I have to agree with what Keela said last week and exclaim “Can anyone believe its already mid august?!” Everyone has been working really hard, and I don’t think we saw summer flash past us.
I returned from Korea last week, which was probably the best trip I’ve ever been on, despite the incessant rain (it’s monsoon season). So I’ll treat the beginning of this post as a sort of show and tell. The design scene in Seoul is one of the best in the world. Literally at every corner is an art bookstore, incredible museum, experimental retail shop, or the best handmade food you’ve ever eaten (this is a traditional soup called dukgook, which includes stock broth, egg, seaweed, fresh sliced vegetables, meat, spice, and of course duk, which is compressed rice cut into slices):
It’s always a good bet that if you think something is cool, there’s something cooler there. What is most fascinating, not only from a design point of view, but also linguistically and historically, is Hangul, the native language. It was invented by King Sejong in 1443. Concerned that his people were unable to express themselves in everyday language with Chinese characters, he enlisted the services of scholars and together with them, devised the writing system that is used today. The amazing part is that all of the characters were designed after speech organs, and the basic vowels were representative of the confucian realms of heaven (ㅇ), earth (ㅡ) and man (ㅣ).
You can see how these symbols represent their inspiration. 대박! So research, synthesis, design. They were using the design process a long time ago. Not only that, Korea invented metal moveable type. Let’s just say for a graphic designer, there’s a lot of inspiration. What I thought was really cool was the typographic logo on this truck (can anyone guess what it means?):
(It’s the Korean word for Milk! Notice the milk droplets.)
Luckily, the Bay Area is famous for its Indian Summer, so we get a summer bonus in the fall. Thinking about it now, that’s really nice. Although the weather might be nice, it does feel a bit like “back to school.” We’ve been preparing all summer for some big things in the fall – some of our Exchange projects will be in their final stages and wrapping up, and new ones will be starting. We’ll be meeting a lot of new people. Damien’s SoCap appearance is just a month away now also. I’ve just recently read his piece in the August edition of PRINT magazine, which summarizes a lot of points that have themed these summer months at Central. Snag a copy if you see it!
We were lucky to have Linda join us full time this week. She has a pretty cool background (she worked at IDEO), which makes her ideal for her new role as Studio Manager. It’s really fantastic to have someone new join our team. We’re already good friends, and I’m a bit envious of her EU passport. We had actually run into each other before, at an IDSA awards event last year. SF is such a small place! I’m hoping next week she can do one of two things: 1) bring it some cool german music, 2) ask Pandora to add new songs to their playlist. We’re happy to have you here, Linda!
Kathleen and Keela have been working super hard this week as well. They’ve been working together on Kathleen’s research, and from what I gather, Kathleen is totally breezing through what would otherwise be a very steep learning curve.
This weekend, the Outside Lands concert is taking over Golden Gate Park in the city, although I waited too long to get tickets. I might have to just experience it vicariously through Keela’s Monday description.
I have no idea how it’s Friday already. I have no idea where the week went or how we are in the month of August. Our new intern, Kathleen, started this week. Well, she’s not really ours, she technically works for our client, but she sits in Suite 6 with the rest of the Central crew. So far she’s doing lots and lots of research, which I hope she likes. She seems too, but she’s also extremely polite so we probably wouldn’t know otherwise.
The Alabamboo team made it cross the finish line this past weekend. So, we helped throw a little party for them at the Bamboo Bike Studio on Post. It was great to hear about their journey and very cool to see all the people they brought together. It was also nice to see our buddies at Weightshift show up. Sometimes, it’s nice to have a face-to-face conversation with people that you talk to via e-mail more than 7 times a day. We had an interesting conversation about when startups aren’t startups any longer and those that truly stay indie vs. those in for the buyout. You can ponder your thoughts on that.
This week has been about juggling. Juggling different projects, different responsibilities and keeping the team moving forward, while still staying smart. It’s easy to push toward a hard and fast deadline, but you’ve got to make sure that you are keeping with the overall vision that you set out, not just trying to make it to the finish line. Sometimes this needs to be repeated aloud.
We’re continuing our collaboration with the teams from SOCAP, Fearless and COMMON this week. We’re hopefully going to pull off something pretty cool at the SOCAP event in September. We’re also learning more about the COMMON pitch…clever people pitching bold ideas to change the world. I love it and can’t wait to hear how it went!
