Rob Forbes: Ways of seeing

[megmegs84]

1:08 sidewalk in Rio de Janeiro, was an heritage of Portugal, look at google : CALÇADA PORTUGUESA

[carpetrainium]

The commercial at the end is pretty nice too.

[AzoreanProud]

paradigms?

[hancho17]

i love his search for beauty in the everyday world...

[dsgncr8or]

Awesome.

[NaumaddX]

Rob's presentation is about one thing - having your eyes and other senses receptive to beauty rather than continual pursuit of elusive "perfection" creating all sorts of quick judgments and division of oneself from what our world - natural and man-made has to offer. The point - "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". If you do not see beauty wherever you look and everywhere you look, it isn't the fault of your environment - it's your own lack of vision remedied by a simple change of attitude.

[sjkdec18]

Seriously. What a snob.

[catchalotmor]

Everything I dislike about the 'people ruin my perfect expression of art' section of designers. 5000 photos a year!! man get out from behind your camera and give your other 4 senses a walk. Design is either about vanity or servicing people and its very clear which group this guy is in.

[jogamatudo]

that sidewalk is typical from portugal, all the sidewalks are made like that there...

[AxelCross]

This guy is great. Fuck the h8ers.

[lizardz23]

He went to Amsterdam and looked at DESIGN? wow, he's missing out.

[r2d244]

Sad speech - he's like machine without personal senses, art senses... It's good to search inspiration in our world, but... man, where are YOU in all of that?

In my opinion- tons of demagogy.

[fealasy]

"I took this picture of a turd on a yellow phone book, how delightfully artsy, I call it a "urban-organic-statue"

Take it easy man.

[tuigleven]

The reason people in amsterdam drive bikes and walk definently has NOTHING to do with universities or art schools.

[EzymaticBoom]

This guy. When he commented about how all the tourists came into the restaurant, the mood was ruined, he was a fucking American tourist too, fuck him.

[prelan]

he's not a graphic designer, and its not graphic design, lol

[TheThomaswastaken]

After a while I just felt this was an homage to exorbitant wealth. Then, I felt bad for all those people who will starve to death while this man roams around Venice taking shots of phone booths. The plants in urban Chicago, a 50 foot tall digital read-out in Millenia Park; something more fruitful could have been done.

[SirBanon]

people who starve to death are victims to international political policies. look into africa where their politicians are bought off, lands cast into ruin by corperations because there is no government policies preventing this and also the subsidized food that comes in an puts local african farmers out of work and lose their land, then after all this, a once self reliant africa becomes dependent on foreign aid. and by political policy, they aren't even allowed to industrialize.

[anoutsideobserver]

I agree with you, but that doesn't storp TheThomaswastaken from being right also. This video is a classic example of selfish self obsessed bastards leaching off of society and giving little in return. What is this guy doing to help the world? There are plenty of jobs that are worthwhile and help a lot of people, like in science, or manufacturing, or in civil services. This guy is getting money for doing something that doesn't help anyone. What a piece of shit!

[prelan]

he did say he was a ceramics designer for ten years. what are you doing that gives you the right to say that?

[anoutsideobserver]

Part time work at a care home for people with severe learning disabilities to support my degree in physics which I hope to use in order to aid in the development of new technologies that could benefit our (and hopefully other) species.

[prelan]

depends what way you look at it all really. i wonder what the world would be like without creative people, lol

[SirBanon]

fair enough.

[moon3k3]

You make a valid point. Yet I don't believe you should be presumptuous in making such judgements. An 18 minute talk on a narrow topic doesn't signify very much. Also, whether one chooses to practice altruism or not, doesn't make one good or bad. It is matter of personal choice. You can't impose such obligations. If he cares for those who are less unfortunate than he is, that's great. If not, hopefully he will learn that act of 'giving' can also be a simple way to attain happiness.

[moon3k3]

And who knows what good will sprout from his ideas and his perception? Society today functions the way it is because we have such an enormous diversity in people's interests and personalities. I am actually excited to see what new innovations he will produce in the future. But I must admit, I wasn't too delighted by the self-contradictions his metaphors often conjured up. He also seemingly ignores the fact that "way of seeing" is all matter of interpretations; there is nothing right or wrong.

[mikedubya]

What's with all these guys on TED lately who seem to drone on and on without actually saying anything?

[ArcaneKarma]

Still not my thing, but he's much better then the last guy. This guy is more about character and less about big, bold, and belligerent buildings.

[jjmm112]

wake me up when this is over.................

[blockthisuser]

He looks like Hannibal Lecter. I bet he would be better than Hopkins.

[Disposable50]

Hannibal Lecter isn't a real person. Hopkins is the face of Hannibal so I have no idea how this guy would be better.

[MrCropper]

From the "More Info" box:

" this slideshow will open your eyes to the world around you."

I doubt it. Reading Newton or Bacon or Voltaire might, but not this nonsense.

[Anhelain]

Did this guy have a point?

[xanthus1]

No idea. Even the guy who talked about penguin shit and the trajectory of bird crap had more of a point :D

[1schwererziehbar1]

his point is that the place where people live or grow up has an influence on their creativity that is bigger than expected. however most of his talk wasn't about that point but about design and perception in general.

[xanthus1]

I didn't like this video; it just didn't seem useful or interesting in any way. I did skip large portions of it though; but not because of his voice or the way he was presenting. The material was just... bleh.

[yeldarbo]

Yawn

[homerthompsonman]

I think this guy is about disappear into his own self-contradictory metaphorical anti-skeptic anti-realism.

Or maybe that's just me un-subscribing from TED

[archaedemos]

5000 beats me... how does one Even begin to sort that kind of volume of work. man. Also I like taking pictures simply because It Is A moment in time captured to me. The image will almost certainly never be the same at the same spot at the same time .

[chikotube]

i know of a guy on flickr that is working on managing over 250,000 photos from his life. There are other accounts with way more images, but it looks like they're all computer generated. My private archive consists of at leasts 25,000, no where near the other flickr guy.

[sparks59]

really wasn't that impressed compared to the other ted videos

[PropensityWaveJr]

Great one!

[psixosic]

TED is great

[1trip711]

Are you stupid

[mrkvamaster]

Die, designer, DIE!

[PursuitOfReality]

Seems very silly to me.

[lolaphilologist]

I'm enjoying the content of this, but this guy needs to learn how to pause and fluctuate his speech in pitch a bit. Aurally, this is a massive block of mostly monotone, mostly unbroken rhythm of speech.

[PursuitOfReality]

I think he had to speak without pause to get all he wanted to say under 18 minutes.

[lolaphilologist]

That's possible. I certainly didn't mean to disparage Rob Forbes- I just found his speech patterns to be distracting from the message. The content was very enjoyable.

[SpecialKit]

Wtf are you talking about?

[PropensityWaveJr]

monotone is fun