I'm definitely going back to Square One
Two inspiring days in Chicago
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Hey friends,
I spent part of the last week in Chicago as a speaker and an attendee of the Square One design conference hosted by Advanced Design.
If you haven’t heard of them, Advanced Design is an organization dedicated to industrial design education outside of a traditional 4-year college degree and forging a closer connection between what’s taught in the classroom and what’s demanded in professional practice. They run their own educational program called Offsite taught by experienced working professionals, helping designers gain skills that make them competitive candidates for hiring.
I’ve gotten involved with Advanced Design over the past few years, working with them as a mentor for their students and occasionally doing lectures. This year, Hector, the driving force behind the organization, invited me to speak at their annual Square One conference and I gladly accepted the opportunity. The theme was “The Future of Design”, and the speakers were encouraged to interpret this in any way they wanted.
It was my first year attending, and I have to say, Square One was unlike any design conference I had attended before. The speakers were all top notch, each with their own inspiring ideas to share (more on that below), yet extremely approachable and relatable.
The vibe of the two-day event was intimate and you could feel how community oriented Advanced Design is as an organization. All the speakers took extensive Q&A sessions after their talks and I think that really made the whole event feel more like a dialogue rather than being talked at. Many of them also hung around afterwards for more casual chats.
The pricing of the conference was also much more accessible than other conferences I’ve attended (though I did attend free as a speaker), which meant that a lot more young and upcoming talent could afford to attend without company sponsorship. Naturally that came with some austerity in some areas like no main meals being provided, but honestly I didn’t care. I was there for the content and the vibe.
Today I wanted to reflect a bit on some of the inspiration I had absorbed over the last few days. For each speaker, I’ll share one key idea I took away from their presentation and story.
I would definitely recommend attending next year if you can!
Anson Cheung - Technology and media is enabling a broad future for designers
The main idea I wanted to share was that due to a proliferation of technology and media in the last few decades, designers and creators now have ways of scaling their impact and growing their careers beyond the traditional path of rising through the ranks in a company or building a big team under them.
I gave some examples like a designer who met their business partner through an online community and founded a keyboard company together called Work Louder, leveraging crowdfunding and the ease of remote collaboration to create a product that a more established player would never make. Or John Mauriello, who hosts the popular YouTube channel Design Theory, who leverages media to create and share design content he’s clearly passionate about while also earning income from it.
Over the past year and a half I have done somewhat of a hard pivot in my own design career. I had been on a fairly traditional path for the first decade of my design career and had done quite well by most measures. I shipped many products that I was proud of and worked with people I liked and respected. I had a good thing going.
But I felt the pull of these new ways of working, and seeking more flexibility in my life for family and personal reasons, I took the plunge and put myself on a decidedly non-traditional path by starting my own solo independent practice and experimenting with making income online as well. Through this talk, I wanted to encourage others to think more expansively about the shape of their careers.
Marvell Lahens - Design systems, not objects
Marvell’s talk started by questioning the dichotomy between designers and consumers. He challenged us to see it more as a spectrum, where consumers could be brought into the design process to give them more of a sense of ownership over what they purchase, which in turn might lead them to assign more value to the product and make it more long-lasting.
He showed us a furniture company concept he was working on called Self, where consumers can customize their own furniture within certain constraints. Kind of a video game character maker for side tables.
In this context, designers become more the definers of the system and instead of controlling the final object, they control the guardrails and guidance that enable a consumer to create something they feel authorship over and hopefully not mess up too badly in terms of form or function.
I think with the growing accessibility of on-demand fabrication techniques like 3D printing and CNC machining, this kind of customization is certainly part of the future of design. The interesting challenge for designers will be how to provide an intuitive enough interface for customization without overwhelming the average consumer with all the details that come with a full design process.
Felicia Ferrone - Make opportunities for yourself
For me, Felicia’s talk was one big reminder that we all have agency to make things happen, and that if you want to do something that you know is possible and you apply enough effort over time, you can make it so.
She shared with us her journey essentially materializing a career as a successful glassware designer through sheer force of will. She illustrated this with the story of her Revolution collection (below). At first she tried to go through a more traditional licensing path, but had to navigate setbacks with manufacturers for years. Eventually, instead of waiting for the opportunity to come to her to create the product, she took on sourcing, production, marketing, and distribution herself.
The idea for this collection was created in a simple sketch in 2001, but took until 2011 to come to fruition. A good reminder that good things can take time and that design is often more about the execution than the initial concept.
Chuck Anderson - If you do something, something will happen
I didn’t know Chuck before this talk. But I had seen his graphic design work thousands and thousands of times before.
He designed the Windows 7 wallpaper.
Yeah. That one.
He’s also worked with Nike, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Lupe Fiasco, and the list goes on and on.
The big idea that stuck with me from Chuck’s talk is his philosophy of, “if you do something, something will happen”. So often we creatives sit around wondering, “what if” and daydream about ideas. Or we sit around waiting for the perfect client or opportunity to present itself. Or we think 10 steps ahead and worry about details that aren’t anywhere close to being relevant. Then we talk ourselves out of actually doing anything.
Chuck’s notable career embodies a bias for action that produces results. It seems his philosophy drives him to simply follow his instincts and continually create new work that leads to opportunities. Each story he shared (and there were many) seemed to follow a pattern of him doing work that interested him without too much concern for the outcome, and then a huge opportunity would present itself because he put himself out there.
If you do something, something will happen.
Henry Julier - Make everything you design
For someone who works in a completely different area of industrial design, it was cool to hear how much Henry’s design process and thinking overlapped with mine.
Henry shared how his education at Carnegie Mellon University instilled in him a respect and consideration for not just the designing part of the process, but the making as well. It’s not that Henry literally makes everything he designs these days (and neither do I), but it’s clear that his process and the design outcome is informed by the making aspect of it.
The manufacturing of an object influences so much about it, from its materiality to its form, and I think having a healthy awareness of this even when you are first putting pen to paper is a powerful foundation for a designer of physical things.
Another idea that shapes Henry’s work is “simple things, done well”, which again resonates with me a lot. I have never been one to be drawn to the flashiest or most cutting-edge design trends, but more to useful, everyday things that are done to a high degree of refinement.
Craighton Berman - Design is not limited to being a service
Craighton shared with us his independent creative practice that spans the gamut of design from design consulting and facilitation services to launching his own crowdfunded product lines. Fun fact: Craighton was the first designer to use Kickstarter to launch a product.
What really stuck with me from Craighton’s talk was a slide that said, “Design is not limited to being a service”. Most designers, myself included, get into the profession for the love of making things. But in professional practice, so often design is a service for others, and you don’t often get to see your ideas through to the making part, or have much control over it if it does get made.
Craighton seems to have crafted a practice for himself that has enabled him to engage in both the service aspect of design and the making part by continuing to work with clients while also launching products on Kickstarter. It presented a future that I might want to steer my career towards, and it sure seems like he’s having fun doing it.
I hope you enjoyed that roundup of the inspiring talks I heard at the Square One conference.
Maybe see you there next year?
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