I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails lately from soon-to-be graduates looking for jobs. We don’t really have anything posted out there as far as “help wanted” signs go, but they find us anyway and are all so specific about their interests in working at Central and they all live far away. We usually stick to a strict in-person interview process. The first test is finding the studio. The second is deciphering Damien’s British humour. Both are oftentimes impossible.
That’s it for today. Got to get back to… everything that is…on…my…desk.
No it hasn’t been that long since you last visited. We did jump from week twenty to over a hundred and eighty. Its just that I stopped to think about how long it has since we’d been in business. And in 2008, The Central Office of Design received a business license from the city of Sausalito and we’ve been trading as Central ever since. All a hundred and eight four weeks since.
The week is busy. But really quiet.
Jonathan has been in Korea. And since we’ve not read anything in the news about him, we’re assuming he’s back in the office on Monday. Emma is likely in Africa now. Perhaps torturing the three people she’s with, of stories of her awesome internship here in Sausalito. Perhaps.
Keela has been working on… everything. The Toolkit. The Picturebook. The Web site. The contracts. The performance. The banking. The bookkeeping. The numbers. The Ride. The event. The call. The machine. And likely more.
One of the things she did was arrange a conference call between ourselves, Amy Benziger from SOCAP, from COMMON: Alex Bogusy, John Bielenberg, Rob Schuham and Sarah Brooks from Hot Studio. Only two couldn’t make it. The rest of us brewed up some ideas for the upcoming SOCAP 11 in September. It should be pretty interesting.
Which reminds me, I should be preparing my stuff for speaking on the Design for Social Innovation track. Which is being curated by the above mentioned Sarah. It looks to be a very interesting set up for the four days. I’m honoured and thrilled to be going this year.
We have a couple of projects in what might best be called ‘development’. Many of our projects evolve through development to become long-term engagements. In a traditional consulting practice a client comes to you, explains their needs, or you help the client define their needs and then you write a proposal to meet those needs. Proposals become easier and easier the more you write them, as they tend to borrow from prior versions as you do more work. However, in our case, the people that tend to pay for the work aren’t the ones who are actually impacted by it, or perhaps even the ones who suggested the work be done in the first place. So business development works very differently. Which is a fun distinction between the two worlds.
In our consulting practice, we have to develop the projects, the funding and the stakeholders. Even if someone brings it to us. So much like the film industry, we get a kernel of an idea, perhaps from an outside person who brings to us an area of concern we might not have considered and we begin to pitch that “around town” to see if there is any interest. We develop the basic materials to explain what could be done, or why we think there’s a need and start to meet and talk to people about the overall concept. Because we don’t really know any precise details at this point. We’re likely just dealing with a huge overarching issue like, fish populations are in serious decline, and we have to get to grips fast with what design can do for this issue. It takes a lot of meetings, many interviews. Lot’s of research and we slowly get a good idea of what kind of story we can tell about the value of running a large-scale design project might be for the huge-critical-thorny-seemingly-intractable problem we’re interested in. Typically by now our development team comprises of actual experts in the space. Whether they’re scientists, researchers or practitioners. And we start to write our version of a script. Which is our project proposal.
A few years back it seemed that philanthropy was the best funding partner to have in situations like these. And back then it was. But today the opportunities seem to be different and the mix of funding partners is much more varied. Which is good in some regards. We now can have partners who are seriously invested in the outcomes and in the performance of our process. Or in areas where philanthropy can work is when the outcome of a particular phase of work could be shared with the entire community. The foundation then would be able to market the work throughout their relevant program areas. So the mix of funding is important. It can help to accelerate a phase of work, as well as create the perfect conditions for another phase. And when a project is in development, you’re trying to figure out where the best source of funding and partnering is for the right parts. Because not all funding is equal, and if you have the chance to get an incredible partnership, that’s the goal to go for.
Once the proposal is written, it really does live much like a Hollywood script. It gets rewritten again and again. It gets notes from different people its shopped around to. It gets tailored to the audience we’re seeking. And along the way we end up creating a kind of brand for this project, an ideal scenario for what we want to achieve which now exists within this new community and our studios. So we act as producers. Shaping the story we’re telling and engaging a community in the vision of it. Finally, when the right funding mix is achieved, we then do the dealmaking to get a full green light to proceed. Contracts signed, kick-off, well kicked off.
Like the film development process, we can easily stage our version of development. And it helps to manage multiple development projects and deal-flow. Yes, we typically do development for free. Having managed ourselves on prior projects to have the freedom to spend a serious amount of time in development on the projects we most want to do. It seems like the development cycle lasts between three and nine months, depending on the sheer audacity of the goal. The smaller the scope, often the simpler the process. But I wouldn’t say there’s not often an exception to that rule.
