RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
Sketchbooks Research & Analysis Ideas for Week 7.
New modes of personal practice, approaches and strategies for delivering creative services.
Studios in multiple locations worldwide have adopted new approaches and strategies to communicate with and service a global audience. They are offering twenty-four-hour workdays, cross-cultural communication, diverse perspectives and exciting collaborative methods.
Co-design focused Hato, based in London and Hong Kong, creates community-centred design that actively connects people, engages society and adds value in cultural engagement by equipping people to think and communicate differently (HATO, n.d.).
Hato Press is an independent printing and publishing house that acts as an autonomous experimental space. It encourages collaboration by helping creatives think differently, establishes a collective perspective and voice while learning from one another (Hato Press – Riso Risograph printing, 2011).
Fig. 1: Neily, 2017.
Fig. 2: Risoprint Workshop with Hato Press, 2017
There is a rise in collectives like Lovers Collective and New Studio. Collective individuality shapes New Studio with members in different locations from Greece to Portugal and New York, supporting autonomous operations under a collaborative umbrella, allowing for agility and diverse creative exchange (Work: New Studio, n.d.). More extensive networks and connections are also established that would take an individual a lifetime to build.
Global practice has the advantage of multiple perspectives, agility and culturally diverse creative exchange. With offices in London and San Fransico, Turner Duckworth uses a ‘distant crit’ process where creative teams or individuals in their sister office review, assess, and provide input on work objectively while adding a different perspective.
Turner Duckworth has also coined the term and practice of competitive collaboration, which encourages designers to work together within a studio, or between studios, acknowledging the idea of a ‘winning concept’ and celebrating its’ authors. Collaboration between studios and designers rotating in and out of teams keeps ideas fresh and ensures consistently high creative work (David Turner (Turner Duckworth) Interview, n.d.).
Fig. 3: Turner Duckworth, n,d.
New Studio and Simon Manchipps’, Someone advocate collaboration in a global context to inspire non-traditional, exciting ideas and approaches. These studios search for and recruit designers with the same values and similar outlooks so they can evolve and grow together (About – SomeOne, n.d.).
Studios with multiple locations globally, like New Studio, Turner Duckworth and Someone, can work across various time zones, which often allows for a 24 hour workday. Client service is more effective, and work can be turned around quickly with a boost in productivity (The pros and cons of working across time zones, n.d.).
Technology is an essential ingredient to the facilitation of connectivity, collaborations in the creative process and education. It allows companies and individual designers to work globally, collaborate with different industries and individuals, and seek unique perspectives and cultural influences.
Applications like Zoom and Cisco facilitate online meetings and presentations (Cisco - Networking, Cloud, and Cybersecurity Solutions, n.d.). Miro is a collaborative whiteboard platform that allows teams to work together anywhere and anytime (Miro, 2021). Whatsapp provides for quick, micro communications with clients and staff. Evernote helps you find, capture, and effortlessly organise ideas (Best Note Taking App - Organise Your Notes with Evernote, 2021). Instagram and Twitter provide ideas and inspiration with the click of a button. Trello allows teams to manage and organise projects and tasks (Trello, 2021).
Fig. 4, 5: Evernote, n.d.
Fig. 6: Trello, n.d.
New technology and modes of creative practice are reshaping and restructuring the design industry. Creatives need to learn from and mimic the methodology of others, incorporate new technology to streamline and speed up productivity while understanding new design techniques and strategies and why they work. Don’t get left behind.
WORKSHOP CHALLENGE
Doodle Café – Connect, Collaborate, Create
The pandemic has accelerated a change in society, where freelance, hybrid and work from home situations are the new normal. The resulting isolation is not conducive to creativity.
The Doodle Café is an inspiring, visually stimulating environment that cultivates a creative ecology. It offers customers the opportunity to break from the isolation of working alone and explore a change of scenery while networking and interacting with a community of like-minded individuals to co-discover, share, problem solve and create in a uniquely playful way. All while sipping on a great cup of coffee!
The Café encourages creatives to leave technology behind and explore by doodling, sketching, or writing on table-tops, benches, and other surfaces covered in sketch paper. There are post-it and blackboard walls where ideas, art, photographs and magazine clippings can be pinned. The interior design is comprised of customers doodles in an ever-evolving environment. You can visit the café multiple times, and it will always look different.
