Justin Mezzell (Occasionally) Blogs
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On “Fake” Design
Recently, a fairly well known designer bemoaned the practice of designers not working on “real” projects, implying a line between what he’d classify “actual” and “fake” work. He lamented those designing for the sake of practice and/or experimentation—classifying it as more a scourge than a validated form of artistic expression. He even posited a solution for designers who don’t have the work they desire of working for a nonprofit and not feeling the obligation to actually show your work while boasting a verbose portfolio of his own with several high profile clients. Ignoring the prescriptive nature of the post itself, what stood out most to me was its open lambasting of designers who don’t yet have the clientele they desire and offering a somewhat crippling solution. As if he could somehow filter what design was worthy of publishing, be it Facebook or Nike etc., and what design wasn’t fit for the web.
If you’re not taking the opportunity to put yourself out there and, dare I say, “fake” designing for projects that weren’t commissioned, you’re missing out on the valuable opportunity to challenge yourself in new, more creative ways. When I had just started illustrating, I took to getting my hands dirty multiple times a week—work that wasn’t commissioned. Work that no one was asking for. It was done for the sake of experimentation. It was done FOR the sake of attracting prospective clients. And it worked.
Your clients aren’t going to know what it is you’re capable of unless you show them. In my experience, there aren’t too many designers that have been hired to work on a highly trafficked product by looks alone or a really nice “About Me” section. That whole adage about missing all the shots you never take, while admittedly hokey, is admittedly true. You don’t sit back with an empty portfolio and wait for the clients to pour in.
I’d theorize that most of the fuss about this “fake” design is really based on the unadulterated possibilities of pleasing only oneself. With client work, you’re inundated with the specific needs of said client. You have CEOs and prospective customers to make happy. With self-initiated work, you’re free to tackle your process any way you wish. Perhaps some designers who are too busy with “real” work feel that they’re competing with an impossible bar where “fake” designers can propose and publish any solution—even if it dips into a compromise for aesthetics over functionality. That’s going to have to be your call.
It’s your responsibility to make time to work on projects that aren’t reliant on a paycheck—even when you do get a steady workload of clients. Those projects that merely stretch you to create solutions for problems that no one is paying you to solve. Maybe just to create an homage to a particular piece of fiction you hold on high. Truth is, you don’t have to wait for an inquiry to do something you’ve always wanted to do.
There’s absolutely a time to “ship it”. Take advantage of those opportunities when there isn’t.
That being said, there’s a clear difference between self-initiated work and work that riffs off an original design. If you want to discover how a design works, you can take it upon yourself to build it, but in those cases, don’t publish it. Learn from it, don’t claim it as your own.
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Rewriting Science Fiction
This post was originally written and appeared on the Envy Labs blog here.
The lot of us self-proclaimed “nerds” in the tech environment can still feel experiential echoes of the moment Tom Cruise donned the “glove” to begin a tech-dance with the G-Speak Spatial Operating Environment in Spielberg’s Minority Report. It was the stuff dreams were made of—whizzing and whirling, manipulating a pulsing, breathing interface with tactile ferocity. John Underkoffler and his team gave legs to a ghost that previously only existed in thought and desire.
Science Fiction finally felt like Scientific History.
But film is one thing, and real life is another. Science Fiction has long been an advocate for progressing the discussion on design and interaction. In architecture, fashion, and technology, sci-fi has shaped our future by lending a hand with the building blocks of actualization. Yet the future we were promised seems all but nearby.
With the announcement of the G-Speak technology at TED2010, this felt more tangible than ever. Following hot in pursuit was the Xbox Kinect, leveraging a similar interactive architecture to allow manipulation of the onscreen UI. And while this digital conversation is bound by the restrictive confines of a television screen, its very commercial existence feels like the beginning of a new dialogue with technology on what’s achievable.
In theory, we’re wading into new territory. In truth, we’re taking our baggage with us.
The challenges we’re working to overcome as designers are diverse, and among them is a battle with our fictional history. We’re adapting the far-reaching, distinctive interfaces of the cinematic realm into usable products for a still-human world. Science Fiction has always been granted the advantage of developing UIs for a universe that embraces a cold, robotic utopia, but designers are not afforded that luxury. Most of us aren’t creating for bio-mechanical interaction where a stream of information as large as the titanic is processed on a dime in the user’s brain. We have increased our bandwidth of information intake by learned user interface intuition, but the limitations still exist.
Even more ironically, our screens are getting smaller!
We’re building products for humans, and while that fact seems to be a hot phrase to use, the implications of building products for this market should seem natural to us. Yet, in a number of cases, that couldn’t be further from the truth. We use words like “intuitive”, putting stock in the learned and natural behaviors of our audience to navigate our products; yet we’re packaging interaction guidelines to teach people how to bookmark, highlight, and turn pages. Over time, our hope is that these motor functions will become second nature.
While we’re still learning to create products for this new chapter in interaction design, let’s take the time to develop systems that work. Apple may have won their patent war, but let’s be mindful that this is arena is far from victorious. For all of their research and brand success, they’re still just a student of the new digital age like all of us. All of the answers aren’t contained within OS X, and they’re not all inside of Metro. These are the beginnings of a great dialogue that will last for a long time. You, as much as I, stand the chance to develop a more intuitive standard for this new relationship with interaction design—and the browser is only the beginning.
