A Journey in Design by Emma Joy Lovell

05.01.13 – 04.30.14

A JOURNEY IN A collection of discoveries made during a year spent

in the Master of Design program at NSCAD University Emma Joy Lovell

A JOURNEY IN

A JOURNEY IN

DISCOVER, COLLECT, REFLECT I find myself standing at a precipice, preparing to leave the inspired and insular world of academia and (re)enter the real world. The journey to this precipice has been long and winding but with hindsight and distance, I have come to realize that it was always leading toward design.

Along the way, being a perpetual collector of things, I have amassed a trove of inspiration, words of wisdom and models to live by. When I find myself at a precipice, as I do now, I often find it inspiring and encouraging to sift through my collections and take stock. In that spirit, this almanac serves as a record of the time I’ve spent in the Master of Design program at NSCAD University: the lessons I’ve learned, discoveries I’ve made, inspiration I’ve found and mistakes and successes I’ve met along the way.

In this almanac, I have sorted my collection into discoveries. These discoveries mark moments of inspiration: whether it was something said, read or realized, things came together in a way that made me see something new. On the following pages, projects and exercises, words of wisdom, sketches and inspiration are all sorted by discovery.

I hope this almanac helps to distill, highlight and share the knowledge, experiences and skills I’ve collected at NSCAD. It has been quite the year.

Grateful and inspired,

RESOLVING�UNCERTAINTY

DESIGN�IS�RESEARCH

SEEK�THE�WEDGE

07 13 19

DESIGN�IS�A LANGUAGE

RESTRAINT�AS�LIBERATION

THE�NOISE�IS�INTERESTING

27 35 39

RESOLVING UNCER-

DESIGN�IS�NOT�PROBLEM-SOLVING; IT’S�RESOLVING�UNCERTAINTY.

-

Ask designers what they do and many will tell you they’re problem solvers.

Early on, I likely would have said the same thing. But I have come to understand that the practice of problem solving is troublesome because it makes two assumptions. First, it assumes that there is a single and definable problem that must be solved and then it supposes that there is a single and definable solution to that problem. Rarely is anything so black and white.

Design deals in indeterminate scenarios. The designer’s task is to take a given situation (which is most often a complex web of problems, challenges, relationships, opportunities and realities), discover what is unresolved and seek to resolve the uncertainty through the design process, in order to come up with the best possible result given the scenario at hand. Like explorers, designers cannot always see the land at the other side. They have a hunch that it exists, they have instruments to help them find it, they have a process and mentors to guide them and they have a resolute fearlessness in the face of the unknown. What they lack is a certainty that what they discover will be of value. But they set out anyway.

This has been a particularly challenging discovery for me. I have always been a person who likes to have the whole picture before attempting to tackle the solution. Perhaps this is informed by my background in journalism or perhaps it’s my insatiable and tiresome desire to always be right. Whatever it is, I see it as a deficit to overcome, especially in design.

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Pounce Wheel Poster, 06.15 This project was one of the hardest for me.

It was meant to be an engagement with the idea of the field, where multiple planes of imagery interact with one another. We had to use orthographic drawings of a tool as the portals between the fields. I struggled with this project because the scenario was so indeterminate. We were assured that there was no wrong answer; that anything went, as long as it was done thoughtfully. I see now that I should’ve revelled in this experimentation but instead I was paralyzed by it.

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Looking back, I recognize that early on in this journey, there were several moments where my compulsion to know the whole picture limited my potential.

Like anything, being comfortable with indeterminacy takes practice.

It also takes confidence or at the very least a calm resolve that it will work out in the end. Having seen the results that can come out of fearlessly embracing the unknown, I now understand its potential.

Rather than letting uncertainty keep us on shore, we should accept it as an incredible source on inspiration and excitement. Like the ardent explorer, we should set out into the unknown, confidently optimistic and armed only with intuition, skill, a capacity for critical thought, and the hope of discovering something completely new.

THESIS POSTER, 08.13 The first semester concluded with the creation of a large poster that was to act as a visual aid for a presentation on the progression of our thesis project. The poster was supposed to give a visually compelling overview of the ideas we were grappling with. This was a challenging exercise because, up until that point, our research had been a broad exploration of the general domain.