So we have two major projects in development right now. One year long engagement, and the other is a Future of… project which would be three or more years. This is a fun part of the process. Driven mostly by passion and the belief that these projects are truly worth doing because of the communities and the amount of the environment they’d impact positively. As much as I enjoy the development process, I also can’t wait till they begin.
I think if Nike came to us and asked us to work on supply-chain solutions to alleviate labour-rights issues and said they’d happily pay us to do so, I’d still have a hard time probably understanding that and suggest we spend six months looking for someone else to pay for it. We work best being extremely creative around large complex problems, so finding a sustainable resource for funding these projects is part of that challenge for us, which we very much enjoy. Sometimes the money is to last beyond the project is over, for the ideas that have been implemented and need to run for some time.
But what really topped the week off was an incredible gift from the guys over at Tinkering Monkey. Completely unexpected. If you’ve not visited their site- do so, and feat your eyes on some delicious woodmaking skills and products. And then buy something. Like I just did. Thank you both – Mike and Paula (and congratulations on the engagement!).
I’m out for the next week to ponder my age and make plans for becoming XL. Until then I have a XXXIX year ahead of me.
It’s Friday. I think everyone is very happy about that. It’s been a busy and productive week. Fridays we turn the music up just a little louder. And with the sun shining through the windows and Pandora sprinkling Beatles’ songs into my mix, it’s quite a nice ambiance in the studio. Except that it’s Emma’s last day. That’s a downer. We put an ad out a few months ago for “one of those interns we talk about for the next ten years, comparing every future incoming person to them” and she really fits that bill. She’s smart, funny and a joy to have around. She loves mobiles, so it’s only fitting on her last day that Google’s homepage was an ode to Alexander Calder’s 113th birthday, he’s the great inventor of mobile sculptures.
Outside of being bummed about the loss of a super-smart and comedic intern, things are going great, except we might be running out of space. Everyone has a desk, but the addition of another large-scale project will call for more tables and more foam core. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Jonathan isn’t here. He’s off to Seoul for a week. He cleaned his desk before he left, so not only is that corner of the studio ultra-tidy, but it’s quiet as well. It’s a little strange. He furiously cranked on the project before he left, mountains of research on his desk and piles of cookies. I’m not sure what he did with all those papers…and cookies for that matter.
I’ve been working with the Alabamboo team this week. They’re planning their arrival into the Bay Area, after biking well over 2500 miles. I get sporadic e-mails and phone calls when they have service. I applaud them for being able to not only bike across country, but blog, tweet, facebook and plan an event all at the same time. I’m looking forward to meeting them and hearing about their amazing journey.
There are a lot of proposals on my desk at the moment. Not necessarily currents ones, but olds ones that I am reading through to see what projects have been done and how they were structured. It’s interesting to see the wide range of work that was done at Central before I came here and even more interesting to see where we are going to go…hopefully that will include working with Architecture for Humanity in the near future.
So, it’s late on Friday now and I’ve still got quite a lot to do before I call it the end of the week. Soon, we’ll have more news to share and stuff to show. A thank you to Charlotte for driving over to see us this afternoon. She’s doing a Visualizing Science Fellowship at Yosemite this summer, you can check out her work here: www.charlottexcsullivan.com.
Speaking of driving, I’ve posted a pic of Emma’s ride. I’ll miss it almost as much as I’ll miss her.
So long…happy trails.
We’ve just installed new high speed internet next-door, as well as increased our bandwidth in the main studio. This also applies to our daily mental capacity. I’m thinking we need to do that with human resources as well, and it just so happens that Central will be growing soon! There is so much going on here, that I’m forgetting to eat.
The studio is in hyper-focus mode with the Exchange Project, which seems like 5 projects in one. We’ve been doing tons of research; scouring academic journals and historical texts, as well as dipping into the ethnographic side of the design process through some field-research trips. Of particular note, from the design side of things, is Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style. I read this front to back when I was in School at RISD, but felt compelled to read through it again. It’s proved most useful for weighing the past few years of professional design work, with more empirical and research based principles for design and typography. It feels great to look at type as a science and craft again.
In contrast, we’ve been doing a lot of research on product design, where designing emotion and experience have proved once again to be as important as designing the product itself. Don Norman speaks to this in his Ted Talk, 3 Ways Good Design Makes You Happy. What’s been especially exciting, is orchestrating all of these principles into design guidelines for our project. We’ve been taking on the monumental, yet very necessary task of pulling data from the best minds in typography, educational design, structured writing, cognitive theory, industrial design, and visual composition – and weighing it against (or using it in compliment to) user driven field studies and personal experience – to create the best designed result.
