Design

"RISD is MIT for the right brain," says John Maeda

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OB-CF216_EDAI14_NS_20080901183356.jpgOn the eve of his inauguration as president of the Rhode Island School of Design, John Maeda gave a wide-ranging interview to Dominique Browning in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Among the Maeda-isms:

“I want to reform technology. All the tools are the same; people make the same things with them. Everyone asks me, ‘Are you bringing technology to RISD?’ I tell them, no, I’m bringing RISD to technology.”

“Companies know that they can’t get any further with their left-brain processing; they are dying to engage the right brain. Artists change how we see the world — and that can have value in the way people do business.”

“A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.”

Check out the new RISD blog … or follow John Maeda on Twitter >>

Illustration: Ismael Roldan