I feel like everything has really shifted in the past week. It’s the first full week we’ve had the non-profit moved in next door while we incubate them. We’ve moved from working with them three or so days a week in various working sessions on a multitude of projects, to working with them everyday on everything from future business strategy to perfecting the perfect work space. A wonderful working environment has developed. There seems to be a buzz of excitement and eagerness to get things done. Emma, our research intern for the non-profit, has really set the bar high. She’s taken her projects and really run with them. Filling up foam core boards with quotes and theories and charts around development and city building…and far beyond.
I think everyone is enjoying their new work space as well, especially Jonathan who now has twice the room to spread out. He and I are neighbors now, sharing the back wall. We have our daily check-ins at 9:15 to plan our goals for the day. It’s nice and keeps us focussed and sets the pace for the day. We’ve also started having office-wide MMM’s (Monday Morning Meetings), not to be confused with MMJ (My Morning Jacket) who’s new album, Circuital, is quite fantastic. The meetings are great as well, we get to go over the schedule and plans for the week, our calendar of late has been filled with working sessions and meetings and interviews with possible intern candidates. Although, we have tried to shy away from having so many “meetings” here, I’ve found it quite necessary as we grow to at least have a weekly check in and make sure we are all on the same page and see how we can help each other out.
You’ve probably heard us talk about the picture book we’re making. It’s been moving along. We’ve changed the structure of the working sessions. We have discovered that having two 45 minute sessions is the most productive way to work on this project. Any longer and it seems you push yourself so the results are seemingly forced and the outcome isn’t as fruitful. Since there are so many different parts to the book, we tackle each one in it’s own session. So, I will curate and re-curate the space for each session, so it becomes sort of an ever-changing photography gallery.
Up until now I have been taking over pretty much the entire space with these pictures. I finally gave in and split the room in half so that Damien and Jonathan have some room to work on the other printed piece. It seems that we can fill up any space given the chance. With two sub-projects in one room and the non-profit working along in the back, things are filling up. Having a lot of people around is nice. I think even Damien is enjoying it.
On a side note, I’ve just started to read “Notes on the Synthesis of Form” by Christopher Alexander. Already in the first three pages I found it fascinating by how what Alexander is talking about in designing a complete environment with a million people is so similar to what our client, the non-profit is looking to do in re-designing community and city spaces. As Alexander puts it “People must somehow be able to live in close cooperation and yet pursue the most enormous variety of interests.” More on this as I get further into the book. Maybe I can finish it on the plane ride home. I am down south today, not southern California, but the actual “South.” I can see lightning bugs at night and hear an assortment of country sounds that you forget about while living in the city. Speaking of the South, you should all check out what the Ride Alabamboo team are up to. That’s all for now, it’s the end of my day and time to sit on the porch swing and read and ponder a little…
It’s week something or other, in our weeknote list, and the studios are really busy. I think Wendy has become an expert at putting together Aeron chairs, and I’m told we’re running out of wastepaper bins.
We have a summer intern from Harvard working with us. Emma is working for one of our clients and is spending her time getting immersed in academic research and developing the much needed intellectual grounding for our client’s methodology. As usual, we’re not able to say much about the work with our clients as it happens. It’s part of the deal we make with them unfortunately.
One of the things we are able to talk about and very proud to do so, is our involvement with Ride Alabamboo. They leave tomorrow and the four of them are riding across America on bamboo bikes they made themselves. Yes, across the States. Bamboo. And bikes. We’ll say more about it soon, but for now if you are interested or want support them, drop by their site: http://ridealabamboo.com/ Ride Alabamboo is part of Common Cycles, founded by COMMON.
The photo is of Nicole, one of the team cyclists, holding up her frame she’ll be riding on. She’ll of course put on wheels and things before doing so.
In other news, we’ve teamed up with Weightshift again on an exciting project for ourselves. One that we’ll be very public and transparent about in the short future. Over the last two years of our four year history (though Central was first started about eight years ago) we’ve gone through several stages of change as we’ve evolved from a design studio to being more of a consultancy. We’ve built up some great project experience and knowledge around the impact and value of the design process and are looking forward to sharing where we’re going with all that. And of course, collaborating with Weightshift on our own story is always a pleasure.
Being busy and with this upcoming change, we’re a little more quiet online than we usually are. But here’s a photo of Jonathan inspecting a mock-up of a book we had bound for a project we’re working on.
