INTERDISCIPLINARY METHOD
We live in a compartmentalized mind frame. Home is different from office, fun is separated from work, science lives apart from art. We’ve been trained to specialize in one thing and call that our profession, pushing our other interests down to lesser importance. Many of us, however, have several seemingly unrelated passions simmering within us, waiting to be manifested with the right method.
Interdisciplinary thinking turns compartmentalization on its head by encouraging the coming together of disparate interests. In her map painting series, designer Paula Scher, partner in the eminent studio, Pentagram, combined her passion for lettering, maps and painting to create a series cross-disciplinary works. Similarly, designer Andrew Byrom merged his love of typography and furniture to create typographic furniture, while the ceramicist Stephanie Dearmond cast letterforms in porcelain to make new and unexpected form. These are but a few examples of what can happen when we choose to combine our interests instead of segregating them.
Passions are fluid. They change shape and intensity. Introduce yourself to a new subject matter. Prod into a new discipline in order to give yourself a new perspective. A great way to do this is to talk to experts in other fields, as conversations fuel passions and can spark new ways of thinking. This is precisely why designer James Victore holds The Dinner Series, an annual week-long workshop where each day culminates in a lavish dinner party, meant to stimulate creative conversation. (Get Victore quote here).
Add additional examples of conversations: Etsy Street Teams and D:Center Baltimore’s monthly design conversations.
Conversations can lead to striking collaborations between experts from different fields. Longtime collaborators Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak of MM/Paris and photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin have produced hybrid photo/text works. (Show alphabet here). Likewise, designer Stephen Farrell has worked closely with writer Steve Tomasula to publish novels that bestow equal value on the design and the text. (Need example of designer working with a non-artistic collaborator).
Add a paragraph on working with community — larger, social issues
How does this work get done? In this chapter, we give you some leads. We attempt here to break down the method of interdsiciplinary design into useful tools—charts and diagrams, tips on inter-personal relations, and guidelines for testing the work as you go along.
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That Can’t Be Done. Can It?
Most of us have pulled the cord to flip venetian blinds open or closed hundreds of times, without giving it a second thought. To designer Andrew Byrom, this commonplace instance provided a burst of inspiration, as he envisioned letterforms made of blinds, switching from bold to regular to light with the pull of the cord. This notion has led him to build a series of letters out of venetian blinds, and further, to draw a striking flat font based on the idea of the window blind. (show images)
Byrom thinks in an unrestricted way, seeing the magical in the mundane by asking, “what if?” His thoughts flow from paper to screen, to metal work, kite construction and neon signage. In doing so, he constantly subverts existing parameters and pushes his way into other disciplines to nourish his creative needs. Byrom’s thinking is effective only because it is backed up by his eagerness to learn, to renounce the comfort of his mastery to for the thorny work of the beginner, failing again and again until a new skill has been learned.
Fluid thinking allows us to see old things in a new way. Find inspiration and possibilities by combining existing knowledge in unexpected ways. Apply an old process to a new material, or inversely, a new process to a well-known material. And when you move from thinking to making, expect obstacles and find ways to overcome them. Experts will insist that it cannot be done, but if you trust your idea and show both your passion and persistence, they may eventually move over to your side and share skills with you. When the level of investment is high and when it is shared among participants, interdisciplinary work comes alive.
Add here: Joshua Davis, Banksy, Wayne White (need a woman, too)
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Design and ________
Once your interdisciplinary geenie has been unleashed, seek out partners with whom you can create new work, free of artificially imposed restrictions of academia. Partnerships come in all shapes and sizes: project-based or long term; intimate or distant. Beware, when disciplines come together, the unknown, that fearsome sphere, grows ever larger. As does the need for careful listening on both ends. Success hinges on shared passion, common goals and a high tolerance for risk. The following examples show the unlimited potential of graphic design as it branches off and connects with other disciplines.
When design meets architecture, motion and scale can find fresh new manifestations. Seeley and McNall are partners in Electroland, an interactive studio based in Los Angeles, California. A designer and architect by training, Seeley and McNall have fused their respective disciplines, using electronic tools to create urban site-specific experiences. In Drive By, 2007, Seeley and McNall have given motion an urban dimension, connecting it to traffic. An electronic display along Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood tracks the passing of cars by flashing phrases and abstract letterforms. Here, an unremarkable slice of metropolitan life — cars speeding along a thoroughfare — has been transformed into visual play; this has been achieved with a meging of architecture and graphic design.
The grand scale of architecture usually towers over the intimacy of books and screens. Electroland flipped this notion of scale in two projects, Author Wall (2009), and College Faces (year?). Visitors to the Guadalajara Book Fair enjoyed playing with authors’ names on a touch screen in Author Wall, and seeing their interaction simultaneously projected on a 30-meter wall. This type-driven environment enriched the event by making everyone, and not just the authors, feel like “makers”. The close-up experience of a touch-screen has been writ large, influencing the look and feel of the entire event. In College Faces (year??? has this been realized?), Electroland took the intimacy of the personal photograph and blew it up to architectural scale, projecting a yearbook of sorts on the facade of the Gateway Community College in New Haven, Connecticut. The faces of students, teachers and staff are cast in slow motion on the building’s glass curtain wall, generating a sense of togetherness on campus. To make the project more meaningful to its most frequent viewers, individual faces can be accessed on a website (which one??) or via smart phone.
Pairing up with someone with access to new technology can take your work to a new level, as demonstrated by two stunning 2011 typographic projects, Type Fluid by Skyrill Design and Arkitypo by Johnson Banks. Brothers Ali and Hussain Almossawi of Skyrill Design in Bahrain come from computer science and graphic design backgrounds, respectively. They have put their knowledge together to create Type Fluid (2011), a remarkable typeface built using RealFlow, a special effects program. The letterforms exist both as stills and as short animations in which they grow, pulsate and undulate in stunning ways that could not be achieved using the standard tools of graphic design. In London, the design studio Johnson Banks partnered with the 3-d manufacturing studio at Ravensbourne, a digital media school to print exquisite sculptural letterforms, an homage to 20th century typography executed with 21st Century technology.
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Single practicioners
Andrew Byrom
Wayne White
Joshua Davis
Need a woman here
Examples of Partnerships:
Electroland — design and architecture
Skyrill — design and computer science
MM/Paris — design and photography?
Johnson Banks —Arkitypo – design and rapid manufacturing
Stephen Farrell and Steve Tomasula — design and literature
School Projects:
Nancy’s Kala Raksha in India
Natacha Poggio’s lab
Mike Weikert’s CDP
Bezalel Academy of Arts and GM
Big Projects:
IDEO
Kala Raksha?