We’re not done discovering yet.
Not even close.
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Pinching, Pulling, Punching
As designers, it’s easy to get looped into this idea that style trumps substance. Don’t get me wrong, I think we’d all fight this tooth and nail—arguing for the latter, but actions speak louder than words. And what’s released speaks tenfold for what’s in idealized practice. That’s not to say we’re not actively rethinking interaction design, I think we are, but it seems like we’re getting caught up in where that interaction meets tangible tactility.
This isn’t so much a dismissal of all things skeumorphic, as that’s a conversation that’s been chest-beaten by the most vocal of enthusiasts and skeptics, but more a call to reevaluate the interactions we’re building into our products. Whether you add a two-pixel top light highlight, drop a shadow on your buttons, or keep them completely flat, is a conversation for another commentary. I’m speaking to the way we interact with these piles of pixels on the screen. Is it necessary to swipe a “lever” of sorts? Is it crucial to your information architecture to quite literally have to “fold” an image to peek what’s behind it, or are we just getting tied up in a pissing contest to see who can make the most life-like evocation of our everyday interactions.
We’re forcing our medium to bow to our creative whims.
That’s not to say they can’t be beautiful or won’t catch someone’s eye the first few times, they will and do. But with repeated use, once the wow factor has dissolved into dutiful repetition, these kitschy techniques have a tendency to lose their ostentatious awe.
I’m not here to draw a line in the sand. This is an encouragement to keep pushing, keep thinking. Apple has made incredible progress in the world of interaction design, but it’s still not perfect. They’ve patent protected their work, their research and their results, but that should feel like less of a wall and more a catalyst for innovation.
There are better, more intuitive solutions out there.
Let’s find them.
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In a given day that meets all intended tasks and even the obligatory half hour of exploration, we as designers rarely get the opportunity to branch out of our comfort zones to any real degree. I’ll credit that to the fact that most entities don’t hire me to do something they haven’t seen me do for largely the same reason no one is hiring Judd Apatow to sing alto in A Chorus Line—to my knowledge.
This past week, I was able to participate in a type fight with a one, Mr. Rogie King. Long story short, none of us are typographers. For transparency’s sake, I’ll even regrettably confess that when it comes to type, more often than not, I take the well-traveled path of Futura Bold for geometric punch and admittedly as a sort of typographic comfort food. This run, however, I was resolved to create a custom letter form from scratch which is somewhere between marathon and Iron Man in terms of my own experience which is to say, none at all and more importantly, no plans currently exist. Only now they did, but for type. Not a marathon.
This competition pits two designers up against one another to create a single alphabetical character (some of you know it as a “letter”) in a fight to the proverbial death as decided by a jury of our peers or more specifically, a vote of an anonymous public online. It’s like the elections, only no one dies on account of this. Usually.
I wanted to create a letter that was relatable to me—as typography itself rarely is, no matter how much I will it to be. Lately, I’ve been on a fairly insatiable kick for graphic novels and comic books. Thinking it would be neat to work that aesthetic, I dug up some vintage references for the most polarized, traditional approach I could get.
As is customary, the internet did not disappoint.
From the authentically vintage to the neo-antiquated, there was a wealth of work with typography and illustration that lent itself well to a clear direction to pursue. As a majority of my illustrative work is geometric, this was an awesome opportunity to work in more organic forms than I was typically comfortable with. After all, this was a Q, not an L or N.
Take the opportunity to do what you don’t often get to do. Embrace the parts you suck at and work to improve in areas that aren’t beyond your understanding. In places you do ultimately get stuck or lose a critical eye, have someone you trust take a look at it for you. You won’t always be making the right call. Statistically, you’re going to be wrong at some point and that’s a great thing. Consider it fortunate that there are people out there far better than you are.
We’ve all got such a long way to go.
The finished result is above. Be sure to head over to The Type Fight now and throw down your vote!
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Just a thought today.
The state of things isn’t pretty. It’s not easy and it’s typically less than an explosive path up and to the right. But somehow, despite the mess and miscalculations about what our less-than-perfect world should look like, there are those who see something else in spite of it all.
I don’t really “run” a blog on design because in order to do that, I’d have to post regularly. I also don’t always have something I need to say about design—maybe not much of anything at all, for that matter. But today, regardless of how it applies to your life, whether it’s in design or the way you approach failure, rejection or misfortune, practice an uncommon response. One that refuses to sit in the mud. I don’t do this often, but I want to.
Because at the end of the day, when it comes to cynicism, oftentimes you’re right. But it’s a rather joyless victory. I’m learning that one myself.
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This piece was originally posted on Field Trip SF site. Thought I’d give an update here as well:
I’ve been on trips before. Met people I’ve only heard about before. Even been reminded why the West Coast is geographically superior to its East Coast brother before. But those were only supplementary discoveries to this trip. And it’s not just the sum of our experiences that totals our time spent in reverie, it’s something different altogether. We went out to California to exchange stories, to acquaint ourselves with someone else, and to build a typeface(s). I’m pleased to say we did all of the above.
