Jeff MacDonald

Today I spent 12 hours at the Brandcenter doing all sorts of cool things, but my favorite part of the day was when my professor asked me to do something as an assignment that I’ve been doing for fun for years.

I guess this is what they mean by do what you love.

Well in the last few months I’ve started working on things getting ready for Brandcenter, and I’ve moved in with my girlfriend into our new apartment! It’s awesome having all of our stuff in one place. Also it’s really nice having my own internet, Time Capsule backups finally work over WiFi.

I’m super excited to start grad school in the next two weeks. It’s going to be an awesome experience being around so much talent. That’s all for now.

From the suburbs…

New Recycling Options from IKEA

So I’m headed to graduate school only after graduating from undergrad this spring. I got into the awesome VCU Brandcenter, which is a really cool achievement. It was kind of the reason for me choosing VCU for my undergrad in advertising. My field of study will be creative technology, which is what I’m all about. So I’ll try to keep all the sites update over the summer and try to keep my head straight once school starts. Big things coming.

Four years ago today I came up with an idea called Project One. To celebrate it’s Senior year of being an idea that has driven most things that I do I wanted to honor it with some attention. Today I’ve purchased my first online hosting and I’ve created a domain for my projects to live online.

The site is visitformore.info

I’m so happy to be at the point that I am right now. I’m surrounded by wonderful people and they support me so much. I hope that after four years I am experienced now more than ever to make my dream a reality. My ultimate dream is that four years from today I can say on Project One’s 8th anniversary that I’m ready to open my dream institution. So please visit my site to learn more.

To put it best Project One is going to be a community center built in Washington, D.C. or some place similar. A more wordy explanation would be that the Project is a cafe / art gallery / community outreach/action center / film, music, art, design, and culture lab / school / film and t.v. studio production space / equipment borrow or rent /poetry, prose, and plays / live music venue / recording studio / And creative library. This project initially thought up by me as an idea called HQ on April 8th 2006 at the Starbucks in Springfield, Ill

Jeff

I’ve lived in Richmond for four years now and I’ve always had an affinity for this building at 801 W. Cary. It use to be Paragon Pharmacy, and unfortunately I never visited the establishment while it was open. The picture I’ve posted shows the building closed but google maps has links to geotagged flickr images of what the building looked like while open (I love technology).

This week Peyton Rowe of VCU fame was telling me that it would be so cool if the Mass Comm students had a place where they could hang out 24-hour style to work and socialize. This works in with my idea of Project One and also the idea of creating my own agency. So then I started brainstorming an idea called “The Shop”.

The look outside would be the aesthetic of an the original establishment. With the sign changed to say the shop and an now open sign that would stay illuminated all the time. Inside in the entrance area we would also keep the same original style and form of the soda shop. But this isn’t a working soda shop anymore, no, it’s an innovative media center incubating ideas and social experimentation. 

What an awesome place to hang out, great looks that make people relax and hang out. A place that completely separates it’s self from a student commons and becomes a place of productivity as well as experimentation.

Just an idea.
Jeff

This morning I listened to an awesome short radio podcast from my favorite program Radiolab. The title of the show was “The Bus Stop.” They described a nursing home in Düsseldorf, Germany, called the Benrath Senior Center, that employs a really innovative way to keep their dementia and Alzheimer’s patients safe and comforted. The home has installed a fake bus stop outside their building so that when a patient wanders outside the building or asks to leave they can escape to “the bus stop” and wait for the imaginary bus to take them away from the home. After a while the patients normally forget why they’re out there and either come back inside or a nurse comes and gets them.

I think this idea of recreating an escape is a really interesting idea and I think it can be used in the creative and academic field. I think it would be really cool if we let students or colleagues “leave” a situation and escape to a bench where they can gather their thoughts and think about a problem. To often we keep people locked into a space when they are uncomfortable or feel ganged up on and it’s not a good situation. Having a space where you can leave and come back when your ready is really healthy and should be explored. Listen to the segment and think about it.

So I tried an experiement and kept all of my information that I posted on the Internet contained in Twitter, I now know that Twitter is a great catch all for everything, but a more slimmed down and concise spot is needed for keeping all of my ideas together. So I’m back to keeping a blog and it’s found it’s new home on tumblr and onmy awesome flavors.me page. Still working out the best way to get this all together. Check out flavors.me/directory for some awesome inspiration. -Later

An amazing wedding. So beautiful. I could not be happier for my sister. Congratulations to them both. Good luck and I wish them the best in their future.

The weather was beautiful today in Chicago! I talked about Burnham early today in my blog post, and by coincidence Chicago will be celebrating 100 years of it’s central plan soon, http://bit.ly/4G4lqs

Part of the awesome exhibit that is going on in Millennium Park is the these pavilions that were created near the park. I took this a neat photo from inside the pavilion.

So I’m in Chicago for my Sisters wedding. It’s so awesome being able to see all of my family at such a happy occasion. I love the City of Chicago.

Last night I had tapas for the first time, I am a big fan.
The reason I love Chicago is partly because of it’s awesome urban planning. It’s basically the birth place of modern urban planning, during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition oversaw the construction of the “White City.” A small scale avenue of buildings built mostly from papier-mache and included things like grand boulevards, classical building facades, and lush gardens. During the expo many saw the benefits of a centrally planned city and a decade later Daniel Burnham started work on “The Plan of Chicago” using the principles from the “White City” and the City Beautiful movement that was taking shape during the beginning of the 1900’s. A great example for reference of what planners of this movement were aiming for is the The Mall, in Washington D.C. All in all I love Chicago, it’s public transit, and it’s architecture.
Just a little history to start your weekend, enjoy.

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