Hackney, North-East London. It’s a warm, sunny day. I’m getting off the Thomas Heatherwick’s red double-decker. I look around and suddenly from behind the corner of Westgate St a very confidently looking chap holding an iPad Pro in his hand, surfs on his skateboard towards me. That’s Josh Patterson — a London-based illustrator whose work explores a variety of different, ever so intriguing directions such as surrealism, mental health, and NFT.
Defining Josh
Josh, please tell us a bit about your background and how you became a designer.
Josh: Where to start… I’ve always been a natural drawer, always loved drawing from an early age. My dad is actually an illustrator and artist himself so I guess he’s always been my main influence especially throughout my childhood. Throughout school, art and graphic design were always my favourite subjects. I knew that I wanted to take that further to university. I did art and design for my A levels and then went on to do a foundation diploma which again was in art and design. This helped me narrow down what I’d like to specialise in because at this…
What if instead of a wardrobe full of clothes we could have just one piece? A piece responding to weather conditions. A piece changing depending on the occasion. A piece keeping itself fresh. Made out of a biomorphic material changing and evolving with us, during our lifespan. Catherine Mondoa — a Materials Designer — shares her progress on “living materials.”
Catherine’s origins
How does your journey look like? What did make you choose to become a designer?
Catherine: So my journey to design began with a curiosity about materials. I studied material science and engineering, and then I went straight into a textile design program. At the time I entered design school, I was frustrated with the way that materials were presented to me, in the sense that I love materials because they help explain why things work the way that they do, but I didn’t feel fulfilled. I initially went into engineering because I wanted a blend of multiple disciplines that allowed me to impact people. But I struggled to reconcile the kinds of materials we…
“Now that we have learned to fly in the air like birds and dive in the sea like fish, only one thing remains — to learn to live on earth like humans.” The words of George Bernard Shaw remarkably conclude my conversation with extraordinarily inspiring Filipe Magalhaes — an Industrial Designer, exploring more humane, more expressive, more personal prosthetic solutions.
Filipe’s origins
Please tell us a bit about how you got into design field.
Filipe: When I was roughly 11 years old, I discovered who Da Vinci was and from that moment, I knew that I wanted to do what he did. Essentially, I wanted to become an inventor and I wanted to create things. I didn’t know what I wanted to create, all I knew was that I just wanted to build things with my hands and make something real and that’s pretty much what I’ve been been pursuing ever since. At first I thought mechanical engineering would help me achieve my goals, but then I found out the hard way that calculus…
‘The touch, smell, sound. I’m mesmerised when the morning sunshine gently glimmers onto you. The texture, temperature, weight. It’s utterly surreal when I’m holding you in my hand. Even though you’re seemingly mundane, yet you’re undeniably extraordinary. You’re mine and we share priceless stories.’ Would you ever think that way about any of your personal objects? I’m not going to lie to you — I would. Designer and Maker — Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska — empirically proves that the bizarre affection concerns all of us, on a variety of different levels.
The Legend of Aniela
Please tell a bit about your path of becoming a designer.
Aniela: I grew up in a quite creative family. My…
John Adams once said — “Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.” The mantra has always seemed particularly fundamental to me as a designer. Throughout the past year and a half, we’ve all faced a tremendous challenge when everything that was once familiar was suddenly swept away from us. It might have been the end of the road for many. Although, it might have been an opportunity to discover things previously obscured by dogmas and unwillingness to questioning them. Human creativity always reaches its new highs when exposed to an inevitable change. Yomi Ajani — an Industrial Designer — has proven again, that indeed “every problem is an opportunity in disguise”.
Becoming Yomi
Would you please tell us a bit about your background?
