We are encouraged to listen to the voices of others insight and read it so that we can broaden and improve our insight. As our class assignment, were to listen to a few interviews from this sight, Observer Media, so that we may implement our early stages of knowledge in design and begin conversing of the topic that strikes interest.

Debbie Millman does a good job of pulling in her subjects’ (interviewees') past while relating it to their current design applications and motives. In particular, she points out Grace Bonney’s past of being a Phish-head and how that created some connections for her later in her career. Networking has come of interest to me recently and understanding the value of the connections made with others. Whether these connections are of like-interests or not, they can be quite useful in the future. Even though it is not mentioned what Bonney’s connections within school were like, she made valuable connections outside of school within her social life that made stronger ties than she may have realized or intended when she began. These connections have made her blog and website what they are today.

From a design side, Bonney does express her beliefs in the importance of embracing the design that is happening within schools because that is where the designs of the future lie. In a sense, I believe our society has begun to loose those businesses that thrive off of what someone's desires and interests are. Bonney did not get into this business for the money and still isn’t in it for the money. She has a bigger picture of something that she wants to give and provide during her life. And that something is a new eye of design and how it can interrelate with our new media and social connections. She does not feel that she has to rely on other businesses that would impose their insight and convolute what she started in the first place. She realizes that she has created a business out of what she loves and wants to continue to evolve those fresh looks and ideas. But she has come to realize that businesses can have a different kind of partnership and work together in other ways. I commend her strong belief in giving back to where intellectual design really starts, in schools and universities, and her strive to continue the cycle. This reflects with the idea of recycling and renewing that our society has begun to bring to the forefront again. She provides the opportunity for a student to explore their creativity so that it may be paid back and make the circle when they come into the market and are applying their new ideas and designs. 

I feel that John Hockenberry brought the social recycling insight into view for me during his interview. Millman, the interviewer, asked what Hockenberry thought of our social media today and what is expected of the declining formality in journalism. Hockenberry enlightened me when he pointed out that although journalism is being offered readily now in informal fashions, a turn is started to be made within our society to bring the formality back. He makes the parallel with the music industry and how music was first heard on the radio and then we began creating a physical form of music in records, tapes, and CDs so that people could feel that they owned that music. Now we are starting to move into an online music store instead of one that we drive to. We do not feel like we have to physically have it in our hand, but have it there when we want to listen to it. The same thing is happening with magazines and newspapers. Those that we felt we had to have and hold in our hands are diminishing on a certain level and we are doing without the physical handheld products besides the one object that lets us have access to it all, our phone or computer, just like the radio once did for society. And going back to the formalism and professionalism of journalism. Blogs are creating a new world of journalism. When blogs are written, whether they are professional writers that are writing or stay-at-home moms that write about their family. We are in the beginning stages of organizing these so that people may chose how formal they want their articles and posts when they read them. I feel that we are in the process of understanding a new way of looking at our social media and how to organize it to our benefit. Journalism will have its light shed on it once again. But until then, we will just have to organize those blogs and informal posts ourselves so that we may push our media further.