This was a clear lesson in embracing uncertainty. Nearing the end of the first semester, the concepts I was dealing with in my thesis project were somewhat vague and highly conceptual. I had no idea how to translate the theoretical into a single poster, let alone a final design in eight months time. I knew that I wanted to include the multi-layered nature of place in the poster and that I wanted to represent the difference between rural and urban sense of place, but the way forward was foggy.

RESOLVING�UNCERTAINTY

Inspiration struck during a kayak trip on the Bay of Fundy. At the time, my anxiety over not having a concept for the poster, due in two weeks, was reaching its climax. (Funny, today I would rejoice at a deadline two weeks out.) As I was taking some time to relax, paddling on the ocean for the first time, I was in awe of the steep cliff faces that jutted straight up out of the ocean.

They were striated with layers of rock and sediment. To me, at that moment, this presented itself as a perfect metaphor for my understanding of the creation of place and my thesis domain.

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I began playing with the concept in my sketchbook before considering exactly what the final poster would look like (a move that was highly out of character for the old me). I layered images on top of one another, exploring texture, relationships and metaphor as I worked. My final poster was a multi-layered collage that represented the natural, historical, emotional and social qualities of place, both urban and rural. In designing the poster in this organic way, I came to understand more about the relationships between ideas in my thesis. Even the process of creating depth by selecting which layers would be in the foreground and which would recede to the background informed the trajectory of my thesis.

Looking back, the poster and my experience of creating it was a small representation of a larger feeling toward my thesis (and design) at that time. The style and aesthetic of the poster captures that state of suspension in the unknown that I was feeling anxious about. A direction was vaguely apparent and I had a hunch that I was onto something, but beyond that there was a lot of fog to push through. I was looking for land but not finding it. In August, I resisted this for the anxiety it triggered. Today, I know to embrace it.

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RESOLVING�UNCERTAINTY

DESIGN IS RE-

DESIGN�IS�RESEARCH: A�PROCESS OF�UNCOVERING�NEW�KNOWLEDGE.

Before coming to NSCAD, I was conditioned to assume that the way to uncover new knowledge is to study the work of others, draw a hypothesis out of your research, test it and then share the results. What I have discovered since then is that, while this is one way to gather knowledge, it is certainly not the only way. Another way of knowing is through making.

When something is made by hand, whether it be a sketch or a drawing or a model, knowledge is generated, embodied and communicated in a way that could not be done through what I consider more traditional research (reading books, writing essays, testing equations, for instance). After finishing a three-dimensional project in the summer, I wrote in my sketchbook, “When you make something by hand, it’s as if you gain a deeper understanding of the information. By making it tangible and dimensional, you somehow make it real. It moves closer to lived experience–it creates an experience itself in its dimensionality.”

I have always found making things to be exciting and empowering–my father is a builder and has always instilled in me the value of working with your hands. In all likelihood, though I might not have recognized it then, I was excited by working with my hands because I was generating new knowledge, rather than reciting or collecting it. With practice and exposure, I have come to understand, value and embrace the power of knowing through making.

As Diego Rodriguez, partner at IDEO, said: “In doing, there is knowing.

Doing is the resolution of knowing.”

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FREELAB, 06.21 – 08.02

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On a hot day in August, watched by two peers, I braced a roaring jigsaw with all of my strength and cut the opening for a window. Had I been asked what I expected to do in my graduate design degree, I most certainly would not have said that.

Island, the community in which the site is located, sits on the shores of the Minas Basin, home to the largest tides in the world. The influence of this natural wonder is embodied in the concept and design of the site.

For two weeks in the summer, I lived out of a tent in a campground on the Bay of Fundy with nine architecture students. We were taking part in Freelab, a design-build workshop NSCAD holds every year in partnership with Dalhousie University’s School of Architecture. The Freelab that I participated in was lead by architect Roger Mullin and had been taking place annually since 2006. The project involved the gradual construction of the Uncertain Centre of the Mary Celeste, an interpretive centre and future artists’ residence that engages with the history of the area, particularly the robust shipbuilding industry of the nineteenth century. Spencer’s

Freelab was an intensive whirlwind tour through the design process. Early in the project, we engaged in collaborative brainstorming and planning for the tasks ahead, which included sheathing, cladding and installing windows in the existing buildings and imagining, framing and cladding a new fourth structure. Together we sketched, discussed and refined our ideas. But the real magic of Freelab came when we were handed the saws, the hammers and the nails. The theorizing and imagining very quickly became real. Each day, we could see, touch and walk over our progress. There weren’t many of us who had prior building experience but

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DESIGN�IS�RESEARCH

we learned as we went. Occasionally, we would take a break and travel down the road in the back of Roger’s pickup to Paul’s mill. We’d sit on a log and watch in awe as Paul turn giant logs into stripped, milled planks. Being immersed so completely in the project, in the community, in the materials and in the design process provided incredible perspective on the importance of knowing through making. The immediacy of that experience is something I will seek in all my work as much as possible.