This week was a good one. A lot happened. Monday kicked off with a complete clean up of Studio 8. The photo foam core maze, which was made up of 25 boards total, has now been rearranged to 5 neatly stacked piles leaning against the wall. It was a complete transformation and I think one we needed in order to move into the next phase of this project. It felt like you could breathe a little easier, the room was suddenly not so small. With this change, came a change in direction. After talking with the client we’ve decided to spend a little bit more time dissecting this picture book we’re making. I’m very happy about this decision and fortunate to have a client that is willing to work with us for however long it takes to execute the vision properly.
Karen from Bacchus Press came by to talk to us about printing two “intriguing and complicated” projects, as she puts it. She was very helpful, writing furiously on her green gridded notepad as we peppered her with printing “what if’s.” We’re lucky to have Jonathan on our team now as he has quite a bit of printing experience…and also some pretty wild and probably expensive ideas.
Also, the Shop went live and was an immediate hit, although there were a few kinks. With the help of our Twitter community we got everything sorted out, thanks guys! As I type, Wendy is busy packing up green and pink notepads and nicely folding Squiggle Ts to send off in the post today.
Damien has been speaking with Common Cycles this week about helping them with the Alabamboo Think Wrong Ride from Alabama to California. You can (and should) read more and donate here: indiegogo.com/ridealabamboo
So, between the Shop, the Cycles, the Book, the samples and some pretty fruitful working sessions it’s been quite lively and challenging. Kind of like riding a unicycle along Highway 1 at Big Sur, which is what this guy is doing. Classic.
This should technically be Jonathan’s week to write, but since he’s still officially “the new guy”, as we prefer to call him, I’m taking this task off of his very busy plate.
Our project Shinuku is well under way. Its focus is on Knowledge Visualization, and how we might develop tools for that. We’re partnering with a friend, Youri, in Cambridge, UK. Apart from being an exceptional developer and builder of applications, Youri also brings a bit of science to the project, having a PhD in Astrophysics. So we really should be calling him Dr Youri. So long as he doesn’t bring up anything too heavy in Geometric Algebra or something like that. As the project evolves we’ll try to share bits and pieces as we go.
Another project, inside of our Exchange project, is in beginning that stage where we look at grid systems, type specimens and so on. For a couple of us, this means looking at books, holding them to feel their weight and sense of completeness. Looking at the type in books we admire, like Reiser + Umemoto’s Atlas of Novel Tectonics, which is set in Dolly. We’re designing a book that needs to feel right, for its purpose, and so a lot of attention is being put into the craft of making this book.
So far, everyone has been nice to the new guy. And he’s been nice to them. So I think it’s going to work out just fine. But the table issue is a growing concern. We’re going to need more.
On Monday I get to talk to a couple different people about possible opportunities. One could possibly involve travel to the UK. I’d better find my British passport. The other, we’re very excited about, is looking at how to develop community amongst non-profits and social entrepreneurs in a particular area of work. We’re also talking with AFH about a couple project briefs we hope to be helping on in the future. Oh, and I have to write up a new piece for Print Magazine, which should kick off a new department for the magazine soon.
It’s Friday afternoon now. It’s one of those nice warm ones where we should really close up early and start the weekend, and as our friend Daniel says, camp out in Sonoma without wireless. I’d have done so by now if I hadn’t been distracted earlier by watching, not by the Royal Wedding, but Common’s live working session on the launch of Common Cycles. It was pretty interesting to peek into the live brainstorming session with Alex Bogusky, John Bielenberg and others. Great idea. I enjoy watching what they’re doing with the Common brand.
That’s it. Have a good weekend.
It has been quite a busy week here at Central. Actually, it’s been a busy month. We’re working on a book at the moment for our current project: Exchange. It’s a picture book, a rather large one. We’ve hired a photographer to help us out with this. By “help us out” I mean take for us 1,000 of the most amazing photographs to help us tell our client’s story. It’s a huge undertaking, but she has been up to the challenge. I’m going through these images in rounds, the first round was almost 1,500 photographs….I’m on round 7 to give you a frame of reference. It’s very interesting to work with just one photographer on this project. I spend the majority of my day shuffling through, evaluating, organizing and admiring these photographs. It’s basically like I have been looking at the world through her eyes for the past month. She’s quite talented and it always amazes me how she captures some of these beautiful, serendipitous photos. She has a way of shooting animals that actually look like they are posing for her, it’s brilliant.
