Prior Statements & Past Selves

2015

I am a designer who puts content at the core of her work, an artist who values clarity, and a writer who uses visuals instead of words whenever possible.

Give me all the information. I will find the patterns and the context. 

I like to know all the technology and forms. Which is the best to say "snow?" Describe the audience, and I'll craft a conversation, take them on a journey, answer their questions, and raise new ones in turn. 

Let me weave together a tapestry of information. Text and image. Action if it's a live presentation. Navigation if it's not. Interaction either way. Sound. Touch. Smell. Words that are quick to understand and words that require reflection. Combinations of things that will come back to mind two weeks later in the shower. 

What combination of these conveys not just the denotation of snow but also coolness and color and glaciers and history and potential water and the quenching of thirst? Geometry and crystals and weather and molecules. The weight of shoveling and the grime it collects towards the end of the season. How it muffles sound and transforms a landscape. City vs country snow. Dirty snow. Yellow snow. Environmental impact and civil engineering. Igloos and Inuits. The arctic and Antarctica. Snowmen and snowballs and snow angels. Snow as an immersive environment and a manipulative object. It is big and small. Geographic and time limited. It is a white circle, a star, and a symbol of winter. 

Now let's do that for a new router or a nonprofit or compassion.  

2013

Everything is philosophy and everything is teaching.

That's the short way to describe my approach. "Everything is philosophy," because everything emerges from underlying belief systems, values, and assumptions. "Everything is teaching" because everything is communication, and communication is only achieved when someone receives and understands the information transmitted. But as any teacher will tell you, people retain information when they have some framework on which to place it. So, to achieve understanding, you need to know something about your audience. You need to understand how they think of the world and what they already know. You need to respect them. Then you can start building a structure to connect what they know with what you want them to know; you can have their attention; you can inspire.

What I love about design is taking things and making them work better. "Working better" can involve a successful conveyance of information, a successful completion of a process, or an enjoyable experience. It can be entertaining, functional, or visionary — or all three at once. 

Design is conscious. Design is a chosen structure. Design is problem-solving. Design is everything we choose to make of our world.