Standing back on the final day of Freelab, surveying the work we had done, I remember feeling incredibly empowered. If I could imagine and build a building, no problem was too big to tackle. The things I came to know through making were countless and exponentially more powerful and enlightening than anything I could have come to know in a book.

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DESIGN�IS�RESEARCH

SEEK THE

IN�EVERYTHING�THERE’S�A�WEDGE; DESIGN�IS�A�WAY�OF�FINDING�IT.

It’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the scale and apparent inevitability of some of the world’s most pervasive challenges. At times, it can seem impossible that the most complex, enduring and far-reaching problems, those like climate change, global poverty or discrimination, can ever be eradicated or even addressed.

Until this year, I never imagined that design could be one of the disciplines best equipped to tackle these types of problems. Politics, science and international development maybe, but not design. I see now that I didn’t truly grasp the possibilities and potential of design. I know now that through intense questioning, relentless research and vivid imagining, design has a tenacity and an inquisitiveness that makes locating the ways into these problems possible. These ‘ways in’ are the wedges–small interventions into nasty problems that create larger openings. Sometimes finding the wedge can be about drawing connections that others were unable to see. Sometimes it can be about being inspired by an experience or observation. Sometimes it’s about trying to improve or reimagine the things that frustrate us. The wedge can be as innocuous as an innocent question or statement. However it happens, designers are attuned to identifying the clues to where a wedge might be hidden. They are familiar with the blood-pulsing gut-churning feeling of “being onto something.”

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Amelioration Exercise, 05.27 Patrick challenged us to locate a design opportunity within a process we experienced every day by seeking out the potential for improvement.

This introduced us to a new way of understanding where great ideas come from. Setting out with the goal of creating the next big thing can feel like an impossible task. A more reasonable and approachable task is setting out to make something better.

In response to this challenge and out of my addiction to good coffee, I imagined a better french press–one that is environmentally friendly (by discouraging the use of disposable filters) but doesn’t require users to spoon soggy coffee grinds out of the bottom of the press–a daily ritual that I loathe. The press also combined the process of grinding the beans with that of brewing the coffee. Through the design process, I uncovered problems with my design that I attempted to fix in subsequent iterations. This, Patrick told me, is the whole point of design research: uncovering something that you couldn’t have known before you started.

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I was introduced to the concept of the wedge through a question, posed by Patrick: “What drives you nuts?” He insisted that taking on those things that don’t work in our own experience, imagining and sketching another way, is a sure-fire way to find a wedge. Once a wedge is revealed, the reflection phase includes questions like: Is there potential for this solution to make the experience worse for anyone? What does the research bring to light that you couldn’t see before? What are all of the possible ramifications of this work? Reiteration ensures these questions are addressed and resolved at every stage.

Wedges create small openings through which we can squeeze into more complex and convoluted issues. Wedges identify opportunity and reveal a way forward. Wedge-finding is a practice that demands courage, a confidence in hunches, the capacity to think bigger and a compulsion to ask: what if?

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SEEK�THE�WEDGE

“How to Solve India’s Poverty Crisis” by Paul Polak and Mal Warwick on designobserver.com (11.12.13)

FUEL FOR LIFE, 12.05 The brief from Candace could not have been more broad: take something that matters to you and develop a creative proposal that is well-informed and detailed. Feeling inspired and perhaps a little idealistic, I thought I’d tackle global poverty.

The headline that inspired this lofty goal read “How to Solve India’s Poverty Crisis” and I remember how impossible that sounded. In the article, the authors, Paul Polak and Mal Warwick, listed a series of staggering statistics (bottom right), the first of which was that at least one billion people in the world live on two dollars or less a day.

