Reneé Seward

I think this conversation about images is still going on in many ways. There’s more awareness of that. But it’s still a struggle. And I think even in an education setting with questions around decolonizing the curriculum, how do we not simply teach the same dead white guys again? How do you navigate that and make space for different forms of images and representation?

I often say that the thing that I felt was lacking in education is understanding the history of people who look like me, or people of color in general. I feel like that handicapped me in some ways. I’m happy that, in the space we sit now, the stories are being told, and I can bring those stories back to the classroom as I’m learning them too so students can hear a broader perspective. I’m not going to act like I’m the expert historian who knows all this. I don’t, but I want to learn it. And I want my students to be aware of the resources. When I write projects, being Black, there’s a perspective that I bring to people, like the images that I share. It’s been good to talk, just have open conversations about different things.

Can you tell me a bit more about what your research looks like now? You mentioned you are going into high schools?

Over the next four weeks, I’m going into to some high schools to talk about design with students in art and science classes. I’m excited to expose a diverse group of people sitting in a physics class, for example, to the power of design and the idea that we need diverse voices in there. I’m excited to share with them that they can make a good living just as well as an engineer or a business marketing person inside of design. It’s not the starving artists that maybe their parents are imagining. But the bigger thing that I’m excited about right now is my research. I’m blessed to have a new research lab called Learning by Design, where I’m collaborating with people like speech pathologists, linguists, and educators to develop new technologies that help struggling readers read. When I started looking at how many people of low income were struggling read, and the vast number them who are African Americans with low literacy rates, it was astonishing. And I’m like, okay, the basic skills of learning to read can propel you into design, engineering, all sorts of places. I want them to go where they want to go, but they have to learn to read. And if design can help do it, let’s do that. So I’m excited to look at how typography can be done to help change people’s trajectories.

“We’re always in transition and those transitions are often made without intention and long term thinking. It’s about servicing efforts that exist right now, not necessarily coming up with new ideas or new interventions.”

Pallanez (MGXD ‘13) is an Interaction Designer and a Teaching Fellow in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon, where she earned her PhD in Transition Design. Her professional experience includes Fjord in Finland.

You’re in a PhD program at Carnegie Mellon working on transition design. What is transition design?

Transition design is a relatively new area of design that is acknowledging that we are living through transitional times. It takes as its central premise the need for societal transitions at a system level that involves society, technology, and, most importantly, ecological concerns, which are oftentimes neglected in other areas of design, and in life in general. We’re always in transition and those transitions are often made without intention and long term thinking. It’s about servicing efforts that exist right now, not necessarily coming up with new ideas or new interventions. It’s about observing and seeing what is happening right now and how we can connect them and deepen their efforts. So it’s not just what can we make but also what can we unmake.

I’m interested in the ecological aspect of that definition. Sometimes I wonder if ‘humancentered’ design is too limited and we should be thinking about ‘ecology-centered’ or something.

I think we have this fixation on the new, as humans. I think there are good aspects of human centered design. They are good aspects of something that is more ecological. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. There are very valuable tools that I’ve used throughout the years in my time working as an interaction designer that I believe are valuable, so I don’t think we should throw it to the trash. But is the next thing to think ecologically? Yes, we should because we are part of it. We are natural beings that make artificial things but we’re still part of nature.

What does your research look like?

My focus is in everyday life. I’m focused on the role of narrative and the role of embodiment in addressing this systemic changes and how that translates into everyday life. I’m focusing on my hometown, which is Hermosillo in Mexico in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. I’m exploring craft practices and hosting craft workshops. How can those spaces of making together become spaces in which we make time and space for reflective conversation?

So I set up workshops, thinking of it narratively, moving through the past, present, and into the future as it relates to craft, territory, and memory.

I’m interested in this move from graphic design to transition design. How does a graphic design background influence this work you are doing now? Are there things that you are learning now that you think should come back into graphic design education?

What I bring to the table by having a training in graphic design is this sensibility and training in aesthetics. In both my research and in transition design, because I have this training, I can uplift the aesthetic sensibility. That’s something a graphic designer can do that other types of design, like service design or design thinking for example, can’t do as well. For graphic designers now, I say start looking at the systemic aspects and how they influence what you do because who you are shapes what you design.

Matthew Muñoz (MGXD ‘08) is CEO and Co-founder of the brand strategy company New Kind. He focuses on growth and aligning the firm’s offerings with the market-place, integrating the company’s capabilities, developing its leaders and methods, and maintaining a culture of design.