Pursuing Wonder
A Personal Design Philosophy
by Isabelle Rigsbee
This presentation was given at Senior Symposia 2023 in the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University (SC) on November 30, 2023.
Presentation Transcription
Hi everyone. If I haven’t met you, my name is Isabelle Rigsbee, and I love old wardrobes. Ever since I was young, any time my mom took me to a thrift store or a home goods store, I always looked for old, dusty wooden wardrobes. Honestly, the dustier the better. Whenever I encounter one that I feel like is good and solid enough, I will look around, make sure anybody’s watching before I throw the doors open wide to reveal whatever’s inside.
Usually that’s enough, but sometimes I have to lean in, give it a good smell of all the mothballs and cedar. Sometimes I’ll touch the back wall just to be extra sure before closing the doors and moving on to the next wardrobe over.
My mom is here and my baby brother — and my mom is definitely laughing at me a little bit because she knows exactly what I’m talking about. See, I’ve been looking for Narnia ever since I was a little kid and could understand the stories from childhood. As I’ve grown older, it’s not always Narnia that I’ve been looking for in particular, though, it is a personal favorite. And I don’t always look in wardrobe doors either. Though I do have a particular fondness for a really good door.
I have always, and I still do, enjoy seeking out something one might call fantasy or adventure or other. For the sake of this presentation, I’m going to call it Wonder. I was never discouraged at opening literally hundreds of wardrobe and closet doors to find no lamp post and tea with Mr. Tumnus waiting for me. But more than finding the adventure itself, I grew excited over imagining the wonder of what could be or what might lie beyond.
I opened a door into another world when I started studying design.
For the past four years, it’s been like most adventure stories with healthy amounts of trial and hardship, balanced out with reward, community, and growth. It wasn’t until this semester that I was given the opportunity to look back, realize this, and really study it.
It was also during this semester that I realized I have been LARPing the same amount of time that I have been intentionally learning about design.
If you don’t know what LARPing is, it stands for live action role play and it is essentially playing pretend in the woods for grown adults.
My first real LARP event was spring semester of my freshman year of college, and up until this semester, the two interests of mine lived in two totally separate worlds. When I was immersed in the fantasy roleplaying world of Oleron, I was no longer thinking of things like grids and principles and Adobe Suite. And when I was in the design studio, I wasn’t always thinking about secret messages or preparing for battle.
This semester, the worlds began to collide, and I realized just how much that they might influence one another. When given the space in a design studio for personal exploration of any topic that I wanted, I was immediately drawn to making something for my LARPing kit and studying a historic topic to go along with it.
I didn’t really stop to think how strange it was to be Sonya Gamberson and listening to a podcast on the Luddite Rebellion for Design class. I just thought it was really awesome. For four weeks in this design studio, I was researching topics in history that interested me, sewing various projects, and my personal favorite, finger loop braiding. Overlaid with this exploration were consistent readings and writings based around design.
At first I didn’t notice the collision that was happening here. The two worlds that I had kept compartmentalized in my mind for so long were suddenly converging into one space. I began to look at my process of designing through the lens of the stories that I had been immersing myself into, considering what a Luddite would think about what I was making, or how I could design something that would bring another story to life.
Then it came time to put pen to paper and divulge the ruminations of my explorations from this semester. I was worried that to define my thoughts would be to limit them. But through the guidance of my professor and through conversations with my peers, I now believe that it has set these ideas free.
I believe that design is storytelling.
I design today because I adore visual storytelling. In my youth, I mostly lived in a state between truth and fiction, between deep rich histories and highly imaginative fantastics. To me, design is a way to tell stories. Design can accomplish storytelling in a myriad of ways. Whenever I create a resurrection typeface, I’m not creating something new. Rather, I’m resurrecting and bringing to life a once lost history of the original makers and the forms that they created.
Additionally, when I design a brand identity, I do so with the aim to reflect the people that it is for — their histories, current life experiences, and their future growth. A mark can represent their values. Typographic palettes can express their personality and carefully pairing it together with colors provide a distinctive tone, and this should result in a design that would help portray them or help tell the story that they’re seeking to tell.
Design can discover new stories and uncover those lost to time, translating them into something stronger than before. Design is a way to create meaningful connections through telling the stories of others. There’s an ancient human element to sharing stories that I just love. In doing so, design is not only adding pieces to the pattern of human history, but it’s an opportunity to look out for and uplift one another.