While all of the facts were overwhelmingly appalling, I sensed a design opportunity, particularly in the fact that one billion people in the world use cooking and heating methods that make them sick and pollute the air. I wondered, how hard would it be to design a stove or cooking implement that is affordable and safe for users and the environment and that addresses as many of these problems as possible? (After doing some preliminary research, I realized that it’s pretty challenging and there are lots of devoted and very smart people working on it.) The article proposed three ways to end poverty: by helping poor people develop income-generating businesses of their own; by providing jobs that allow them to increase their incomes through wages or salaries; or by selling them products that enable them to earn or save money. I took these stats, propositions and the term ‘Jugaad’ (top right), a word that I uncovered in my research, as the starting points for my design.

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SEEK�THE�WEDGE

Photo: ‘Tata-Heavy Duty’ by florianpusch under Attribution License on Flickr

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Through research, drawing connections and a series of discoveries, I arrived at what I perceived as the root of the problem: half of the world’s population cooks on stoves that burn fuels that are harmful to the cooks, their families and the environment. This problem does not necessarily demand better stoves, but an alternative fuel source. One that is sustainable, renewable and less harmful to people and to the environment. I discovered that ethanol is a relatively clean fuel and can be made rather simply using the basics of fermentation and distillation. The direction of my research made a turn away from stove design toward an effort to combine frugal innovation, existing technology and available resources to create a sustainable and safe fuel source for cooking in the developing world.

The statistics in the article were the wedge. They outlined several ways into a pandemic problem. Guided by the wedge and after a series of twists and turns, I squeezed into the issue, emerging with an all-in-one processing, fermentation and distillation system for the creation of ethanol fuel from sugarcane. Without the wedge and my instinct to follow it, I would have never come to this conclusion. It might not save the world or eradicate poverty, but at least it proves that these problems aren’t so impossible after all.

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+ +

FUEL TECHNOLOGY FRUGAL INNOVATION LOCALLY SOURCED MATERIALS REDUCTION OF POVERTY

Fuel for Life

Yield This system produces roughly 4.5 litres of ethanol in 2 to 10 days (equivalent to nearly three weeks of fuel for one family’s stove).

An all-in-one processing, fermentation and distillation system for the creation of sustainable and safe fuel

The Fuel for Life system would require roughly 5 metric tonnes of raw sugarcane to provide fuel for one family for one year. One hectare (about the size of a football field) would produce enough ethanol with this system to provide for 12 families for one year.

Fuel Ingredients Raw sugarcane (or organic material high in sugar or starch) Yeast Water

1. Sugarcane is pushed through a press to extract juice.

Construction Materials

4. Once heated, the liquid rises up into a copper tube. As it drops, it cools and condenses.

3. The liquid then flows into the solar still, a glass jug surrounded by reflective mirrors.

23”

SEEK�THE�WEDGE

5. The distilled ethanol is collected in a jug, which is then stored or used in the stove or engine.

2. The liquid is filtered and flows into the fermentation chamber, where it stays for 2 to 10 days.

34.5”

Heavy press capable of processing raw sugarcane 200 L steel drum Large plunger Stirring implement Two fine screens 19 L glass jug Rubber stopper Small glass collection jar Copper tubing Highly reflective material (tinfoil, glass mirrors, etc.)

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DESIGN IS A N

DESIGN�IS�A LANGUAGE�AND THE�MEANING�EXISTS�IN�OTHERS.

N-

I have always loved language. Growing up, I was sure I was going to become a writer because of my infatuation with words. What I did not know then was that language comes in many forms. When I discovered design, it was like I had uncovered a whole new world, one where communication was transmitted through images rather than letters but where the same level of grace and poetry was possible. The same devices could be employed in compelling ways; the same connection with the audience could be formed. It was one of the most powerful discoveries of my life.

Over the past year, I have honed my skills in communication. I have learned more about how to speak this visual language and I have been reminded over and over that it is not that different from the written one after all: literacy, in being able to speak and read, is critical. And to be literate in any language, you must first understand the basic tools.

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WHY DO WE NEED RHETORIC? To figure out what we mean; To persuade others to take our point of view and to accept the results of our inquiries as valid; To protect ourselves from those who would use it to their advantage; To enhance our pleasure in using and experiencing symbol systems of all kinds: language, visual arts, even music; To preserve or, even more basically, to define our humanity; as an alternative to solving conflict through violence.

