The Shape of Design

by Frank Chimero

  The same opportunity to analyze, question, and invent is afforded to any creative individual who understands the full system in which they operate. They can use their knowledge to find new configurations for the three levers, and to introduce fresh material into the making process. In these cases, creativity doesn’t just serve and respond to the world around it. Instead, it actively pushes the world forward into unimaginable directions through experimentation. Sometimes, those results can be confounding, much like the dishes served at elBulli.

  Grant Achatz, an impressive chef in his own right, wrote about his time staging at the restaurant and of his first meal there:

  A small bowl arrived: Ah, polenta with olive oil, I thought. See, this food isn’t that out there. But as soon as the spoon entered my mouth an explosion of yellow corn flavor burst, and then all the texture associated with polenta vanished. I calmly laid my spoon down on the edge of the bowl after one bite  –  astonished.

  What the hell is going on back there, I thought. I know cooking, but this is the stuff of magic.

  Sometimes the results of graceful rethinking can be thought of as magic, because it produces something we previously thought to be impossible. It subverts the established ways of working, either through sheer talent or brute force, and questions the standard settings of the three levers. Magicians don’t just create new things, they invent new ways of doing so, and these new methods only appear from intense analysis of the assumptions about their work. The products of the process are contrarian by nature as a result, because the maker is exploring a terrain no one else has been able to realize. Laid bare in his work is an example of how craft and art grow, how they serve as an example of a new possibility.

  Steven Johnson, in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, describes the idea of the adjacent possible as a model for explaining how ideas develop and new inventions are envisioned. The adjacent possible originated with scientist Stuart Kauffman as a label for the fundamental atomic combinations required for biological development. Evolution occurs one step at a time, and the size of each step is limited: nature must first create the cells in leaves that can capture the energy of the sun before it can produce a flower.

  Johnson extends Kauffman’s concept to the development of ideas themselves, saying that our collective ideas advance with the same limitations. There are prerequisites for us to reach what we desire as we pursue better circumstances and new inventions. For instance, in order to invent something like the printing press, we must first invent language and an alphabet, produce paper and ink, master metallurgy to cast letters, and construct a winemaking press. There had to be many contributions and breakthroughs before I could sit down and write this book.

  Most inventions are recombinations of existing things, but where do the sparks for those combinations come from? What instigates that magic to make hybrids, to use them for unimagined purposes, and to inspire new settings for the three levers? Certain advancements seem logical and inevitable  –  smaller cellphones, faster computers, more reliable medical technology  –  while others seem to come out of nowhere. Turning avocado into caviar, for example, is not a logical conclusion in the kitchen. That choice is an inspired one. You can always spot these brilliant inventions as instances of magic, because our reaction, much like Achatz’s first meal at elBulli, is always disbelief.

  Henry Ford famously said that if he had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. Of course, we know that the faster horse is a testament to the limited imagination of customers, but I’d suggest that it’s more representational of not reassessing the objectives of the work in light of new opportunities. The faster horse is a recombination of the three levers in a predictable way: the customer’s answer is staunchly loyal to the horse, the already established format of transportation. They are inside of the adjacent possible, and ask a How question: How can horses be better?

  Asking a Why question leads us to a different conclusion: Why are horses important? Because they quickly and reliably get us from one place to another. A Why question defines our need and uses an objective to create a satisfactory outcome for the work. This type of question is specific enough to be observable, but flexible enough to be approached in a variety of different ways. It’s easy to think that the way to improve life is to iterate on the things that we already have, but that is a trap of limited imagination. We should be iterating on how we answer our needs, and not necessarily on the way our old solutions have taken shape. The root of our practice is located in the usefulness of the work, not the form that it takes.

  The most important advancements, the “magical” innovations we produce, happen by a visionary pulling from the outside of the adjacent possible, not pushing from the inside of it. Our magicians  – our Henry Fords, our Billie Holidays, our Gutenbergs, Disneys, and Marie Curies  –  do not stand on the inside of what is possible and push; they imagine what is just outside of what we deem possible and pull us towards their vision of what is better. They can see through the fog of the unexplored spaces and notice a way forward.

  The work of these individuals is lauded and momentous, but a similar effect is not out of our reach. The same ways of thinking and working are available for us to mold our own processes and shape our craft. There’s a pattern to seizing latent opportunity to produce unprecedented outcomes, and the successes of the past suggest a method for how to continue.

  It begins with the proper mindset, established by asking Why questions to define the true objectives of the work. The inquiry emphasizes the project’s true purpose and sheds any false presumptions about how to do the work or what it should be. It ensures the design’s relevancy by forcing one to ask about its consequence in the world. The designer can then make decisions that use the defined function as guidance. The fruits of this questioning define and emphasize the cornerstone of successful design: the work first must be useful before it can transcend utility into something visionary.