Creatives can add to or improve on the doodles of others in a curious, expressive and exploratory manner that inspires new ways of thinking, sparks creativity and collaboration. Creatives are encouraged to mark their work with a name or avatar linked to an accessible archive to facilitate networking.
When people with different skills and perspectives come together to create in a place like the Doodle Café, you end up with something greater than the whole.
REFLECTION
The power of collaboration hit home this week after reflection on the week sixes podcast with Cailyn Sonderup. Cailyn realised that she had been very insular in her academic thinking and approach and felt like a new world had opened up for her with visual applications, prototyping and workshops to realised her ideas and concepts. I learned about exciting new ventures to explore design applications in a completely different industry.
Cailyn and I spent an evening brainstorming design applications for childhood phycology and modelling a business plan that included structured workshops on a digital platform. The workshops would be tested in a space inspired by Morag Myerscough vibrantly coloured interiors and hospital design work that would reinvent itself for every seminar, providing us with visuals for the website and live prototyping and testing.
The power of design thinking, the tangible visualisation of theoretical ideas and perspectives utterly contrary to our own, has sparked new and exciting possibilities.
In conjunction with this, I have realised the benefit of stepping out of my comfort zone and embracing new technology to manage my time, collaborations, business structures, and accounts more effectively. I can get set in my ways and find the idea and hurdles of learning new applications and technology daunting. I am trying to adopt a new attitude of exploring and embracing the new and unknown to make work more straightforward and effective.
Reference: Miro. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://miro.com> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Reference: Cisco. n.d. Cisco - Networking, Cloud, and Cybersecurity Solutions. [online] Available at: <https://www.cisco.com> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Reference: Zapier. n.d. The pros and cons of working across time zones: What to expect when you work in a distributed company. [online] Available at: <https://zapier.com/learn/remote-work/remote-work-time-shift/> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Reference: Someoneinlondon.com. n.d. About – SomeOne. [online] Available at: <https://someoneinlondon.com/about> [Accessed 18 July 2021].
Reference: Newstudio.studio. n.d. Work : New Studio. [online] Available at: <https://newstudio.studio/list/> [Accessed 18 July 2021].
Reference: Newstudio.studio. n.d. Work : New Studio. [online] Available at: <https://newstudio.studio/list/> [Accessed 18 July 2021].
Reference: Hato.co. n.d. HATO. [online] Available at: <https://www.hato.co> [Accessed 18 July 2021].
Reference: Slade Knowledge Base. 2011. Hato Press – Riso Risograph printing. [online] Available at: <https://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/know/1122> [Accessed 18 July 2021].
Reference: Designboom | architecture & design magazine. n.d. david turner (turner duckworth) interview. [online] Available at: <https://www.designboom.com/design/david-turner-turner-duckworth-interview/> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Reference: Cisco. n.d. Cisco - Networking, Cloud, and Cybersecurity Solutions. [online] Available at: <https://www.cisco.com> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Reference: Miro. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://miro.com> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Reference: Evernote. 2021. Best Note Taking App - Organize Your Notes with Evernote. [online] Available at: <https://evernote.com> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Reference: Trello.com. 2021. Trello. [online] Available at: <https://trello.com> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Image 1: Neily, A., 2017. Hato on Studio Life and Risograph Printing. [image] Available at: <https://www.shillingtoneducation.com/blog/hato-studio-life-risograph-printing-industrytalks/> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Image 2: Risoprint Workshop with Hato Press, 2017. [image] Available at: <http://inesdesignes.com/risoprint-workshop-hato-press/> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Image 3: Turner Duckworth, n.d. [image] Available at: <https://www.agencyspotter.com/turner-duckworth> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Image 4, 5: Evernote, n.d. [image] Available at: <https://www.google.com/search?q=evernote&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjf44Kz-PHxAhVSiRoKHfpyCJUQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=evernote&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIECAAQQzIECAAQQzICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAOgQIIxAnOggIABCxAxCDAToFCAAQsQNQ55YBWMecAWDWnQFoAHAAeACAAfIBiAHjDJIBAzItN5gBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=lOj2YN_JEdKSavrloagJ&bih=1100&biw=1623&client=safari#imgrc=zGBpZc_d04q4UM> [Accessed 20 July 2021].
Image 6: Trello, n.d. . [image] Available at: <https://getnave.com/blog/trello-kanban-boards/> [Accessed 20 July 2021].