A few weeks ago I attended what I had hoped would be a very informative and very enjoyable event called “The Dinner Party” that was thrown by the New York branch of AIGA.  The speakers scheduled were the principals of AvroKO (designers and owners of my favorite restaurant Public and a large reason that I decided to attend), chef Dan Barber (of Blue Hill), pastry chef and molecular gastronomist Will Goldfarb, and designer Matteo Bologna (of Mucca Design).

By all rights, it sounded like it should have been a lively discussion, especially considering that the moderator was Christine Muhlke, a deputy editor of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, who (at least on paper) seemed like she should’ve been an ideal person to get these disparate voices conversing with each other about the extremely multifaceted topic of “food and design.”

I am extremely sad to report that the event was less than a success.

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As someone who likes to be as accurate as possible when writing (though I admit that I don’t always succeed), I’ve been thinking a lot about the Bravo series entitled “Top Design.”  If you aren’t familiar with the show, it’s a competition-based reality program in which interior decorators work with a series of spaces; the last contestant standing wins $100,000, a spread in Elle Decor magazine (which I’d never heard of before watching the show), and “the right to say that they have ‘the’ Top Design,” which doesn’t strike me as much of a reward at all.

Here’s the trouble (and I fully expect to be blasted here)–I don’t really know that interior decorating, especially in terms of what these contestants are doing on TV, is actually design.  Yes, there are some elements to their work that are design-oriented tasks, such as space planning and furniture arrangement.  Remember, I’m the guy who defines the act of design as the creation of something for a specific practical purpose.  And pasting up wallpaper, setting a dining table and gluing plates to the wall alongside pieces of glitter-coated driftwood is not the creation of something for a specific practical purpose… it’s decorating.  It’s styling.  It’s applying a veneer of attractiveness (or not) to a setup that is largely functional as-is.  In some cases, I’d even say that decoration can go too far and actually hinder the usefulness of a functional design.

When you get right down to it, a plain white couch in a plain white room is just as functional as a leather couch in a room with orange zebra-striped walls.  That veneer of decoration didn’t do much for the functionality of the room, but it does enhance its sex appeal (assuming that the decorator knows what he or she is doing and that his or her taste matches your own).  Thus, I suggest we have the name of the show changed to “Top Decorator.”

As a disproportionate amount of my time and energy this weekend has gone to procuring an iPhone 3G (and no, I was not one of those crazed fans who stood in line for one for any length of time), I have to admit that I’m extremely disappointed with the way Apple has handled the distribution process.

Seth Godin points out that artificially imposed scarcity can damage customer loyalty (thanks for my friend Jardel in Brazil for the link), and outlines a number of ways that Apple could’ve prevented those hours-long lines that almost certainly pissed more customers off than they pleased.  (I myself am included among those who are upset; if you’ve been looking at my Twitter feed over the last couple of days, you probably noticed that I went to the open-24-hours-365-days-a-year 5th Avenue Apple Store at 1am last night only to be told that “the line forms at 2am” for iPhones, though they wouldn’t actually be available until 7am.  What?!)

I tend to agree with just about all of his assessments, especially the idea of allowing advance orders. Bookstores do this with eagerly anticipated books like Harry Potter ; even the company that I work for full-time occasionally offers pre-orders on products, and it almost always gives you a better handle on how many you’ll need to order/have manufactured to prevent backorders.

There was really no reason that Apple/AT&T couldn’t have planned for the release better.  Amping up an already-eagerly anticipated product like this one creates frenzy, injuries and frustration rather than enthusiasm and goodwill.

Now that I’ve been done with school for several months, I’ve been in the process of trying to determine what, exactly, will come “next” for me in professional, academic and personal terms.  I’ve been doing a significant amount of work for my clients as a freelancer, but I’ve also picked up a number of small personal projects, including:

• A weekly collage/mixed media class at Cooper Union, since I’ve largely worked in digital media and have kind of neglected physical media over the years
• A modified version of my friend Ray’s “365 Days” photo project, in which I use my point-and-shoot camera to capture a picture of myself or something significant every day for a year
• An ongoing “micro-blog” via Twitter
• Establishing a collaborative story writing site (Room506.org)

I’m particularly proud of myself for sticking with these new projects, but I believe the reason that I’ve maintained interest in all of these endeavors is twofold.

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As I was reviewing my checking account statement the other day, I discovered two charges that I didn’t recognize, both from the same business and for the same dollar amount.  I did a Google search to see if perhaps I was just forgetting a transaction or two, which happens from time to time, but Google was unable to give me literally any information on the company.  I looked up the telephone number and even called it, but the guy who answered didn’t seem to have any idea what I was talking about.

As a result of all of this, I had to call my bank to dispute the charges.  Annoyingly, because it was a debit card-related transaction, my debit card (which, coincidentally, I use for literally all of my daily purchases) had to be cancelled; a new one will allegedly arrive in "seven to ten business days."

Are magnetic cards really the best medium to use for financial transactions?  Newer cards include "PayPass" or similar tap-and-go technologies that utilize a short-range RFID tag embedded in the card, but those are troubling, as theoretically someone unscrupulous with a RFID reader could discreetly scan the posteriors of passersby and collect all kinds of information that they would have previously needed physical access to.

I tend to think, at least upon initial consideration, that biometrics are the future of this kind of application.  It’s laughable to think that someone would attempt to make a transaction in a store using a severed human hand or with an eyeball stuffed in a plastic bag.  The back-ends of biometric databases are the problem–we’re still living in an era where laptops are misplaced and hard drives are stolen and suddenly the personal identifying information of thousands is compromised.  So while a retinal scan may be virtually impossible to forge, we’re going to need to see some major advances in data security before I think such scans can go mainstream.