RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
Interdisciplinary collaborations, exciting partnerships & new genres of design specialism
Collectives, partnerships and collaborations have resulted in contemporary design as we know it. Interdisciplinary collaboration creates great connections, inspiring new ways of working, communicating perspectives and viewpoints in design thinking, bio-design, service design, social design, VR, AI, and so much more.
Designers are storytellers, who through visualisation, bring concepts and imagination to life. When you combine design with science, research and academics, you can capture public imagination and institute change.
Anab Jain brings the future to life by creating experiences where people can touch, see and feel the potential of the world they are creating. Together with Indian scientists, samples of polluted air from 2030 were developed and presented to the government so they could tangibly smell and experience the air their future children would be breathing. This collaboration between science and design resulted in the government investing billions in sustainable energy (Jain, 2017).
Institutions like Policy Lab, Designers on Holiday and Colour Factory, bring together creatives to facilitate collaboration and exciting, original outcomes.
Policy Lab brings people-centred design approaches to policy-making with teams of designers, researchers and networks of experts who use speculative thinking to better service design and assist government (About Policy Lab - Policy Lab, n.d.).
Designers on Holiday located in Sweden's Gotland countryside bring together creatives from different practices to develop a hub for experimental, modern and sustainable design. The design adventure explores new ways for designers to reintroduce themselves to the natural and playful side of creation through collaboration, sharing and teaching(designers-holiday, n.d.).
Colour Factory brings together artists and creatives to work in colour and conceptualise the unexpected. By offering a highly sensory experience, they inspire real, unfiltered emotion and remind people what it means to slow down and be present. Together with Queens-based writer Won McIntosh, thousands of images of New York in colour were translated into ten poignant poems that capture daily life in the city (Color Factory – Experience the Joy of Color, n.d.).
Fig. 1: The Just-Opened Color Factory Reflects the Palette of New York City, 2018.
Colour Factory facilitated a collaboration between artist Lakwena and musician Abimaro to produce 'Sing me high, singe me low, bring me back, let me go.' The installation es the magnetic relationships between the first and fifth note in a scale, offering a sequence of longing and resolution. By playing chimes and listening to the response between notes, taking in the vibration of the words and colours as they travel high and low, the audience gets to participate and collaborate with the exhibition.
Fig. 2, 3: The Just-Opened Color Factory Reflects the Palette of New York City, 2018.
Artist Gordon Young and Why Not Associates creation of Blackpool Comedy Carpet is an example of social design collaboration. (Gordon young: the comedy carpet, Blackpool, n.d.). Jokes, songs and catchphrases are given visual form in a 2,200m² work of art containing over 160,000 granite letters embedded into concrete to celebrate British comedy on an extraordinary scale (Altmann, 2012). Chemists, engineers and designers created new techniques and recipes for production (Comedy Carpet Blackpool | Visit Blackpool, n.d.) in a complex piece of public art that took five years to realise (TYPO Talks » Blog Archiv » Dinner for One? n.d.).
Fig. 4: The Comedy Carpet Blackpool, 2019.
Fig. 5, 6: Wikimedia Commons, 2013.
The design studio Brighten the Corners collaborated with Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor to produce a sensational, double-volume, colour-saturated annual report utilising ten overlaid neon inks for lighting giant Zumtobels (Brighten the Corners live up to their name with this colour-saturated annual report, n.d.).
Fig. 7, 8, 9: It's Nice That, 2012.
Multi-sensory experience design studios Bompas & Parr collaborate with creatives, designers, cooks, specialised technicians, producers, film-makers, contractual structural engineers, scientists, artists, and psychologists to experiment, develop, produce, and produce install projects, artworks and exhibitions.
Bompas & Parr teamed up with Ancestry DNA to present the world's first DNA-driven and hyper-personalised culinary experience. Each course is specifically designed to reflect the DNA of one of our four pairs of diners, based on their genetic heritage and ethnicity (About / Bompas & Parr, n.d.).