Organizing these photos has proven to be a challenge, mainly because of the sheer volume and whittling over 3,000 shots down to the chosen 1,000. I started by taking up half of the project studio and about 10 oversize foam core boards. It wasn’t enough. So, I started pushing bookshelves back and moving in more foam core. Now all the windows are covered with boards and images and there is one small opening between a bookshelf and a wall where you can squeeze into the space. It’s a photograph fort and it’s fantastic. Thanks to Eric from Architecture for Humanity for coming by a couple of weeks ago to talk about the project. It was really fun to go through our process and images and get his feedback. Hopefully, we will be working with them more in the future. If you haven’t already, check out their work, they are doing some very cool things to help in the rebuilding in Haiti and Japan. That’s all for now, I’m back to perusing photographs.
I dipped into Bruce Mau’s Life Style recently. Dipping is really the best way to experience the book if you’ve not got the time to read the six hundred and twenty six pages from beginning to end. I don’t think he wants you to do this anyway.
As I dipped in, kind of looking for inspiration about how to sum up the work we’ve done over the last few years, and within a few pages I arrived at this:
To understand the studio, you must understand the way we have defined collaboration. A collaborator comes to the studio with an undefined relationship to the proposed work. They approach with an understanding that anything is possible. They arrive prepared to ignore the limits, engage content, and develop something new. They may have expectations, even quite specific ones, but within those expectations or desires, there is space for invention. We, on the other hand, enter an open space of learning. It is an enviable position. At the best of times we have been students with the world’s greatest teachers.
And the text goes on to list learning things like architecture with Frank Gehry, urbanism with Rem Koolhaas and so on. Page 223.
I like this passage. It connects with something we try to do here: truly collaborate with the client. In a fashion where we’re not so much leading as we’re facilitating, and learning on the project together. Almost every project we work on tends to spawn news ones, new directions and take different trajectories. And this comes with knowing that we don’t, at the start, know yet what we’re going to find out as we embark on a collaboration together. But we do know we’re going to learn a lot.
I was thinking about our list.
We’ve learnt a tremendous amount both from the people we’ve collaborated with but also in exploring the field with our clients.
So as a first pass, we have studied:
The future with Ashoka Changemakers.
Complex system design with Changemakers’ Discovery group.
The supply chain black hole with the Future of Fish project.
Strategic investment with the Packard Foundation.
Urban redesign with Urban Re:vision
Making it personal, with Proteus Biomedical
States of mind with Silverado winery
Storytelling with Architecture for Humanity, and Kosmix.
In my own words, when I look at the projects like this, I end up being grateful for how much you get to learn with each collaboration. Because it is inevitable that if left open, you’re going to be changed by a real collaboration.
In Bruce Mau’s words: Our collaborators have helped create a situation in which we have more at the end of our work than we had at the beginning.
I think there’s something to this in both how you see what it is you do, but also in how you see the projects and “clients” that come through the door. I know I’ll be writing more about this in the future.
In other news. People came to resurface the parking lots outside our studios. I had to wrestle with the desire to push a bright yellow Post-it note into the black tarmac that had sharpied on it: DO NOT WALK ON THIS. But then I noticed someone had… forever leaving their mark on the ground. And their shoes.
I also have to draw attention to this Kickstarter project: the Glif. Thomas and Dan presented a story of how they’d like to manufacture a mount for the iPhone 4, so it could work as a camera. They created a great short movie, were very likable, and asked for a mere 10,000 dollars from the community at large.
When I found out about it, they had a measly 6,000 dollars pledged, with a lot of time to go before the funding period ran out. Today they closed the funding goal time (they set at the outset and can’t change) with a total of 137,417 dollars pledged.
This isn’t the most extreme case of funding on the Kickstarter Platform, but it is one of the top 100. And it was fun to watch the number climb and have that nice fuzzy feeling of having contributed.
That’s it for now. More to think about on studying with collaborators.
I have to say, I’m a little tickled by the fact we’re going to end this year on week 100 for our company. The kind of symmetry that makes those of us here geek out. Technically the year swaps out on the 100th week for us – which makes it all that much sweeter.
Here in the States things slowed down for the annual feasting and thanks celebrated on the last Thursday of November. The office closed for a few days but we’ve apparently been sneaking back in individually to get work done with no one else around.
