The Middleground

CLOSE COVER, STRIKE ON BACK.

A STUDY OF MATCHBOOKS AND THE DESIGN PROCESS

FOREWORD

My desk is the opposite of minimalism, completely littered with another man’s trash. Vintage boxes of staples, travel guides from WWII, my grandfather’s postcards, and a jar of 500 matchboxes. Practicality is set aside when trying to spark my creativity, and even through all the mess, I always know where the solution lies. When in doubt, I stick my hand into the jar of matchboxes, feel around for the right one, and pull out whatever I am holding: and it is always the perfect solution of what I need to design.

Design has always been interwoven with my life yet did not have a label until later on. When looking back, my childhood seems encased with magic, a place where exploration was free to happen. I was the youngest child, always pushing the envelope of what my parents would allow. I would consistently pull all the pots and pans out to make a drum kit, draw on every surface with my mother’s red crayon that lived with her makeup brushes, or dumping my dad’s matchbox collection onto their bathroom floor. Sort by color. By place. By texture.

By size. The categories were endless. While I sorted and searched for the prettiest ones, my Dad would tell me the stories behind them.

Back then, I didn’t know those moments would be so important, but looking back now it was evident that I would always be searching for the “prettiest one”, whether it be matches, typography, antiques, or mementos. This book serves as an artifact of my dad’s matchboxes collection he later gave to me, the artists who made them, and my connection to them.

PRIZED POSSESSIONS

My dad’s not a designer. Or that is at least what he says, but I’m not sure if I believe him. In his 20s, he and all of his friends were leaving behind small childhood towns to move away to their next stage of life. From shot glasses to golf balls, their friend group started building their collections. They were doing anything they could to stay present in moments and remember them.

Matches were everywhere: bar counters, restaurant bathrooms, hotel lobby’s, and secretary’s desks. They were easy to pick up and stick in your back pocket, to then chuck into your collection. My dad was adamant about the expansion of his, too. His small town knew he collected them and would bring them back from all around the world. The weirdest thing to me is that he doesn’t smoke, but rather just purely just enjoyed the designs on them and their ability to hold onto his memories.

While they were once my dad’s silly items to collect due to their convenient frequency and their nonexistent price point, they are now my most prized possessions. While his connection to matches looks very different than mine, we both hold the same passion for wanting to remember every forgettable moment of our lives. The ability to have a log of our lives that doesn’t live in a phone’s camera roll. A tangible connection to every fleeting day.

THEIR HISTORY

Matches history runs deeper than I expected. What was once created as an expensive novelty for the rich ended up becoming current day trash. With their sliding-drawers or flip-up lids, they have facilitated a small frame capable of housing a wide array of design and art. First traced back to women in 577AD who ran out of kindling and had to get creative, which led to the first friction match credited to a man in 1669 who made it happen by accident and ignored his discovery. Created again by accident in 1827, but this time around it was time to experiment, yet failed to patent the model he once called “Congreves.”

Soon after the first safety matches, the ones closest to our current day matches, was created by a man named Edvard Lundström in Sweden. The resurregence of these in Sweden set the trajectory for the future of matchbox label design.

I knew I needed to find out anything and everything I could about the makers behind these beautiful small artworks. Knowing these people would allow me to understand why I felt so connected to them.

REMAINING OPEN

After searching for hours upon hours, there was nothing. Radio silence. I reached the end of Google. Countless emails to matchbox experts, fans, facilities, and industry officials. Nothing. I was stumped. I had to change the trajectory of my project from being these artists and shift towards my connection with matches.

In the beginning of this project, I thought finding past matchbox designers was my solution. I was searching for an answer and thought this would be the explanation of why I loved looking at these small pieces of memories so much. I searched in hopes of finding just one artist and being able to connect with them emotionally. Many nights I imagined their portfolios being filled with thousands of these boxes, seeing that they had devoted their whole lives to this rare art form. I now later realize I was searching for someone else who cared the same as me, who felt the same gut emotions about these matches. I had to start from what felt like the beginning, all over again. Re-framing the reason behind this project, searching for the reasoning for my deep connection.

