Is Creativity the Answer?

Almost everyone living in today’s economic and social climate realizes that we are at the brink of a new era. As a whole the world knows that what we are doing is not working, but we are afraid of change, and afraid of losing the interactions and relationships we have with the things that surround us. In the face of change we have questions and concerns. Most people look to political leaders and scientists for answers, but Nathan Shedroff has a different idea.

Nathan Shedroff, an experience designer and expert in sustainability, is convinced that the answer to our problems lie in the hands of designers. Shedroff believes that designers are creative thinkers who are trained to look at the world in a different way than everyone else. Creative thinking is what is needed to change the way the world is run, and answer the questions that our world is faced with today.

Shedroff firmly believes that there is not one answer to our problems but many questions that will eventually lead to answers. During a recent presentation Shedroff asked the audience a series of three questions that he believed could help designers examine the interaction between content and form and work towards a more sustainable world.

The first question that Shedroff posed was, What's a more sustainable world look like? Shedroff’s answer was that sustainability is not the end result, but the answer to what is coming. Through the interaction of business, design, and sustainability solutions will be made. Shedroff used examples of other countries creative thinking to illustrate that everyday progress is being made toward a more sustainable future.

The second question that Shedroff posed was, What's a more meaningful world look like? As designers, Shedroff thinks it is important that we put forth realistic ideas that can hold meaning for people. Meaning can be found in personal items and in brands, and both are acceptable. Shedroff used the example of the Build A Bear Company to illustrate how a brand can create a meaningful experience. Even though Build A Bear is a chain store and may not lend itself to the idea of a more meaningful world it creates a meaningful experience for many children, and this is an important distinction for designers to make.

The third question that Shedroff posed was, What's a post-consumer world look like? As a consumer based nation we have relationships with the objects around us, and in a post-consumer world this will have to change. The relationship between form and function will change, and everything we own will become more useful rather than beautiful. In a post-consumer world people will be forced to closely examine the relationship of how things got to them. The world will become a place where the process is just as important as the end result.

Shedroff outlined that we have no actual vision of what is to come. We know that things have to change and that the relationship we have with design will shift, but many of the plans that we have for the future are unrealistic and based too firmly on the idea of a Utopian wonderland. The most important message that Shedroff delivered was not that we all need to work together to find answers, but that as a group it is important to remember that we have no idea what a post-consumer world will look like, we need to figure it out, and design is here so that we can find answers.

Image: From Nathan Shedroff's lecture on Sustainability, illustrating how Business, Design, and Sustainability can no longer work as separate entities.

Thinking Outside the Cardboard Box

Surtido, a design firm based in Barcelona, recently challenged thirty-five designers to go to IKEA and come up with new products using only what they found at the store. The idea behind this project is that IKEA is not a place to buy finished disassembled furniture, but a supplier of raw materials.

Everything used in the designers products had to come from IKEA, including screws, tools, light bulbs, fabric, and anything else they needed to complete their product. While the idea of hacking IKEA products is not new, challenging thirty-five well-respected designers to make something within these constraints is.

This project forced already successful designers to step out of their comfort zone and think outside of the box, a skill that will be very useful for designers in the future. With sustainability and depleting resources on everyone’s mind, the ability to take dissimilar used parts and make them into something useful and new will be a valuable skill for all designers to have.

Many of the finished products have a unique homemade feel to them. While complicated many of the end results look like garage projects, something that anyone could assemble with a little visualization and practice. As designers we are coming into a world where it will be vital for designers to know how to think creatively and make something old into something new, or in this case something mass-produced into something unique and different.

Image: Lamp made out of IKEA parts. Designed by the Yonoh Design Group. See the rest of their work at http://www.yonoh.es/

Are Icons the Key Ingredient?

Icons are often used to help children learn. At a young age it is easier to identify with pictures than words, and it is not uncommon for children to use pictures to learn their alphabet. Christopher Monro DeLorenzo, an art director and designer, used the concept of an animal and object alphabet banner to come up with a set of stickers that use icons to help children learn to use a keyboard.

Children are becoming dependent on computers at an earlier and earlier age and DeLorenzo thought it was about time a old method was adapted for our new world. Each sticker is made up of an icon and the word that corresponds with it. The sticker is then placed on the corresponding keyboard key.

DeLorenzo believes that by using icons in the place of letters it will help children adapt to the keyboards key placement faster. While this concept may seem simple, the idea behind it is quite important. DeLorenzo has managed to take an old teaching method and adapt it for the future. The keyboard stickers are a sustainable and easy way to help children progress faster in an increasingly technology dependent world. Rather than creating an entirely different children’s keyboard, which would be not be sustainable, and would most likely be expensive, DeLorenzo designed a simple, cheap, and sustainable teaching method that can be easily applied and disposed of.