Almost a thousand sticky notes and an equal number of pages later, we are almost there. I think Keela either has secret powers for staying impeccably organized and on top of things, or isn’t sleeping.
Our research also led us to Alan Turing, who has been called the father of modern computer science. His story is an incredible one to say the least. Check out the trailer for a new film that will be launching later this fall here.
We’ve also been visited by an old friend, the Future Fish Project. And a new friend, John Bielenberg, who helped to start Common with Alex Bogusky, stopped by for a great discussion on bicycles and the SoCap conference, where Damien has accepted an invitation to be a panelist. We’re thrilled about this.
Damien also finished writing his article for Print Magazine, but is still writing … something, which just made me look at the mess of notes on my desk that I have to clean. He was extraordinarily generous and surprised me on Wednesday with a limited silkscreen print, Rise for Japan, hand signed by the designer, Milton Glaser. Thanks, D.
Speaking of Japan, I’ve taken on the responsibility of Creative Directing a class called Design for Social Innovation, at Musashino Art University, in Tokyo. The students are working to develop a collaborative idea generating web platform, to help with the ongoing recovery efforts in Japan. Something like Open Ideo. Although it has fallen out of the news here in the US, there is still so much work to be done. The class is hyper-smart and very talented. If you’re wondering how this actually works, we use facebook as a progress and communication tool, dropbox to exchange files, and skype video calls. Technology is amazing when used in this way.
What a week. I’m going to see Harry Potter. In IMAX.
It’s one of those amazing Bank Holiday weekends here, where it reminds you why it is so special to live in the Bay Area. 67 degrees when waking up, and slowly getting warmer. Here at the office, people have been piling into the parking lot getting ready to sail, canoe or hang out on the small beach right here. Le Garage Bistro is going to be slammed. And while everyone is out there, I can get some serious work done.
I just read this in a paper my father wrote:
Dumb ideas have to die first. That’s why progress takes time. First, new ideas have to evolve, then the bad ideas that stop progress have to die.
(Lammers, 1986) by Charles Simonyi. The pioneer of the first word-processor.
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It’s now Thursday morning. There hasn’t been a moment to stop moving. Sometimes that’s a good thing but I’ve learnt that it is quite important to have frequent small moments to take a break. So I have two minutes here before the next activity. We’ve been trying this new thing of making meetings and working sessions fit inside 45 minute slots. It works. For some time now I’ve started most of my meetings at quarter past the hour. For me, I did it mostly to increase the likelihood the meeting started on time as if the earlier meeting ran the full hour then it was hard to move straight into another one on time. But the effect has been that the meetings are shorter, easier to manage and I tend to use the fifteen minutes before it begins to make notes and think about what I want from it. My next meeting, which begins about now, is all about Efficiency. How we as humans develop strategies in density to be efficient and what are the evidences of that. This morning, my strategy for efficiency is coffee and many small breaks.
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So you must by now know I’m a big fan of Berg in London. And of course, I’m eagerly awaiting my shipment of their latest publication SVK, which is a new comic.
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Here are some quotes I’ve recently come across, which all have a common theme to the work we’ve been focused on lately.
Ideally our cities become exciting, sexy, and profitable places to live, play, and work – that’s the most important part. When people have no investment in the places they play or work or live, they act accordingly.
- David Byrne
“Place matters. The kind of environment you create for yourself makes a real and tangible difference in your level of happiness, health, and satisfaction.”
– Malcolm Gladwell
“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”
- Jane Jacobs
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I just had one of those conference calls where, as one of the people said it best, “The conference call Gods were not with us today”. We kept stumbling over each other, interrupting and talking over the other person inadvertently. In spite of that, we ended the 50 minute call with an inspiring combination of Prototyping in the field + SOCAP ’11 and COMMON. I look forward to sharing more about that soon.
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I just saw this tweet from Jason Fried, quoting someone:
“As a designer, there are no “dream projects” handed to you. It’s up to you to make shit great.”
Which I disagree with. In part. We get plenty of dream projects handed to us. Which is incredible. Though – yes, it is up to us to make shit great. It is in our hands to mess it up completely. Or to create something better. I wonder what type of designer Mig Reyes is? Oh, a Graphic designer… that might make sense now. Wouldn’t a dream project be any project that was handed to you, that asked of you to do something great?