Rhetoric is a framework for communication that is profoundly social in its orientation. It assumes the scarce commodity is human attention and stylistic devices are the filters that regulate that attention.

- Hanno Ehses

It turns out that the study of all language, whether it is written or visual, is based in one of the oldest areas of study. Rhetoric is the practice of persuasive communication and the formal art of studying that communication.

It has been studied since the days of Ancient Greece. A rhetorical approach equips designers with tools and patterns, enabling strategic competence rather than a reliance on intuition.

Professor Hanno Ehses, who presented to the class about rhetoric, stressed the importance of understanding that according to this approach, the message must serve the needs of the intended public, more than looking artistically refined.

Rhetoric provides a theoretical framework for thinking about complex relationships and offers strategies to communicate clearly in any situation.

When I heard Professor Ehses say these words, I realized that perhaps design wasn’t so divergent from what I love about the written word.

But I’ve also learned that design has incredible powers outside of persuasive communication.

Design can be used as a language to connect people, as well. It can be used as a scaffold to share and cooperatively generate knowledge.

This realization has only reaffirmed to me that design is a powerful, multi-faceted, potential-filled language that I am now committed to learning, speaking and sharing whenever I can.

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Iteration 01

Iteration 02 DISTANT FUTURE

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Space in Time

EN A

PROXIMITY TO THE PAST

NEAR FUTURE

PRESENT

RECENT PAST

PERSONAL

GENEALOGICAL

TIMELINES

HUMANITY

Personal Genealogical Anthropological Geological

DISTANT PAST

GEOLOGICAL

1995 Visited the Badlands during a trip to Alberta with my family

2000 Along with my parents, visited the farmhouse in which I was born in Udney, Ontario

2008 Collected newspapers on the evening that Obama became the first African American president

2009 Discovered letters to my grandmother from her brother Alec before he went MIA during WWII

2011 Read Both My Legs, a love story about my grandparents, written by my cousin

1998 Sat in our living room and watched the only surviving home videos of my childhood with my sister

2001 Gathered with my classmates in the hallway of Huntsville High School to see the Twin Towers fall

2009 Watched bodies burn on the banks of the River Ganges in Varanasi, India

2010 Met Rena McPhie, my grandmother’s youngest sister in Scotland

2013 Visited Joggins Fossils Cliffs and discovered fossils dating back 300 million years

THREE SPACES, 09.12 - 09.26 The brief from Rudi was wide open. It asked us to visualize any moment when we occupied three spaces at one time. After the critiques of the first two iterations of the poster (above), I was not satisfied with my approach. The voice didn’t reflect the message. I wanted to convey momentum and impact. I wanted viewers to experience the wonder that I felt when I considered the gravity of the idea: we all occupy multiple spaces on historical timelines. There are moments when we feel close to different histories: our personal history, our family’s past, humankind’s existence and even the distant geological past. These are the moments I was trying to plot.

DESIGN�IS�A LANGUAGE

In the third and final iteration, I feel I found that voice.

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Distant Future

Earth

Humankind

family

2000 Toured

the farmhouse I was born in

Watched the Twin Towers fall

2001

2008 Co newspa night O the elec

Death

Personal

Birth

Great great grandparents are born

1 CE

Distant Past

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First green plants and fungi appear on land

Grandparents get m

ollected apers the Obama won ction

2009 Watched bodies burn on the banks of the Ganges

2010 Saw

the Mona Lisa

2011 Read “Both My Legs,” my grandparents’ love story

Future 2013 Went

fossil hunting at Joggins

Present

World War II

Past

married Dinosaurs become extinct

My proximity to the past, present & future in a series of momentus occasions

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Graphic Wit, 06.14 Great design does more than just inform; it compels people to pay attention. It enhances their experience in some way.

Like a good book, design has the potential to stay with a viewer long after their eyes have left it. But achieving this longevity rests on a compelling use of the visual language.

To that end, design can employ many of the same tools as the written language, such as metaphor and graphic wit.

Candace described the benefits of employing graphic wit in design using the metaphor of a clothesline, with a message sender at one end and a receiver at the other.

Typical messages are clipped onto the line and passed straight from the sender to the receiver who either accepts, rejects or overlooks the message. When wit is employed, the message stops halfway across the line. The receiver must walk down the line to retrieve the message themselves.

During the retrieval, the receiver discovers the message in the same way that the designer did, only in reverse.

