For the past few months, I’ve been doing some volunteer work with IDSA San Francisco. I’ve had a long standing interest in industrial design, and when I heard they needed some help with their email communications, I jumped at the chance to get involved with the organization. One of the projects I’m helping them with is a new take on the idea of a studio tour. We’ve been working on the pitch and branding for the event, and we’ve finally come to this graphic, which all involved seem to be happy with. Stay tuned for more news about the event!

Form has meaning; it can touch us at such a primal level that our mind is left scrambling to rationalize our emotional reactions. Consider the visceral impression conveyed by a natural setting: The deep serenity felt, for example, while walking through a majestic grove of redwoods. The delicate lace of fern fronds wave as you drag your hand through them as you walk, and your heart jumps into your throat when startled by a deer caught wondering across the trail. These natural forms hold an innate meaning that not only transcends the human experience, but even predates our verbal expression, definition, and measurement. In other words, we did not create this meaning; it comes from the forms themselves, and existed long before we did.“

The idea that form is a language that predates verbal expression is fascinating to me. It feels like there’s a convergence between this idea and a notion mentioned by Eames Demetrios at Compostmodern a few weeks ago that he described as “way it should be-ness”. The post also eloquently describes a dilemma I’ve been running into lately – my job as a producer at Zynga is extremely data-intensive, but the problems I’m most interested in solving are in the areas of experience and form. In a business driven by statistics like clicks, installs and daily active users, I’m finding it difficult to justify time spent focusing on the less easily quantifable aspects of designing intuitive and visceraly attractive products. Not only that, but when we do put the time into refining these aspects of the design, as I feel we did with Scramble Live, it’s challenging to measure the impact of that attention to detail.

More info: www.chicartisanfashion.com

For the site, I started with a basic skin and tweaked it for her needs (new logo, colorscheme, some layout modifications) and added a photo gallery plugin with some custom CSS work. The site is still in development, but you can check it out here.

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The complexity and reach of the projects I’m working on has increased exponentially since I graduated. But the questions and process to solve the problems are fundamentally the same. Design provides a framework that is rarely taught in schools: a method for creating intelligent solutions to complex problems.

My advice to you: embrace the fact that everything in your life can (and should?) be a design problem. Think beyond graphic design, exhibit design, fashion design. See the world from a more holistic perspective – the world is a place full of complex problems in need of intelligent solutions.

The projects I’m working on now will have contact with tens of millions of people. What makes me qualified to do this? What makes me think I can do this successfully? One answer: design. Problems get bigger, but the methods for solving them stay the same. Identify the goals, identify the constraints, learn enough about both to push the limits of what’s possible.

Here’s the other trick: it’s not magical. Yes, sometimes there is that spark, that moment of creative inspiration where everything falls into place. More often (and more important, when you’re expected to produce these solutions on a regular basis, not just when you happen to stumble upon an epiphany), it is the result of hard work and focused effort. There’s a lot of mediocre stuff out there. Mediocre design, mediocre products, mediocre people. If being exceptional was easy, everyone would do it. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for those who embrace the challenge), it’s much easier to be mediocre.

My challenge to you: Take what you’ve learned here, and remove the limits from your thinking. There’s plenty of complex problems out there in need of intelligent solutions. Take your design education and go solve a few, you’re better suited than most to do so.

I earned two degrees while I at UC Davis. One took 80% of my years here and 20% of my effort (Ecology). The other took 20% of my years here and 80% of my effort (Design). Looking back on it, I think I tired of my ecology program because there wasn’t much room for creativity. If you did the research and recorded the right numbers, and then put those numbers into the right equations, out came the results. You may not like the results, but there wasn’t much guesswork in the process.

Design, by contrast, forces you to ask questions and explore solutions. Some (many?) of the solutions will be novel, at least to you. How to pick one? There aren’t traditional “right” answers. Sure, design has “rules” but they’re not like the rules of physics – immutable and constant – in design, the possibility exists of breaking those rules, so long as you’re doing it appropriately and know what you’re doing. A favorite quote: “Rules are a substitute for poor skills of observation”. If you find yourself depending on the rules for guidance, maybe you need to work on your judgment and observation.

When picking these solutions, you can only choose the one that you think will best solve the problem within the constraints of the context.

And the new design:

I also helped GSD design and build their first tradeshow booth. We worked with a tradeshow booth production company, and I consulted on exhibit graphics and booth layout.

California Lighting Technology Center: Working with my partner Ashley Brown, we redesigned the CLTC exhibit space and designed a modular case system to support their needs for flexibility in the space. I used Illustrator, Photoshop, and SketchUp to bring the designs together.

Green Design Wiki: a resource for exhibit designers interested in sustainability. I still maintain this site, and it gets about 1,000 hits a month.

This flash portfolio includes print, web, and exhibit desing projects, complete with brainstorms, sketches, and final implementations.

View the flash portfolio.