  Similar questioning should also be directed towards the form of the work. An understanding of the three levers provides a structure to conceive of fresh configurations. Using the structure and affordances of content, tone, and format, one can riff on how the elements interplay and come to exceptional ends. Part of the exploration for novel design is using the materials at our disposal, especially those whose full potential have not been realized. We should look around us to see what available resources are not being fully used, like the affordances of a screen in the promotional materials for the concert, or the new ingredients Adrià used at elBulli. This method modifies either the content or the format, which alters the tone’s qualities as it negotiates those modifications. It is a simple thought, but one way to have a creative process come to different ends is by beginning with new materials.

  The true purpose of the process is to create an accurate picture of the world. The misfit creative individual is stubbornly unwilling to abide by anyone else’s vision of the world without first testing those assumptions. There’s a desire for an honest assessment, because we can only create what we want by understanding what is achievable. We must know the edges of the adjacent possible before we can begin to imagine making the world better.

  Often, what we perceive to be possible dims in comparison to what we can actually do. This gap creates the opportunity for people like Henry Ford, Walt Disney, and all the other magicians who have expanded what we think of the world. The rest of us believe the line that defines what is possible is much closer to our feet than it actually may be. The creative misfits ask their questions to realize the line’s true location, and conclude that there is enough room for a great leap forward. Our questioning, and the imagination it inspires, allows us to perform the most important magic: to make the world grow by revealing what was right before our eyes.

  Part II

  In-Between Spaces

  Chapter Five

  Fiction and Bridges

  “No sensible decision ca
n be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be….This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”

  Issac Asimov

  There’s something about speaking, even if only to oneself, that makes the mind work. Our verbal cowpaths are paved through conversation. Speaking to ourselves is a crude tool to hack our way toward clearer thinking. But in spite of its obvious benefits, I become self-conscious when I’m caught talking to myself. I freeze. I try to find a chair to hide behind. I cover my eyes, pull my cap down, and pretend that if I can’t see them, they won’t see me. I’m not here. I’ve just disappeared. The man you saw talking to himself was only a part of your imagination.

  Perhaps my embarrassment comes from a private activity made public by its discovery. Or it could be that to be caught speaking without a listener is suspicious and embarrassing. Speaking requires an audience; the speaker and listener are bonded. The Russian polymath Mikhail Bakhtin declared that the primary position in conversation is the one listening rather than the speaker. One must have an audience to begin to speak, and perhaps this is a clue as to why we talk to ourselves: we monologue to listen.

  The point of speaking, and likewise creating, is to have someone there to receive. The results of our efforts must move toward others; similarly, design must move to be effective, whether by filling needs or communicating with an audience. It should move like a provocative word: out, and then around. One set of hands makes the work, then it passes to another to use. The presence of the audience is what imbues the designer’s work with its worth.

  As such, it is never just the designer’s hands doing the shaping. All design springs from a complex social ecosystem created by multiple parties’ interests weaving together to produce the design. The players in the arrangement are familiar: the client, who commissions the work; the audience, who sees or uses it; and the designer in the middle, who produces the artifact that will join the client and audience to one another in a relationship. The needs and desires of the audience are bonded to the capabilities of the client under the auspicious hope that they complement and enable one another. In this guise, design not only becomes a way to push toward a desirable future, but also works to establish the vocabulary we use to define the terms of our engagements with one another.

  The best way to describe design is that it seeks to connect things by acting as a bridge between them. The design of a book connects the author and her ideas to the reader by complementing her writing. The design of a restaurant is meant to fuse with the chef’s culinary approach to create a more provocative and full dining experience for the eater. Web design connects the user to the site’s owner and offers a venue for the connection to develop and grow.

  Design’s ability to connect requires it to be in the middle position. The work’s qualities are defined by the characteristics of what surrounds it, like how the negative space between two closely placed parallel lines creates a third line. We’re that third line, frequently shifting in order to serve and respond to the elements around us. As the elements connected by design change, so, too, does the design. The field is in flux, always being neither this nor that, which makes it frustrating to try to pin down. It is, like all shape-shifters, evasive and slippery.

  The qualities of design consistently change, because there is a wide variety of characteristics in what design connects. It means that design lives in the borderlands – it connects, but it does not anchor. The work must provide a path without having a specific way of its own. The design is always the middle position, but rather than acting as an obstruction, it should be the mortar that holds the arrangement together.

  One way that design finds itself in the middle is by its ability to establish the tone of the work. As described earlier, design seeks to negotiate the qualities of the content with the affordances of the format to produce a cohesive whole greater than the sum of the parts. This situation largely describes many of the formal challenges faced by designers in their work. A wise design choice finds the tone that can slip between the content and format, snap into place, and bond one to another.