But I think the most astounding part of the whole week is when I think about the idea that this typeface is still a work in progress. It wasn’t born, perfected and distributed in 4 days. The very concept of type as a work in progress is a sign a craftsmanship—the potter acknowledging that as far as the clay has come, it’s not done yet. That this “work in progress” might only be the beginning. And in a lot of ways, so are we all.
I believe we’re living in a generation that has a more difficult time with the idea of “heroes” than any time before. It’s not always so black and white. Looking at the new archetype of our superheroes in anything from film to comics and you won’t see the old world structure of wholly good vs. wholly evil. Most of them are human beings, broken and flawed, fighting against what they see as an injustice in the world. The Dark Knight being a primary example of all this. We’re privileged enough to see a sense of humanism in our new heroes but it makes *having* heroes a different sort of worldview.
I spent time this trip with those I’ve called “hero” before. I think my favorite part of the entire week was sharing meals and drinks and stories in an exchange where no one felt like a hero and no one felt like a fan boy. We were all content just to be here and now. Those we look up to and aspire to be like, those we’ve wanted to learn a technique or two from, those we’ve wanted to ask how they see the world like they do just to allow us to see it through their eyes for a small window of time.
Everyone on Field Trip SF that I had the privilege of interacting with, from the crew to those we invited over for dinner became a hero of mine. It was inspiring to leave the world of design for a bit to share a meal where we, as people and friends enjoyed the company of those we’ve admired for so long. I got to do this all week. Believe it or not, all of us have lives outside of design. Things that make us just as passionate to talk about or just as willful to share. It was a unique privilege to be a part of that. Many thanks to Eight Hour Day, Brent Couchman, Morgan Knutson and others for letting our team get to be a part of that.
Coming back home and falling in line with the spin of the world has been an adjustment. But I’m happy to say that while I’m a “work in progress” in so many ways, I can’t be more thrilled about what the next chapter of our lives will look like. It’s going to be an awfully big adventure.
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This week, I and a number of other designers will be spending the week in San Francisco for a week we’re calling Field Trip made possible by The Lost Type Co-Op & our friends at MailChimp. This is the what and why.
We’re living in an increasingly remote society where our coworkers are no longer our cube-mates and our drinking buddies needn’t share the same tap. It’s an age where the traditional rules, regulations, and politics of the office space are not only in question, but rather their very existence seems most at home as fringe fodder. The changing face of the workforce—most notably our increasingly digital culture has enabled cooperation and collaboration to the extent which seemed hardly plausible a decade ago. International connectivity is no longer a pipe dream for the wander-hungry, but a living, breathing reality for the taking.
The human story is changing. It’s evolving. Our connectivity is making my stories your stories. Your history, my future. And story is essential to the human condition.
Field Trip is a brief opportunity to be part of that story—to entwine our own experiences together and be an active role in another’s. As designers, the stories we tell are so incredibly vital to the human narrative and while I agree we’re not curing cancer, I would also argue that makes our part in this world no less a facet of the story. Field Trip is the chance to not only tell our stories or hear others’ stories, but an opportunity to birth new ones. New concepts, ideas and an exchange of that which lies beyond our own bodies of work. It’s the chance to build when there is time to build and simply be when there is time to be. Field Trip isn’t a stage-centered conference built around listening, it’s an organically leveled time of collaboration and hands-on interaction. Learning through being.
Let’s take the time to remember those things which bring us together and also those gifts of a pluralistic age where we can embrace our differences. Inside and outside of design. By coming together, perhaps we can tell better, newer stories based on the experiences of a week spent outside the walls of familiarity.
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The Been Everywhere Project
I was invited by a one Mr. Adrian Walsh to participate in his collaborative design project “The Everywhere Project” aptly titled after the folk song of a similar title of which I’m none too familiar. I chose Black Rock City, site of the famous Burning Man festival which I am similarly none too familiar with. What I do know now, I’m partly intrigued by and partly wish I hadn’t seen.
Like most design projects, a lot is cut, unused, or cropped to usable standards. This peculiar wooden thing met a likely fate at the hands of a clipping mask. But here it is, in its full buildout.
And then some creations, like this 12-story tall rickety scaffolding built for the festival and loaded with the patrons never saw the light of day.The 2006 amphitheater seating plan, as arranged by Burning Man, was able to be worked into the luggage tag at a severely obfuscated view, but if you could see it all, this is what it was in Illustrator + the original reference.
Long story short, the ending result is up top. But do yourself a favor and check the heck out of that project. Some killer work over at The Everywhere Project. -
All The Pictures Are Gone.
Yes. Every last one of them. For now. My lack of Tumblr participation came down to me not needing another outlet to merely upload contextless imagery from various unnamed projects—I’ve got other outlets to fail at updating for that.
No promises on frequency and I’m going to avoid the word blog for all intensive purposes as that’s a bit too commitment-heavy at this point. Let’s just say I’ll report newer projects and tangents as the mood arrives.
Let the mass unfollowing begin. Apologies in advance.
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