Designing from Necessity: Event Recap
On May 4th, we brought together four designers who are creating from necessity, rather than for luxury: Yomi Abiola, Editor Vogue Italia; Bob Bland, CEO Manufacture New-York, Co-Chair Women’s March; Deva Pardue, Graphic Designer and Founder, For All Womankind; and Kimberly Drew, Social Media Manager for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their work comes from a place of urgency and need, not one that promotes objects or services in vain. Moderator, Céline Semaan Vernon — AIGA/NY board member, activist, teacher and entrepreneur, focused the discussion on how these women have used their life experiences and challenges to create work that mobilizes the masses.
For Bob, inspiration comes from understanding you need to speak up when something isn’t right, regardless of what you think the outcome will be. Kim’s influence came from her passion to open art (and the understanding of art) to the broader public. Yomi recounted her father’s election and subsequent annulment and imprisonment, as the first democratic president of Nigeria; And how that history helped her understand the complexity of injustice and led her to work to create equality in the world. While Deva’s inspiration came from the request of digital agency, Huge, and their publication, Magenta — her work was a direct response to the lack of uplifting, feminine, yet strong, imagery.
Although activism is what brought these four designers to the MAD stage, each of them approaches design in their own way. Like many creatives working towards social justice and diversity, each has their own approach to the creative process — which can actually deepen and develop through the fast-paced and targeted action needed to create thoughtful and engaging responses to timely cultural or political issues.
As Celine points out, “It’s never like, you sit down at your perfectly designed desk and say ‘my nails are done, I’m ready.’”
The truth is your process must be quick, dirty and precise; you have to strike while the iron’s hot, otherwise someone else will do it for you (the panel admits a majority of their success comes from their impeccable timing).
However, process and ingenuity were also major reasons their work succeeded in the way it did. For Bob, her process is heavily influenced by her formal training as a screen printer. This training has allowed her designs to come from a perspective of what can be quickly burned onto a screen, rather than the more corporate design mentality of uniformity, precision and getting things down in Illustrator. This understanding of medium and content helps her design for application; Ensuring whatever is created, is done so explicitly for that specific use. For Bob, It’s not just what’s going on in the world, but where it’s going and how it’s being shown. As she questions, “We have been explicit that we are not the movement, we are just supporting it…How do you cut through the bullshit? How do you show [the message] immediately? How do you connect with someone in 3 seconds?”
Yomi echoes this sentiment in a her process, but with more of a personal focus, rather than one of tools, “Fuck the money, surround yourself with people who will be with you for the duration of the journey. I think in terms of principles.”
Yomi also notes that a large part of her work deals with supporting women in standing in the fullness of their power. “The truth is, women are so powerful.”
Yomi has made her role one that creates a narrative that will show people what that strength looks like and how we can share that sentiment with one another.
Kim’s process begins with her full-time work at The Met, where she thinks about how patrons interact with art. She says she doesn’t know if what she is doing is a global movement, but for her, building these multiple access point to the museum allow for a direct avenue straight to the heart of what the museum does: cultural education. Kim’s work for the museum helps her create qualitative research on why people don’t go to museums, which informs her activism work. As Kim says, “People don’t go to museums because there’s no one to go with them. They feel without. I try to create tools that give people the resources to experience the museum in a way that they feel comfortable so they feel like they belong — toolkit for engagement. Should they decide to go, they can navigate in these spaces confidently.”
The process for Deva has changed since she began her political work, “now that I have this following and this platform where I can speak to all these people, I’m trying to figure out how to do that and be intentional about it. Trying to figure out how to do it with not enough time.” For her, the activism is bleeding into more corporate (or at least professional) work, “As a designer who is hired to give [clients] a look and feel, [design] is used to lie to people a lot. I’m lucky that I can pick my own clients, but I think there are a lot of agencies and studios who have that luxury but don’t take it.” She advises the questions we, as designers should be asking are: Who’s on their board? Who are they giving money to? Her thought is that we as designers need to make conscious decisions on who to give our skills to. And example of this is users experience with government, “government design is always the worst, but it needs to be the best.”
If you feel impassioned to make a change, the first step is just doing it. As Bob, Kim, Yomi and Deva have shown us, no one expects their work to go viral, or to impact as many lives as they did, they are just creating because they feel strongly it’s important to. That passion and drive is how you know you have something worth sharing. If you feel strongly about it, chances are, someone else will as well. However, if you are looking to make a splash, timing is the number one necessity. As Bob points out “I do not believe that you can manufacture that timing…it’s what the world needs at this very moment and it didn’t exist before that. If you’re feeling that way at that moment, it’s going to really resonate with a certain audience.” Deva also mirrors this sentiment, “The immediacy helps too. Emotion is very important in something like that, when its clear of clutter it will resonate with people…When you can pull all of [this meaning] into one statement you can be successful. And can reach a lot of people.”
