What are your B-side designs?
It’s common among designers to limit their portfolios to the narrow spectrum of mediums and tools they studied or practiced in their professional environment. For instance, my portfolio showcases mostly digital products. But as Bruce Mao’s Incomplete Manifesto states, “Creativity is not device dependent.” Reflecting on my work under Mao’s perspective made me willing to talk more openly about the explorations I usually don’t share in my Resume.
This post is an invitation to the hidden rooms of my creativity, where disciplines and mediums which I am not very proficient come to the surface. It covers my genuine curiosity for designing 3D objects, my passion for architecture, and the output of the necessity to transform the space I lived in for three years.
When I relocated to Sao Paulo in 2016, I moved into a small apartment in a modern building. It was the first time I was not at someone else’s property and had the freedom to shape the space as I pleased. It took two years to accomplish most of my original vision. A big part of the fabrication tasks involved in that process was made by myself.
- Small bathroom Cabinet
Using Vectorworks as my prototyping tool, I created simple furniture pieces, as this wood cabinet for the bathroom.
2. “Elephant bench.”
Things got a little heavier with the elephant bench, that offered convenient storage units.
3. A kitchen island that morphed into a table
This unnamed project had two iterations. On its first version, it was a kitchen island with open shelves and trash cans. I worked with a metal worker to realize my vision. For its 2.0 version, I tweaked I made it work as a table while keeping the original functionality.
4. A cross-shaped Farm House
The cross-shaped farmhouse is a non-realised idea imagined for my grandpa ranch. I wanted to preserve his original ranch as a guest unit, and build a completely new modern house next to it.
Selecting our best works to showcase in our portfolio is helpful when applying to jobs that require specific skills, which sometimes recruiters are too attached to see the potential of a candidate’s broader interests. But as musicians surprise fans with genius gems in B-side tracks, Designers, and creative in generals, usually have side projects that are very revealing of their creative reach. These 3D concepts are some of my B-side projects. They have put me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to exercise design beyond the flat surface of interactive screens.
I look forward to opportunities where I can merge the learnings from these spacial explorations with my background on interaction design. What about you? What are your B-sides projects driven by love and curiosity?
