This will not be a single project, but a series of endeavors resulting in a collection that illustrates an approach to design. In some ways it is nothing more than a snapshot of work from a specific period of time in my evolution as a designer. The goal being the designer I am today will not be here next May, hopefully replaced with an evolved version. I’m looking to involve the following three things in my process: Rigor Leaning into my inclination towards a methodical approach to work. Can a practice in the ordinary, a daily repetition, produce something extraordinary? Investigation Looking into questions that address subjective concepts or are unanswerable. Exploring things like: What matters - Why do we value certain items or achievements more than others? Why do we do the things we do? Emotion - What is memory? Is grief the price of love? Impact - What is it? How do we make it? Power - How is it created? What does it look like? How can it be harnessed? Humanity - What does it mean to be human? What pulls us together, what pushes us apart? Hand Making Embracing my love for physical making and trying to upend my tendency to lead with analysis and start the process with the making. Exploring materiality, form, craft, scale, deconstruction, color, and type to discover the unexpected. If in life everything can change and everything will change, whether we want it to or not, how do you embrace that reality with a sense of optimism, not foreboding, and view change as opportunity instead of obstacle? And how do you balance doing what you want to do (because life IS short, even if it is a cliche), and doing what you can for others with your talents and assets? Can those pursuits be merged? At the end of the day the big question for me to explore will not revolve around ‘what kind of designer will I be or what will I make’, but more around ‘what of me can I bring to design and how can I help shape the world around me?’ I’m excited to find that out and I’m gonna start the way I always do, by asking, ‘what’s next!?’
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