DK | Webinar in Brand Identity Design

A Q&A conversation in the cloud

Pre-requisite: DK | Short course in Brand Identity Design*

About this Course

Learn our top 6 go-to resources for you to discover how to build your brand, from scratch. Talk about these ideas in a webinar, directly with A. Spaice and the team at Design Kompany in this webinar.

More than 80 small businesses, organizations, and NGOs in Seattle, Durham NC and Phnom Penh have hired DK to design brand identities, as well as consider fresh ideas. In other words, or expertise is finding ways to… think in new ways. Experience it. More about DK is at: designkompany.com

Agenda to follow, when you register to confirm.

*If you haven’t already taken DK | Short course in Brand Idnetity Design, you can do that by adding your name to this signup page to get more info: start here.

Issue #86

A. Spaice

S P A C E | Đà Lạt • ‘Tìm Mình Trong Thế Giới’ is the next in our weekly e-zine series. It is set to release on Tuesday.

DK Director Dipika Kohli made the drawing on the cover this week. The drawing’s title is: Chúc Ngủ Ngon & Chào Buổi Sáng / Good Night & Good Morning.

A line artist for many years, Kohli has rekindled her old style of drawing by putting pencil to page again. This [cover] drawing is part of a series of more than fifty new pencil and colored pencil works. These were created in quiet moments, on the spot, in several cafes and brightly lit atelier spaces she discovered while in ‘The Great Lockdown’ (so far) in Đà Lạt, Việt Nam. Kohli had plenty of time alone to write, draw, and reflect, whilst also working on a new book, End of the Rainbow (Kismuth Books / forthcoming 2020).

This  effort has come out of the slowing down, a natural outcome  resulting from the first and second waves of covid19-related measures to maintain social distancing, and self-isolating, in the era of this, the Great Lockdown, so far. Kohli has been in the Central Highlands since April—and continues to discover and make. In bursts, that is. And only when inspired by the chance encounter and surprisingly enriching dialogues with the people in the places where she goes. S P A C E is a weekly zine. It is created by Design Kompany, which was started in 2004 in Seattle and today is based in Phnom Penh. DK are intrigued about how to design the space for an aesthetic moment to happen, on the spot, for unexpected and random connexion, with the people, objects, and places where they go, in S P A C E.

You can order this week’s issue.

Here’s a link.

http://gum.co/space-dalat-tmttg

Thanks! ;)

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Papers, an invitation for just 4

‘How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress:’ N. Bohr, quantum physicist

When DK’s A. Spaice popped around in real life to the N. Bohr Institute in Copenhagen in 2015, we found out something really amazing. It started with poking around here and there. Bohr, a philosopher-scientist, had a library on that site. Of course us being us, we wandered into it. And learned that N. Bohr, ever the thinker and open to new inputs all the time (which of course was the ethos behind the institute itself, and why we were even there), had something cool going.

He had 400 people with whom he would correspond, in letters. Apparently some of them were in the archives at the NBI. DK was impressed by this and moved to try something, but with a twist: a modern update, using the technologies at hand. Also, a wider scope for corresponders. You wouldn’t have to be a scientist, or an expert. The more of a mix, the better. Also, we can manage about 1% of what Bohr could, around here, so we are limiting our correpsondence circle to a maximum of 4. In ‘Papers.’

Here’s what it is. Given today’s world of frittered and inane chatter, Bohr’s way of connecting and deepening correspondences of substance and value seemed a good method to highlight, and, to apply.

What is Papers?

An online writing-and-design-and-generally-creative circle for community. Ambient community that is. International and asynchronous: ‘Papers.’

Why?

Because we are tired of superficial, inane chatter and want some actual depth, progression and substance in our online converations. That’s why.

Six weeks of amazing online conversations with a max of 4 hosted by the unconventional and unexpected remarkable improvisationalists at DK

How does it work ?

It’s 100% email correspondence. No meetings. Fresh prompts arrive once a week and are written based on application inputs & emerging topics.

They are written personally by DK’s Dipika Kohli, who designs and hosts this jam. More about Papers is here.

What people have said, about DK’s works…

  • ‘Refreshingly honest’, guest of ‘N’ Phnom Penh, 2014
  • ‘Astonishing!’, guest of The Mirror, online workshop, 2018
  • ‘Weird and intriguing’, guest of Hello August, Phnom Penh, 2014

 

Issue #85

Dipika Kohli

S P A C E | Battambang, ‘The Week the American Jumped Quarantine’ is a special issue from a team of friends of DK’s along with our founding members.

How people are coping with their situations where they are is one story, how we are finding out about things happening in the places where we have deep, dear ties, and reacting, together, in the cloud, is yet another. This is that jam.

Our conversations across the cloud centered on this remarkable piece of news:

A Cambodian-American woman ran away from a Center in Phnom Penh on the night of July 17, 2020 and was found by the police in a guesthouse in Kampong Cham on the evening of the 18th. July 2020. She arrived in Cambodia on July 15, 2020, on a flight with two US Embassy officials who were diagnosed with COVID-19 on July 16. The spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health, confirmed that this was the first case of people fleeing from quarantine. KBN

-From Cambodia News English

More to say. Saying it.

The feature photographer this time is DK’s own Akira Morita.

Issue #85 is published today.

You can order it from our store, for USD 7.

Here’s a link.

http://gum.co/space-battambang-wtajq

Thanks! ;)

Registration for ‘DK | How to Microfocus’

About this Course

This is a do-it-yourself learning opportunity.