So things should look different here at centralstory.com. As I’ve mentioned before, Weightshift worked with us over the last few months to get to know us, eat together, then translate how we worked and behaved into this online expression of that. Being a design firm ourselves it was definitely an interesting activity to work with designers to trust them and encourage them to design for us. We worked with Eric Strohl to design our identity, and were definitely a little nervous about being presented to. All of a sudden we were on the other side of the table, as the client, and these guys had worked hard to show us their best work. What I enjoyed most about the process was translating our vision and purpose into something that could inspire Eric as well as the Weightshift team. It helped Sara and I get it out of our heads and discuss it with people who needed to understand it. Very valuable. A lot of fun.
More case studies are being prepared. Hopefully we’ll have up to eight of them online in the coming weeks. The products in the shop should also be available very soon, just in time for the next Holidays, as soon as we work out our fulfillment process here at the studio.
Project-wise, things are moving a long nicely. Sara’s group has a presentation in L.A. soon of some self-initiated designs they’ve been working on. Otherwise, we’re working on the year-end admin and next year’s plans. We’re really excited about upcoming collaborations, new opportunities and some of the people we’re going to get to work with next year. Oh, and we’re closing the office for two-and-a-half weeks. It will be a new thing for us. We’ll be sure to let you know how that goes.
Some of the things that I’ve begun to think about are the self-initiated projects we strive to keep going on in amongst the client-initiated projects. Our aim in starting Central was to always have that harmony of doing what we want to do while easily covering the costs through helping clients with their projects. I find it fascinating to watch design firms evolve as time goes on, from building equity in providing services in one core area over time to figuring out what they’d prefer to be doing. For us, we want to start this way and continuously be working on new projects that are unlike the previous ones, and we’re much more likely to attract the right kind of collaborator if we’re able to work on a healthy number of projects we’ve self-started. Coudal has long been inspiration for this, but learning more about BERG and their evolution is also inspiring in how they have a model that helps companies do what we want to do for ourselves. Other companies like Howies and their Do Lectures is a great example of having the strength in the brand to branch out and do something they’re interested in, even if doesn’t sell more T-shirts, but it provides for their interest. A firm like Adaptive Path has provided consulting services as well as running several events like UX Week, MX as well as workshops. However, I see this more as a self-fulfilling business development cycle. They might genuinely enjoy it, but they’re essentially self-promotion (and perhaps recruitment) tools back to the industry they work for, in or would like to do so. Thus in looking for the harmony between feeding ourselves and growing the business, I’m more inspired by their client work and their thought leadership than the event offerings.
We have an interesting mix in the studio of design focused on the process of design (design thinking, innovation etc.) and the craft of design, so in some ways we might have permission to do a wider range of self-initiated experimental projects. Plenty of things to consider, sketch and discuss here in the studio over the coming weeks.
Yes, I skipped a few weeks from the last ‘weeknote’ entry. The excuse of being busy doesn’t really hold weight as we’re always busy, but in this case we were perhaps a little crazier than usual. On Friday we held the exhibit for Sara’s work. The paper cutting exhibit for what she’d been working on for the last eighty weeks or so. It was a great success, lots of people made the trip over one of the two bridges, and we rounded the evening off with a late and large dinner at Le Garage with the remainder of family and friends.
Sara’s mum flew down, and as the invite promised, after two glasses of wine, they both sang the chipmunks version of Jingle Bells. Naz filmed it. So photos and movie to come. Photos of the night will be posted shortly. You have to see the completed prototype of the Backgammon set – it really is quite stupendous.
The Beta version of our site is live. We’re updating content to it. Making the tweaks and kind of embarrassingly excited to get it live. It’s like a exquisitely tailored suit, and the process of working with the Weightshift team has been equally as inspiring as it has been enjoyable. Working with people who care and love their craft is something we love to do, so the design and development of this site has been a treat for us.
It also looks like Christopher and Barbara Warnock might loan us their Chandler & Craftsman Press. It will require removing the large windows at the front of our space and fork-lifting it into the studio, but it will be worth it to have ready access to it. Cathy is going to flip. But I’ve not told her yet.
In other weekly news. I get to give a talk next week at Stanford for Arna Ionescu’s class on design methods for projects we’ve worked on here at Central as well as out there in the ‘real world’. I’m also thinking of sneaking in some other case studies that I gathered on such things as the insertion point case study for cut-and-paste from XEROX Parc and perhaps one on iteration. Helps to have a teaching father who researches such things.