Yomi: Being a Designer wasn’t a goal that I had since I was a child, but in school, during the process of becoming one, I realised that it actually fits my personality quite well. I’ve always been fascinated with technologies and in a way, most of my projects revolve around that topic. I’ve always been curious to find out how things work. So not just accepting an object and using it, but being genuinely keen to understand how it worked. I took apart a lot of things when I was a kid to find out what is being the surface…
Wembley, London. I’m standing in front of a building that looks like anything but something that might contain a lab with groundbreaking discoveries happening inside. We tend to think that innovation happens in shiny, high-tech labs, with tools from another planet. We often forget that we can move mountains if we only have enough inquisitiveness and perseverance. The front door is opening. To a tiny, modest lab, invites me Ruth Lloyd — a design researcher working on solutions that are crucial to our further existence on this planet. From now on, I’ll always think twice before seeking an excuse that something’s not possible because of low budget, lack of tools, or just proper workspace.
A woman on a mission
Would you tell us a bit about your background, please?
Ruth: I used to be more of a textile designer, and I have always loved art, design, and textiles. I did my art foundation course at Chelsea College of Art. I then went on to study printed textiles and surface pattern design at Leeds Arts University. And then I worked for years as a printed textiles and dye technician and then as a lecturer too. That job really suited me because I much prefer the hands-on methods of dying and printing, of applying colour. The common thread in my work, in my practice, has always been colour and texture.
“A…
Wapping, Eastend, London. The former harbour where misfits and rebels would say their final farewells departing on vessels sailing towards the unknown. All of them guided by stellar phenomena, promising them overseas miracles. Many of them solely galvanised by inquisitiveness whispering to their hearts the luring song of discoveries. Now, they’re long gone but the song remains the same, calling those who feel the same thirst. Francesca & Mauro, an Italian design/art duo follow the path to the unknown and beyond. Here is 06d Atelier telling us a tale of where ancient constellations guide them in the modern world.
Defining 06d Atelier
How did you get into design?
Francesca: My path is very unusual. I studied archaeology because at the time I was fascinated with the past, with history. I was born in a very old city in Italy — Bolsena — that has roots in the prehistoric age. That’s what made me choose the university. However, at some point, I felt that I knew enough about the past and I’d like to know something about the future. Due to that, I left the university and started my Interior Design degree because I wanted to link the past and the future. After graduation, I worked as an architect…
Making knowledge equally available to creatives on all levels of their development regardless of their educational, financial, and cultural backgrounds.
Dear design community,
I’ve been working for a while on an initiative derived from my very deep need for bringing high-quality content to design industry publications. Most articles and podcasts focus on vague, often pointless conversations rather than on encouraging creatives to share the intellectual and manual challenges they had to struggle with during projects they’ve worked on. Every creative is a luminary whose voice should not be silenced particularly, as she or he has the power to illuminate the rest of the community and therefore, has the power of impacting further progress of everyday objects and services. …
Everyone of us is disabled in a way on daily basis as disabilities occur not only permanently. Here’s the journey we’ve gone through in order to design for everyone.
For everyone
I’d like to tell you a bit about the things that we include into our product that are not visible at a glance but make a huge difference to how useful it is to our users. While developing the product we always try to make it beautiful, relevant and as user-friendly as possible. We continuously try to make it better for all our users. The Unmind’s motto says:
“Everyone has the right to a healthy mind”
We believe that it shouldn’t be only a slogan. It should be solidified in the way we design and engineer here at Unmind. It…
As a Design Team, we meet lots of challenges impacting our cross-departmental collaboration everyday. Some of them are related to tools, some of them to efficient communication, yet others to frameworks which could ease our work. Here’s what we’ve done and will continue to do to mitigate some of these challenges.
Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.
Over the past few months, Unmind has scaled rapidly. Such circumstances may simultaneously create nightmares as well as opportunities. Between 2018–2019 we’ve worked on a completely revamped version of our product. Because we were on a very strict deadline for the launch of this revamp — Mental Health Awareness Week 2019 — we needed to be scrupulous in regard to our pace of implementation. Doing so requires close collaboration between Engineering, Product, and Design leaving no room for ambiguity during design handoff. In that regard, we appointed the “Refactoring” project. Its primary aim was to ensure that every, even the…