Hosted by Dipika Kohli (TEDx, NPR)…

‘Spreadsheet,’ is what I used to call this...

‘I’d been seeing a lot of people questioning how to focus within a large area of ‘an idea’ or ‘a concept’. This is my technique to solving that problem. I was back from a long solo tour of about four months, and I myself had to do that, when I had returned. So I started to design a way to do it, personally.

A shift of phase..

This is a short course that delivers 3 practical worksheets created by DK that you can use right away to finely focus.

Best for mid-career working professionals.

Learn more about DK..

More than 80 organizations and small businesses have hired DK to help them… think about things in new ways. More is here:

https://designkompany.com/open-for-commissions//

What DK does best is this

Dipika Kohli

I’m finally going to write about what I do for work.

It’s taken me a little while to figure out what I wanted to focus on, for 2020-2025. I have this five-year plan. They always ask you that in interviews, right? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I just went back and thought about all those five-year milestone moments, when I’d reflect, and find out what it is that the journeys have taught me. ‘Say Hello to DK,’ ‘Experiments in N+1’, ‘Practicing the Unknown, Uncertain and Different,’ and ‘Design + Discovery’ have, so far, been five-year blocked themes.

(See examples of projects completed in each of these phases, they’re listed towards the end of this page.)

I am focusing on the next five years on another theme, which I’ll talk about now. ‘Creativity + Innovation.’

Creativity + Innovation

Why this? These are just buzzwords, right? Actually we’ve come to a place where they can’t be, anymore.

This is why.

The rest of this post is at my personal site.

It’s this page: https://dipikakohli.com/what-i-do-best-is-this/

DK: “My community, these days, more than ever, is ‘Papers'”

Dipika Kohli

‘What is it that you do to stay motivated to keep writing, DK?’

I work with a small group of no more than 4 at a time in a project I love called ‘Interactive Papers.’ We are going to open a new circle in August.

Conversations take place each week with a fresh writing prompt that is based on earlier dialogues, and things people share, and research that I do, personally. It’s fun; a week at a time, asynchronously and in the cloud.

 

Staying focused

Sometimes I get distracted and start googling things like ‘how to write a novel’ and ‘tips’ and these listicles come up and all this ‘bestseller’ stuff and people tooting their horns without realizing that a new piece, something that is innovative, that hasn’t been seen before, but could cut a new cloth and shapeshift a different paradigm, is not the kind of thing you write to a template, or a formula. So I immediately back out of those pages and go back to my solid relationships, in the e-circles of email, S P A C E, zoom chats, Dropbox, and ‘Papers’.

Why? Because I just… disagree with the internet ‘besticle’ shite. I made up ‘besticle,’ but you see what I mean, right? More, better, more gooder money I am so cool and I wrote 5069 books already and they are all so popular and they have all changed everyone’s lives, like everyone. Getter richer. (That’s what it sounds like, to me, reading these ‘pieces.’) Where is the ‘back’ button? Out, out, out. I’m different I guess. I write because I actually like relationships, communication, and most importantly, communicating such that a relationship can flourish into a wildly pure aesthetic of a quality human connexion. I guess that’s lofty and idealistic. So?

That’s what I like.

So I write where I write. In ‘Papers.’ I like the interactive components, in our different technological spaces. It adapts based on the inputs, like a fuzzy logic machine. I really do have more to say about this, but I’ll save it for those who opt-in, via an application.

Applications are open now for an August circle of no more than 4, for ‘Papers.’ I’m currently accepting applications through the end of July.

See what it is, at this link for ‘Papers’.

 

23 July | ‘Tìm mình trong thế giới’

A. SpaiceLeave a comment

It’s a small, real-life meet up for a max of 4. It’s also a mini-workshop. It’s on FB.

Here’s a link.

https://www.facebook.com/events/281855386383568/

Exact location to be shared by email, since you already know if you got the link to this page that I do not have a handphone.

Email me, so.

Thanks!

 

Creativity vs. Design vs. Innovation

Dipika Kohli

Last night, I was reading a bunch of extraordinarily boring articles online, which made me very tired, and also, reminded me all over again that the internet contains a lot of junk, written by clickbait-seeking who-knows-who, and their poorly paid ‘gig economy’ freelancers who are ‘finding my creative outlet on the side.’ This is sad. And this, too, the feeling that you couldn’t find anything really good to read without being bombarded by popup ads (2000s) or advertorials masquerading as ‘This is my honest opinion’ affiliate-link people, made me feel like starting my own mini-magazine. Which has no endorsements, ads, or BS.

Such a dearth of real-world, real-time information that I could discover, on the spot, also made me feel like hosting parties to get people together and seeing what we could find out, in the real world dimension, too. So that’s part of why I began to convene people in very small circles, in my conversation parties. It used to be really large-scale, but I found out I prefer simplicity. Depth, substance, and progressions over time. With just a few. This is why I make a membership-based thing called S P A C E. It’s so that we—we as in me, and the people who, like me, want what I want, ie quality–could get to the work of talking about things in ways that don’t waste people’s time.

Curating as I go, I’m putting together an August series for Papers, which is going to be about innovation, not in the business-speak sense, but in the live-it-and-talk-from-experience-of-actually-trying-things kind.

It will be published in S P A C E. It’s a special edition of S P A C E. It’s members-only. Memberhip costs. You can find out more about how to become a member of  S P A C E at this crowdfunding  page, under ‘perks,’ see ‘Basic Membership.’

Here’s a link.

http://chuffed.org/project/spacethezine

Thanks,

DK