  Design also finds itself in the middle of art and commerce. The practice’s hybrid quality breeds different opportunities than either practice can alone, allowing for a special sort of influence on culture. Design can speak the tongue of art with the force of commerce. The products of design maneuver in the streets of the city where people live, rather than the halls of a museum where they must be visitors. There needn’t be the pressure of artistic credibility or commercial profitability always present, which means that the work of the designer can go further in shaping culture than a traditional piece of art, and make money in a way that has more soul and spill-over benefits than straight commerce.

  Design’s connective role is meant to support the movement of value from one place to another for a full exchange. It means that the products of design are not autonomous objects, but are creations that bridge in-between spaces to provide a way toward an intended outcome. The design must be transformative for it to be successful. It must take us somewhere. Airports and train stations are other examples of non-autonomous creations that exist as in-between spaces, because they have been built out of our desire to go somewhere else. Even cathedrals could be considered spaces of transit, because they seek to connect the physical world with the spiritual realm. Design is akin to these places in that their usefulness is defined by the consequences of the connections they facilitate. A train station that doesn’t create a lust for exploration is flawed, just as a cathedral that doesn’t inspire awe is a failure.

  Design’s middle position requires it to aid movement in both directions. The most useful bridges, after all, allow traffic to go both ways. If value is expected to be mutually exchanged, it means that influence on the design will come in both directions from the things the design connects. The content and the format, for instance, both mold the appropriate choices for the tone. Art and commerce each push and pull on the design, because the work must be artful as well as profitable. From a social perspective, the client and the audience both have a say in the design decisions.

  The last is perhaps the most complicated, because the designer adds a third influence to the mix. She is trying to satiate her own creative needs in the work as well. There is no guarantee, as many experienced designers can attest, that the requirements of each individual in this tangle of interest will be the same. Each comes to the design requiring something different. Those differences mean it is design’s job to negotiate the problem space – to create a way for the connection to be built. The parties’ values don’t have to be in parity, their desires simply have to be compatible for the work to have a chance at success.

  One point of complication is that these negotiations frequently happen during production, so the audience is not yet present.

  The designer, therefore, acts as a proxy for the audience’s needs while arguing for her own creative concerns. This makes the whole arrangement precarious, because it means that the designer is being paid by the client, but is obligated to the audience, for it is the audience’s presence that imbues the work with its value.

  It is a double-allegiance, a necessary duplicity. Design’s two-faced behavior is a product of its middle position between the elements it connects. Bridging two things means a bond with both of them.

  Our duplicity is no bad thing; in fact, it is necessary, simply because things must move two ways at once for a full exchange. We are molding a complex, multi-faceted setting, so our approach to improving our conditions and shaping the world should be the same way. Nothing is ever clear-cut when working in a shape-shifting practice to negotiate complicated terrain. Some trickery is necessary to get things moving once they are connected.

  Untruths are what initiate change, because they describe an imagined, better world, and offer a way to attain it. Tantalizing visions of the future are the lure that ge
ts us to bite. The only question is whether the fabrication improves our lot or buckles under us.

  The future is pliable, unknown, and weighty. On the other side of today there is vagueness – a multitude of directions the world could sway. The areas of uncertainty get filled up with speculation. We’ve invented a suite of ways to grapple with the future throughout the course of human history, from the perceived ethereal wisdom in the entrails of ritual livestock in ancient Rome, to the calculated metrics in the odds of a boxing match in Vegas. We flirt with the future and poke at it in order to believe we exert some control over what’s to come. If this means divining some imposed meaning from tea leaves, so be it.

  Modern people, unlike the ancients, have a different relationship with the future, because we understand that it’s something to be made rather than a destiny imposed by the gods or the whims of fortune. Future arrangements begin in our mind as images of things that don’t exist. Our interpretations of tomorrow are productive fictions that we tell one another to seduce us into believing our ideas are possible. We speak beneficial untruths that act as hypotheses, forcing us to roll up our sleeves and work with cleverness and dedication to bring them to fruition. We work to change fiction into fact when we attempt to better our condition.

  An alluring, productive untruth is frequently what’s necessary to get things going. Consider how we behave on New Year’s Eve when we make our resolutions. We weave an illusion and imagine ourselves fifteen pounds lighter, giving more time to our community, or phoning home more often. We fabricate ourselves into better people to inspire the actions necessary to become the fitter husband, the more loving daughter, or the better citizen. We use that image of ourselves as motivation as we work to close the gap between what we’ve imagined and what is true. Molding the world works the same way.