Consequently, the message becomes more powerful for them because they found it themselves.

As an exercise in graphic wit, we were asked to create an object poster for a band announcing a tour or album release that employed one form of graphic wit. It turns out that employing wit is much described said than done.

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Bruce Springsteen

DESIGN�IS�A LANGUAGE

Tunnel of Love | 10.09.87

Emma Joy Lovell | MDES 6030 | 06.14.2013

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RESTRAINT AS LIBER

RESTRAINTS�ALLOW�FOR�LIBERATION FROM�THE�MINUTIAE.

TS R-

With the understanding that the world is a complex place filled to the brim with design opportunities came the overwhelming, incapacitating realization that for every complex opportunity there are a limitless number of possibilities. The whole idea of indeterminacy is that the way through it is unclear. The pressures of that ambiguity and the possibility it creates can easily become debilitating.

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Too many options can inhibit decision making. Thank goodness for rules.

Restraints like grids, ratios and guidelines, liberate designers to think broadly about the bigger ideas, without getting beaten down by the minutiae. This discovery came as a huge relief to the unshakable, detail-oriented, rule-abiding perfectionist that hides inside of me. In the past, I have clung to restraints as justification for staying within my comfort zone. I now understand them as quite the opposite.

“Designers are not beautifiers,” Candace told us. “They’re thinkers. Always be strategic in your design decisions. Make sure you know the rules so that you know how, why and when to break them.” Her position has always been that rules are meant to be broken. So much for rules keeping me comfortable.

Restraints enable risk-taking on a bigger scale. The best work comes when we give ourselves permission to interpret, to play, to explore and to translate the complex issues we work with. Early in the program, there were times when I limited my own potential because I was afraid of risk and of being wrong, particularly when dealing with abstract representation. Because of the complete lack of restraints or rules, I could not transcend the literal. I was frozen by possibility. Looking back, particularly on those open-ended briefs, I can find several glaring examples where employing smaller rules would’ve allowed me to think bigger.

Surprisingly, from these examples of missed opportunity, I have actually learned the most. I have learned that risking failure to think bigger is much better than playing it safe. But thinking big is impossible if you’re overwhelmed by the details.

Rules and restraints are necessary because they give the designer the ability to rise above the details to accept the potentiality of the unknown. In some ironic twist of logic, restraint enables freedom.

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Translating Emotion into Graphic Form, 05.24 This assignment was an exploration in abstract representation. We were asked to select a song or musician and represent any element of the music in an abstract way. We were meant to visualize rather than illustrate.

Out of the uncomfortable feeling that comes when dealing with abstract representation, I made the decision to deal with the lyrics of the song.

Because I chose to deal with an element that had literal meaning (rather than drumbeats or tempo, for instance), I was constantly being swayed towards the representational.

Rather than employing rules in order to allow freedom to think bigger, I was paralyzed by the abstraction. As a result, the piece I created does not really communicate anything, in the end.

MDES 2013, 6030 | Emma Lovell, May 24, 2013

I got the fortunes of heaven in diamonds and gold I got all the bonds baby that the bank could hold I got houses 'cross the country honey end to end And everybody buddy wants to be my friend Well I got all the riches baby any man ever knew But the only thing I ain't got honey I ain't got you I got a house full of Rembrandt and priceless art And all the little girls they wanna tear me apart When I walk down the street people stop and stare Well you'd think I might be thrilled but baby I don't care 'Cause I got more good luck honey than old King Farouk But the only thing I ain't got baby I ain't got you I got a big diamond watch sittin' on my wrist I try to tempt you baby but you just resist I made a deal with the devil babe I won't deny Until I got you in my arms I can't be satisfied I got a pound of caviar sitting home on ice I got a fancy foreign car that rides like paradise I got a hundred pretty women knockin' down my door And folks wanna kiss me I ain't even seen before

This is a unit of time. It represents 4 seconds.

I been around the world and all across the seven seas Been paid a king's ransom for doin' what comes naturally But I'm still the biggest fool honey this world ever knew 'Cause the only thing I ain't got baby I ain't got you

RESTRAINT�AS�LIBERATION

The Measure of Wealth | “Aint Got You” by Bruce Springsteen, from album Tunnel of Love (1987)

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THE NOISE IS INTER

THERE’S�ALWAYS�SOMETHING INTERESTING�HIDDEN�IN�THE�NOISE.