Interdisciplinary collaboration is the ultimate intertwining of skills, passion and knowledge that results in innovation, change and unique outcomes. Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds – Alexander Graham Bell.
IMAGINE
Sketchbook Workshop Challenge ideas for Week 6.
The forty-five-minute interview was cut down to 10 minutes using the application Descript.
PODCAST - INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION WITH STORM WIGGETT & CAILYN SONDEROP
REFLECTION
I have been bored with the mundane monotony that seems to occupy today's design world. It wasn’t until I discovered the inspiring creations and design thinking brought about through interdisciplinary collaborations that I realised I had been looking in the wrong place.
I needed to broaden my scope of reference. The simple process of engaging with someone outside of the design field makes conceptualisation and outcomes so much more refreshing. The perspectives and viewpoints of someone from a different industry is already so different and new that the outcomes are invariably unique. To then build on that results in an exploration of the new and unknown.
Collaboration is much like a birth. The song that springs forth resembles each one of use to a degree, but it’s the kind of thing that would never be born from just one of us sitting down with a guitar – Grant-Lee Phillips
Reference: Jain, A., 2017. Before you continue to YouTube. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYjWLqE_cfE> [Accessed 9 July 2021].
Reference: Amazing-designers-holiday-on-the-wonderful-island-of-gotland.com. n.d. [online] Available at: <https://www.amazing-designers-holiday-on-the-wonderful-island-of-gotland.com/about-c126r> [Accessed 9 July 2021].
Reference: Bompasandparr.com. n.d. About / Bompas & Parr. [online] Available at: <http://bompasandparr.com/about/view/studio> [Accessed 9 July 2021].
Reference: Itsnicethat.com. n.d. Brighten the Corners live up to their name with this colour-saturated annual report. [online] Available at: <https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/brighten-the-corners-annual-report> [Accessed 9 July 2021].
Reference: Altmann, A., 2012. TYPO Talks » Blog Archiv » Dinner for One?. [online] TYPO International Design Talks. Available at: <https://www.typotalks.com/videos/altmann-typoberlin2012-2/> [Accessed 9 July 2021].
Reference: designboom | architecture & design magazine. n.d. Gordon young: the comedy carpet, Blackpool. [online] Available at: <https://www.designboom.com/art/gordon-young-the-comedy-carpet-blackpool/> [Accessed 9 July 2021].
Reference: TYPO International Design Talks. n.d. TYPO Talks » Blog Archiv » Dinner for One?. [online] Available at: <https://www.typotalks.com/videos/altmann-typoberlin2012-2/> [Accessed 9 July 2021].
Reference: Visit Blackpool. n.d. Comedy Carpet Blackpool | Visit Blackpool. [online] Available at: <https://www.visitblackpool.com/detail/comedy-carpet-blackpool-651130/> [Accessed 9 July 2021].
Reference: Openpolicy.blog.gov.uk. n.d. About Policy Lab - Policy Lab. [online] Available at: <https://openpolicy.blog.gov.uk/about/> [Accessed 9 July 2021].
Reference: Colorfactory.co. n.d. Color Factory – Experience the Joy of Color. [online] Available at: <https://colorfactory.co> [Accessed 10 July 2021].
Image 1, 2, 3: 2018. The Just-Opened Color Factory Reflects the Palette of New York City. [image] Available at: <https://www.galeriemagazine.com/color-factory-new-york-city/> [Accessed 10 July 2021].
Image 4: 2019. The Comedy Carpet Blackpool. [image] Available at: <http://www.thehotelatmillfarm.com/2019/10/11/the-comedy-carpet-blackpool/> [Accessed 10 July 2021].
Image 5, 6: Wikimedia Commons, 2013. Comedy Carpet. [image] Available at: <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comedy-Carpet-04.JPG> [Accessed 10 July 2021].
Image 7, 8, 9: It's Nice That, 2012. Brighten the Corners live up to their name with this colour-saturated annual report. [image] Available at: <https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/brighten-the-corners-annual-report> [Accessed 10 July 2021].