MAKING MESSES

Not finding anything on these designers deeply bothered me. It sent me down a spiral of questioning the relationship between a work’s value and our name being attached to it. Imagining all of the work that you created completely disconnected from you. Does that make your work useless? Does work lose all meaning when disconnected from us? When does our work gain purpose? Is it when the concept is formed? Or rather when it is finished and approved by your client? Or maybe, it gains purpose when we feel proud of it. If these matchbooks were made by designers who gained no credit, do they lose their purpose?

So many questions were going through my mind, and in the end, I still can not answer all of them. This battle of pinpointing when all design gains meaning made me take into consideration my practices and daily rituals when designing. When I step back and look now, it is clear to see that process has always been the most important part of the design process for me. Getting my hands messy and making messes. Spilling all of my dad’s matchboxes on the floor and then starting to sort them. This has always been part of me, yet I was ashamed of messy artboards and sketchbook spreads. The process of taking vastly different approaches and turning issues on their heads to find a solution has always been interesting to me.

I searched the depths of my resources to find only a reflection staring back at me. As a result, it allowed me to see design and myself differently. I knew the process needed to center around experimentation and exploration, yet was lost on how to do that. Every word written, conversation spoken, and thoughts keeping me awake said the same thing: this project’s purpose is to help me discover myself and my processes, essentially to show why I am a designer. It felt daunting. Too big of a project to take on, especially by myself. I had no clue where to start this project that had been flipped on its head. I began to write, listen, and speak. Writing any and every thought that came to mind when thinking about my story has led me to this opportunity. Continuously asked my dad about his collection, and why he had it, getting him to open up about what it meant to him. Speaking to classmates, professors, and my family on what this project truly means. The three practices shaped the purpose of this project, allowing me to have a clear vision in my head. At times, It was painful to consider these things aspects of design. It felt like I was cheating on my computer. Yet, at the end of it all, they were what this project orbited around entirely. It went from a textbook of information about artists to something so much more personal to me. It went from me being a “designer”, to me being my authentic self.

PATTERNS ARISE

As I searched for the answers I was looking for about these matchbook designers, it was difficult to confess that it was not going as planned. Looking from the outside in, one could have guessed everything in my project was going well, but internally it felt like the biggest unexpected turns were happening right in front of me. It felt like I was lying about it all. The project was hitting me harder than I could have expected, and diving straight into the unknown felt as if everything I knew was falling apart. It pained me to not stay in the same mindset that design was sitting in front of a computer and moving assets around, and how dare it be anything more than that. Every question I left unanswered was another jab at this project’s meaning.

As this continued, patterns arose. Everything I didn’t understand about design, myself, and this project could be embraced in a different light. Speaking with my dad about what this project meant to both of us allowed me to better understand its importance. Allowing myself to see it from his point of view made me see what could be improved upon. Being vulnerable and open to these changes allowed me to find the true meaning of this whole project.

NO LONGER GHOSTS

After photographing, editing, and pairing all of the 500 matchboxes together, an email landed into my inbox. An answer had arrived two months after asking a historical matches company for information, and from a Chairman of the large company. It included a list of artists that collaborated on their matchboxes. Their history ran deeper than I could have ever predicted. A muralist. A costume designer. A woman who was a pillar of her community. They all had roles I had imagined them having. It even included their known signatures and along with that, a database of their known works. Everything I had searched for and moved on from arrived the moment that I had shifted my focus. These artists were no longer ghosts, but real people.

This process has been one of trial and error. No step of this project came easily to me, yet in the end, there is a continuous thread of joy woven into this time of my studies. It allowed me to slow down and hyper-focus on a media that allowed me to reevaluate where I once stood firmly. Taking this slower pace welcomed more meaning into my process and allowed me to see its beauty.