The Future of Fish project wrapped up somewhat quietly. And a smaller team of us, including the Packard Foundation, Ashoka and two of us from Central are working on the transition of knowledge and research to a new partner. In December we make a final presentation to the Foundation and we hope sometime after that we’re able to create some sort of solution story for the web site without undermining the future potential of what we developed. It is great to see that the state of marine wildlife is a growing topic of interest with the general public, which was very different when we started this project and ‘fish’ wasn’t such a popular concern. Its great to see people like Kristofer Lofgren being recognized for their herculean efforts to create a sustainable and even thriving change in the industry. Not just for themselves, but for the industry.
Projects keep coming along. We’re busy throughout the year and into next. Which is a satisfying feeling. We also decided to close the office for several weeks over the Holidays. Last year I believe we worked right through them. If we don’t start making these decisions in the right way now, we’ll find ourselves ten years down the line, overhearing staff asking us why the company gives so little holiday time. If we don’t remember to take the time to feed ourselves, we’ll have nothing to give to the projects when we work on them. However, if we keep moving the office around like we’ve been doing for the painting and the exhibition, I might actually evolve to being a very streamlined and organized person. Tough way to go through the process though.
This week ended with a fresh coat of paint on the walls and everything the office owned pushed into the center of it. Amazing that it takes only thirty minutes to pile everything up into a tall and bundled mess, but a day or two to untangle it. I still can’t find one of the monitor’s power cables and keep walking into that old G4 tower, of which I won’t take the hint and move out of the way, in spite of the damage it is inflicting on me. But the walls look nice. And white.
We got a delicious stack of It’s Nice That magazines from the UK. Each one came with a limited edition Rob Ryan print. More photos and details of the new magazine soon. I’m not entirely sure why I bought five of them. Perhaps its secretly because I’ve always wanted my own William Stout-like bookstore.
During the week, Sara continued to hunt down a perfect large block of wood to drop her new 20 by 20 project into. Looks like she’s going to buy a block and have it CNC’d correctly for her new piece. Looking forward to that outing.
This week I had an interesting conversation with a friend of Central’s in Edmonton, around how to create a practical vision for a city in order to raise tens of millions of dollars for multiple design projects. Using a similar approach to our work on the Future of Fish project. There’s a wonderful boldness to this idea and project that is quite invigorating and special. Looking forward to more developments there.
Two weeks left to the Future of Fish project, and the team are focused on the business models and functions of the several solutions we’ve developed. We’ll publish two more issues on the Future of Fish web site, and then once the Packard Foundation and Ashoka have seen our final solutions, we’ll hopefully be able to put something online that describes the outcome of the project.
The week ahead sees some continued work on the product development, some first sketches of a new brand we’ve been musing on for several years now, contracts with a factory, probably putting the office back together all week and we’re working with Gino Zahnd on some writing for us.
If you happen to find that monitor cable I’m looking for, please do let me know.
Super rationalization is our focus in the last three weeks of the Future of Fish project. The team is focused on pulling together facts, figures and data to support our solution concepts. In which they will tell the story of why these ideas realistically can make the impact we believe they will. Over a year’s work comes down to these last three weeks in how we craft this final storytelling piece. Well, it is more like a package of storytelling pieces. We’re hoping to explain our solutions on the Future of Fish web site in the coming weeks.
Sara’s group is fantastically busy and deep in development of a couple new projects. They received samples back for a Christmas mailer and have sent out a new file to be sampled. The new file was made out of two months of paper cutting work, then six weeks to trace it into Illustrator. The 20 x 20 inch metal sample is going to be for a new limited run product, which is threatening to be quite an amazing thing of beauty.
We’re also exploring the right kind of packaging for the letter-pressed coasters. Seems foolish to drop them into plastic when we’re trying to use less of that where possible. It may end up that we have to design and make the perfect disposable container for them before we can sell them. We’ve not even begun to think about how to package the Central pads yet. Along the lines of new products to sell, we’ve finally agreed on the first three T-shirts to make. The squiggle being one kind and digitized paper-cutting on another.
Weighshift have been patiently working with us over the last few months to design a new web presence for us. We’re really excited about our new identity online and how Naz and his team have helped craft the way we look and feel in a web site. We get to show the Strohls’ new logo for us too.
We’ve got a couple new small projects to keep us busy in the final months of this year, including an exhibition and seeing if we can make the book project happen that we’ve been wanting to do.
So week 89 is from roughly the first time both Sara + I began working together for the Central Office of Design. Though we technically started the practice many years before likely back in 2003/4. The last 89 weeks have gone by in a blink and inspired by BERG’s updates, I thought it would be interesting for us to share what our company is up to.