R-

The most striking discoveries can be found in the unlikeliest of places. I have heard this adage many times and in many different contexts. In the past, I have taken it to mean that you don’t always need to look for discoveries; sometimes, they’ll pop out at you when you’re looking at something else. But it means something entirely different to me now.

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Urban Explorers

A series of dĂŠrives throughout Halifax Architecture Industry Nature People Signage Art

Group project, dĂŠrives, 10.03

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“Be careful you don’t design out the noise,” Rudi told us. “The noise is often what’s most interesting.”

He was referencing a map the class had created as a record of unguided wanders we’d taken through the city (left). Somewhere in the design process, the subtle details and irregularities of our paths had been designed out: anomalies were removed, lines were straightened, routes were simplified. While the final design was aesthetically pleasing, without knowing it, we had lost the meaning of the paths.

THE�NOISE�IS�INTERESTING

For me, this experience serves as a reminder to always design with my eyes and mind open. That means exploring, questioning and appreciating the noise for the design potential that it holds, rather than throwing it away for the sake of cleanness, aesthetic beauty and simplicity. In the unusual, the rough, the random and the anomaly lies possibility.

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GENEALOGY POSTER, 06.10 Typically, a genealogy diagram does not require much critical thought. It is a process of search and report, where ancestry is plotted in the most linear way possible. With one of the very first assignments of the program, we were asked to create a genealogy poster that turned that tradition on its head.

First, we identified an ancestor who was a cultural producer. Using our research, we were to locate a tool that they would have used in their work. The form and function of that tool was meant to inform the design of a genealogy poster that reimagined our relationship to that ancestor and reinterpreted the concept of inheritance.

In the beginning, I couldn’t get beyond the tradition of genealogy. I was thinking, quite literally, of connections and transfer. I felt incapable of linking my grandfather (the ancestor I chose), his trade of sign painting, the obscure tool he used and me. The tool was called a pounce wheel. It has a wooden handle supporting a toothed wheel that makes tiny punctures when it is pulled across paper. It is used in the transfer of sketches onto other surfaces. After using the tool and thoroughly considering its purpose, I sensed a theme that connected the tool to ancestry, one of transfer and tracing, but I could not imagine how that would translate visually.

In the search for an answer, I looked through old family photos and documents; I read about my grandfather; I asked family members questions about him.

But I remained puzzled. I used the tool and practiced skills that my grandfather would’ve worked on, yearning for inspiration. Finally, after much work and research, the answer was found hidden in the noise.

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From Signpainters by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon, p. 91

THE�NOISE�IS�INTERESTING

As I was flipping through a book on sign painting, I saw a photo of a sign painter’s desk.

Under the completed pieces, it was covered in traces of his work: overspray, dripping paint, cutlines and puncture marks. It was a compelling visual metaphor for how traits are passed from one generation to the next. The layering of remnants, voids and traces became the theme for my genealogy poster — a theme I could never have discovered if I wasn’t paying careful attention to the noise.

43

A JOURNEY IN

WHAT I KNOW NOW In the end, the most important discovery I made this year was more of a revelation.

Before beginning my studies at NSCAD, I knew that I liked design. I was aware that it was a multi-faceted domain that had countless applications.

I was even confident that I could see myself as a designer in one year, in ten years and in twenty years.

What I didn’t quite grasp was that design is much more than a domain or a job or a discipline. It’s more than a set of tools or a methodology.

It’s more than its many applications, from print to screen to experience.

Not to sound too lofty or utopian, but today I understand design as a way of being. It provides a framework for looking at the world and envisioning oneself as an active contributor. Once you learn how to approach the world through design, you can’t unlearn it. Never again will I think “that makes me so mad!” without thinking next, “so how could I fix it?”

And that, I believe, is the power of design: to turn each of us into doers.

Makers. Changers. Ameliorators. Big-thinkers. Question-askers.

For that, and for all of the other discoveries I made along the way, I am forever grateful for the time I spent at NSCAD. I am thankful for my mentors, teachers, and peers, for the mistakes and successes and for the trajectory it has set me on; one that I can only hope to continue.

Onward and upward, Emma

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A JOURNEY IN Emma Joy Lovell

Master of Design, NSCAD University 2013-2014

www.emmajoy.ca