month: Chipotle Chipotle is the most amazing restaurant experience I have ever come across. They make one item: Burritos. Stay with me on this. They are the size of a Nerf football and they are oh so good, with each one being made to order by a smiling Chipotle employee. Unfortunetly, the restaurant is in limited locations (I had never heard of it until I got to Minneapolis) which is why I try to eat there at least three times a week. You know, so I won’t miss it when I leave for home… or something like that. Beyond the food, the personality of the place is great. Every location is designed in plywood and corrugated sheet metal and the ad campaign they have going is so good it makes me weep. |
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