I believe design is possibility.
In my youth, I would open wardrobe doors for possibilities, and now I design. I have discovered that whenever I am given a design brief, a world of possibility is what unfolds before me. There are roads to discover and roads that have been well-tread by my predecessors in design. Just when you may think design is simply one solution or one way of making things, you’ll discover it’s nothing of the sort.
I first learned this by studying other designers. Once I began studying other designers and the history of design itself, I learned that there are no barriers. By studying both past and present designers, I uncovered a world of graphic design that I didn’t even know existed beyond the concert poster or skin care packaging lived a world of experiential design, wayfinding systems, entire international events and movements of people coordinated and created in every element designed. For me, this was only the beginning.
I believe that design is a way to explore possibilities and chase down rabbit holes. It’s an opportunity to think differently about the world approaching problems as opportunities. As I’ve learned that there are no barriers. this means that design is not about tools, but a way of thinking that can shape the world that I live in. Design can be chairs, books, posters, teacups, power hammers, labels, systems of management, itineraries, decks. And the possibilities are endless.
I believe that design is an honor.
Possibility comes with responsibility and this makes being a designer a privilege. I’m honored to be trusted with the potential housed within design possibilities. I once wrote for a student-led journal, “Our purpose is rooted in the stewardship of stories.” And this was true of the journal but it also rings true for me.
As I designed for this historic journal, I did so with great intention and care of the stories that it was telling, the messages it sent and how it would be received. I learned the importance of asking questions to both those who helped create the journal and those that the Journal was created for. I tried to listen carefully for any changes I could make to improve the design for these people.
In design, I must aim to be a steward of the stories I tell. A spirit of generosity or honesty lives in these types of works which explore possibilities and take stewardship over the results of them.
Telling stories, fiction or real, discovering narratives, connecting with others, uplifting one another in love, and seeking possibilities are all ways to design. They are also all ways to honor my God.
By designing prayerfully, I can show my reverence to God, devotion to His Word, and honor to his name. Design done as a means by which we can love others is the best form of design I can ever hope to achieve. When I design anything, it must be done striving to accomplish a Christ-like loving grace or else. to me, it’s meaningless. For me, I will ever aspire to do all design along with everything in life, to the glory of God.
I know that wonder is in design. Ultimately, I think design alone accomplishes nothing. It’s people, stories, human nature, connection, God given inspirations, Holy Spirit — that all activate design into something that is wonderful.
Again, this is something that I learned from studying the history of design. It was seeing the branding of evil during the Nazi regime, starkly contrasted with the life-giving playfulness of the designs created by power couple Charles and Ray Eams. Or the destructive power of a carefully crafted propaganda poster compared to the stunning fabrics designed and crafted by William Morris.
C.S. Lewis wrote for his niece, “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” And when I read this, I was struck with the fear, “Was I too old for fairy tales?” I lived for these things. You see the stories I tell from my youth, from looking in wardrobes and exploring ruined castles. It was all in my innate desire to seek out wonder in the world around me.
Now I aim to seek wonder when I design.
What I mean by this is seeking to make a design that is like a secret door and spills out something magical into real life. When I create a resurrection typeface, may it be a tangible piece of history brought to life in the present day as a moment when the layers between time are thin. When I create a new brand identity, let it show truthfully what the brand is, but also all of the wonderful things that it could be. Let the design either add more wonder and beauty to the world or be a way that we can communicate the wonder that already exists here. My design will seek to become a door that opens up to that wonder, spilling it out into the world for others to see.
I believe that the wonder of design is that God-given space, shared between one person and another. Between truth and fiction. Between endless possibilities and certain reality.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be old enough to start reading fairy tales again, but that’s because I don’t think I ever really stopped. To me, design is a fairy tale. It can be grim, dangerous, curious, whimsical, beautiful… It can be life-giving and it can be deadly. It uncovers histories. It lives deep down in rabbit holes. It can tell a story that is but a reflection of the ultimate story written by the original creator.
The choice is ours in which path we will take. And for me, I will pursue wonder.
Thank you.
Senior Symposia
Senior Symposia is an annual event for the Department of Art+Design in the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University (SC) where BFA Graphic Design Seniors present personal Design Philosophies, synthesizing and summarizing their experiences and perspectives over the course the program. These presentations act as markers in their developmental journey, bringing to light what they believe to be true about design, what design can do, and what they hope to do through design.