Looking back, I can see how transformative this project has been for me. It serves as a specific point in my journey, moving from being very fast-paced and self-destructive as a maker that notices it’s not just all on me. It has opened my eyes to see that the process is integrated into who I am, and it is just the means of implementing that ability I hold into projects. Choosing to invite this part of me into my process allowed me to savor every moment and see it for what it’s worth.

THE MIDDLEGROUND

THE IMPORTANCE OF PROCESS IN DESIGN

It was an unpredictably beautiful experience to see this project turn into a tidal wave of emotions. Late nights editing, phone calls with my dad, smothering spaces with matchboxes for the purpose of studying. Studying artists to lead me down different paths of no solutions. In the end was this, the middle ground.

Design orbits around the process of making and becoming. It is not the finished outcome, but the comfort of knowing that the voyage to the end is wrapped in creativity and grace. The focus of the in-between, along with the unknowns and the growth that emerge there. The rate of success is not dependent on the final outcome, but the process that got it there.

It is the middle ground: between life and death, beginning and end, self and others, and Heaven and Earth. The space is gone, we are now one through the process.

DESIGN_

FOSTERS GRATITUDE

In the design process lies opportunities I might not have expected. This allows me the option of taking these paths, or remaining on the one I am currently on. Choosing to be grateful for these experiences allows for my design process to grow deeper than expected.

I possess the ability to find the solutions I am searching for. The ability to explore different topics, people, viewpoints, and experiences allows me to find deeper meaning in myself. Design is about continuously exploring new areas of research, in hopes of solving problems that help others. It is the collection of the past in hopes to shape the future.

VULNERABLE DESIGN IS_

To help others, I must be open to bearing their areas of need as my own. The process requires intimacy to better understand the issues at hand. When I understand someone else it allows me to see the world from their view and what could be reformed. Remaining vulnerable and sensitive allows me to carry issues for others and help them in any way we can.

In order to help others, I must be able to help myself. Design has the ability to show me parts of myself I have ignored and overlooked. I have the opportunity to learn myself on a deeper level when I choose to take advantage of this.

SAVORY DESIGN

IS_

A design solution should create a moment for the viewer to slow down and enjoy it. The process of design, when oftentimes rushed and pushed to an extreme, oftentimes needs to be slowed down and paced. The intangibility of both the process and result fosters a need to take it slowly to fully grasp its completeness.

SACRED DESIGN IS_

As humans, the design process is integrated into who we are. Whether we choose to or not, each of us has the ability to learn to see design and implement it. I choose to invite this part of me into my process, and am trying to pay closer attention to its impacts in my work.

OPTIMISTIC DESIGN IS_

In order for me to see change, I must first believe that it could happen and should happen. If I doubt that there is even a solution, I am less likely to find one. Keeping my eyes open in hope of finding the right answer allows me to notice things we might’ve once ignored.

DESIGN_

DEPENDS ON FAILURE

I am not perfect, and there is no way I can be. Failure is part of who I am and therefore is part of design. Every frustration and defeat I come across brings me closer to our end goal and my Creator. Failure is, in fact, unavoidable in this process. Design is about seeing failures as opportunities to grow.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I can’t even begin to count how many times I thought I was not capable of becoming a designer. I held it on such a high pedestal, continuously expecting expertise-level work from myself as a beginner.

I was quick to tell myself that I was not smart, creative, and meticulous enough to do this well. It was remembering moments, such as being a child and playing with my dad’s matchbox collection, that revealed to me that I have always been equipped to do design.

This project is so much more than just capturing a collection. It is an artifact of this moment in time in my life. It is my own physical reminder of where I have been, what I have done, and the life I have lived. It captures every part of me, and I hope you can see that too.

Thank you to each person that helped this project happen. For the professors that allowed me to run with it, the classmates that gave continuous feedback and encouragement, and my family for letting me talk at length about this. It means the world to me that I will have this reminder of all the hard work that has gone into this class and learning what it means to be a designer.

STRIKE ON BACK