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Thursday is wrapping up now. The studio has a silence to it at 6.26pm that smacks of people trying to wrap up things before leaving with a clean conscious of having achieved everything they wanted to do today. Some of the things that I saw happening today were, Emma built a table. Jonathan spent the day reading research and academic papers on things such as value driven design, or the design of educational materials. Keela ran two working sessions with the client. I need to go an summarize the Future of Fish project now, so that I can kick-start a new “Future of…” project.
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Earlier this week we decided on the office Christmas break. Yes, I might be the first person online to have mentioned Christmas 2011. Sorry. It is strange to have to do these kinds of things so far in advance, but then retailers who manufacture goods for Christmas or national holidays often have to plan much further in advance, so I don’t feel that alone. We’ve decided to close the studio for three weeks and one day this year. Which is a tough thing to swallow when your business largely runs on billable time, seeing all those potential billable hours slipping away. But I have to say, I’ve found that personally, if you don’t find a way to close the business for a considerable amount of time, then it can be incredibly difficult to pry yourself away for any decent length of time. The Christmas and New Year’s Eve period seems to be a perfect time to shut up shop, rest and restore for a considerable time, and come back in the New Year (on Friday the 13th) ready for anything. Because typically, it’s almost impossible to take off two or more weeks at any other time of the year. This way everyone has a forced, mandatory, real vacation. We don’t have any vacation policy here – you take the time off you need – but knowing it is so hard to do so throughout the year, perhaps this 3 week closure is our policy. Back up policy. I’m looking forward to my 3 weeks off already.
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Finally, a photo of Keela and Emma taking a fancy car out for a spin. Emma, the further away in the photo, is an intern from Harvard, who is working for our incubated client. We’re sad that she’s only with us for another two weeks, and so we’ve begun a campaign of trying to keep her with us, which includes fancy cars, and trying to convince her to quit school.
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.
Three weeks have passed since I’ve been thrown into the mix here at Central. After being given numerous preemptive apologies from Damien about entering the project stream at its high point, I couldn’t be more excited to get involved, and realized that it was the perfect time because there is a lot going on. It pushes us to find a system that works quickly.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about context. After moving to San Francisco a little over a year ago from the east coast, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when I find myself immersed in a moment like above ^, its hard not to be inspired. There is a certain tactile quality to my new role here at central that is a welcomed addition to my daily experience. The commute to Sausalito is somewhat of a treasure that I am fortunate enough to re-discover every weekday morning. Waking up at 6 am to race through my morning and grab breakfast at the ferry building isn’t half bad, and the morning turns completely enjoyable when a blue bottle latte and the San Francisco skyline begin to disappear as I steam towards the north bay.
The last leg of my journey is the twenty minute stroll to Central HQ. This walk is actually great, because it is full of small details, and it affords me time to really slow down. I must pass three dozen wildflower varieties and an equal number of professional cyclists along the way. The entire journey is equal part distraction from and meditation for the upcoming days work. The early morning sensory experience is a great primer to think in a tactile way. For instance, at the office, I’ve felt reconnected to my love for print and typography, thanks to Damien’s outstanding collection of books and publications. Print seems refreshing these days, given our addictions to digital aggregators of news and information. But, I’m always happily surprised when the standard digital platforms (such as google maps for instance) can be used in a new way, as our exchange project is showing us. Food for thought.
In the studio, we’ve been really cranking on some long term projects that are nearing the end phase, which also means beginning new ones! It was a great exercise when Damien and I had to put our heads together to craft a proposal entitled “Accelerating Impact Through Collaboration.” It definitely works. We’ve really been spilling out all over the office too – piles of research in every corner, type specimen books spitting out of the small laser printer, and thousands – literally thousands of images sprawling across desk space and foam boards in our workroom next door, taking up a football-pitch-sized surface area. I think this is making Damien feel a little claustrophobic, but hopefully he knows there is brilliance hidden in that chaos.
This week was also heavy on design research, which happens to combine two of my favorite things. It’s very gratifying to let the process of design be the driver and the designer act more like a curator, orchestrating the results, and allowing the craft of design to be put to meaningful use. Graphic designers can sometimes have a reputation for being simply pixel jockeys, aiming to beautify “design problems.” It’s not that visual aesthetics don’t have their place or importance, but its a much more informative and fulfilling engagement to create a depth of knowledge that can directly inform the result. I’ve been sinking into my new context to help let it inspire my approach, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the process takes me. An afterthought – although the walk is great, I wouldn’t mind getting a new bike!