Images: Picture Keyboard Sticker Set, Images courtesy of http://www.notcot.org/

Designing for the Future

Objectified explores the complex relationship between people and their objects. The full-length documentary film looks to designers to explain the impact that objects have on consumers’ lives, and what design can say about a person.

Gary Hustwit, the producer and director of Objectified, forms an argument about toady’s design culture by interviewing designers and studying their process. By looking closely at how designers all over the world are solving design problems, the viewer gets an in-depth look into the thought process of designers working now.

Through the course of the film process, personal identity through objects, consumerism, and sustainability are explored. Each topic is looked at as a problem that can be fixed and solved through design. The film shows the viewer that designers have the important job of looking into the future and anticipating what the buyer will want.

Today we live in a culture that is faced with the unique problem between the desire for new things, and the need to be sustainable. Designers more than anyone are facing the future, and realizing that it is there job to curb the consumerists need for the new and the now. What does this mean for designers? It means that when making new products designers must ask themselves what people value and how to make things that get better with time. Objectified explores and makes obvious and important question that all designers need to be asking themselves today, how do we design to better the future?


Image: Objectified, Title made of objects, taken from one of the posters designed for the film.

The Desire for Form and Function

Founded on the idea of combining all of the arts into one total artwork, the Bauhaus movement operated between 1919 and 1933 famously making public the idea of combining fine arts and crafts. Walter Gropius, a German architect at the time, started the Bauhaus movement in Weimer, Germany. Gropius based his work on the harmony between form and function. The Bauhaus movement constantly dealt with the question of craftsmanship and mass production and the relationship between usefulness and beauty. Many of the issues that the Bauhaus movement confronted then are the same that designers are being faced with today.

Gropius wanted to break down the barrier between classes, which he believed created the difference between craft and fine art. He believed that well designed items could reach beyond class. Again this is an issue that is prevalent in today’s design world. Many designers today are working to make their designs accessible to everyone, reaching beyond class. The style that came out of the Bauhaus movement attempted to run parallel to the world that was forming around it, a world that needed mass-produced, functional, and cheap items. Artists were trained to work within the guidelines of the industry around them.

The main objective of the Bauhaus movement was to unify craft, art, and technology. They believed heavily in the machine, and the idea of a preliminary design course rather than design history. The Bauhaus movement created a new way of thinking that has transposed into design today.

Image: Bauhaus Movement Poster. Image from http://visualspy.com/week-eight-design-art-history

Artistic Sustainably

Tucked in a corner at The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento is a clunky old cigarette machine. At first glance the machine looks simply like a rusty piece of history, something that once stood outside of a gas station. Only when one looks closer does it become obvious that the rusty machine is now an example of sustainability and the ability to reuse in a creative way. Instead of pulling the handle and receiving cigarettes, a visitor of the Crocker Art Museum can pull the handle and receive a one of a kind piece of art.

The machine displays twenty-two different artists ranging from photographs to screen prints. After purchasing a token at the gift shop, the visitor takes the token to the machine and is able to choose which medium they want their particular artwork to be in. This interaction makes the cigarette machine not only an example of sustainability, but also an excellent example of interactive artwork.

The shiny knobs and anticipation of what tiny piece will be yours makes this machine hard to resist. By allowing the visitor to physically participate it creates a bond between the artwork and the recipient, that otherwise would not have been created. The cigarette machine turned Art-O-Mat is a great example of how we can use the outdated things around us to create fun interactive designs. By revamping the machine it becomes something new and interesting, rather than outdated and rusty.

Image: Art-O-Mat at the Crocker Art Museum.

Musical Scales

Made of old dresses, blue jeans, and bed sheets the African American Quilts on display at The Richard Nelson Art Gallery are beautiful artworks dating from the 1800s to present. Through repetition, color, contrast, and variety the quilts displayed at the gallery each have their own unique rhythm. The quilts offer many stories, and hold emotions that span time. Using rhythm and repetition, the patterns created by the different materials used give a rare feel to each quilt, making it impossible to absorb what the entire exhibition has to offer.

Piano Keys, created in 2009, is made entirely out of hand-dyed cotton corduroy. Due to the use of color and vertical shapes this piece has a sense of cascading movement. The jumping colors create a rhythmic pattern that reminds one of the ups and downs of a musical scale. The cool colors cascade downward as the warm colors rise up to crash in the middle in an explosion of reds.

The constant change in scale and the progressive rhythm of this quilt keep your eyes moving, always jumping from one color to the next. The unpredictable pattern of vertical lines gives energy and life to the quilt allowing its creator to tell a story of excitement and passion.

Each quilt tells its own unique story. Some are tranquil and safe carrying with them the sense of history, while others use eye-catching colors to create bold rhythms and tell new stories. The connection between the past and the present is represented through the use of recycled materials, and these materials bring a particular presence to the quilts, as if the materials were telling a story all by themselves.

Image: Piano Keys, 2009; 108" x 77", Hand-dyed Cotton Corduroy, Cotton Batting, Hand-dyed Muslin Backing.