Lucy Bilson Interview

Lucy Bilson

On choosing design as a career

I decided very early that I was interested in design. I was always interested in drawing and buildings. It wasn’t about making nice pictures. I would try to design a garden or something. And then I went to a Saul Bass exhibition when I was 11. I didn’t know who he was or his significance at that time, but I remember feeling enthralled by what I saw. It was then that I thought, “That’s what I want to do.” In the British school system you can take graphic design as a course which I found very rewarding.

On choosing York

I received my Bachelor of Design from York. I enjoyed it and learned an immense amount but afterwards, while working in the private sector I found that I really missed being in a learning environment.

I felt like there were things I wanted to explore at a higher level than what I had done during my undergrad. I wanted to study further and considered other programs in Canada but my undergrad education was an excellent experience so I felt York was a good place to come back to and study. I also recognized that graduate level study is shaped by the relationships we build with other people, so if I was going be based in the Toronto area I wanted to build relationships with people that I could potentially work with in the future.

On the graduate experience

Graduate study here doesn’t feel prescribed. It doesn’t feel like the nature of undergrad where the focus is achieving a defined skill set and knowledge base, and at the end, everyone has attained an acceptable level of proficiency. The master’s program is not without guidance, but it’s very much driven by your own interests and you still have to meet a certain level of understanding. But it’s understanding achieved through your own exploration and experimentation, and I’m a person who is very much motivated by my own interests.

The York MDes program provides a lot of opportunities for a designer. An undergraduate education is pretty prescribed by necessity, but the York MDes experience gives you the space to explore whatever you want and have it fail, or find out you’re not truly interested in the topic, or experiment to find your real interest. Having the space to do that is quite a unique opportunity.

Work from Lucy's first semester design studio. Lucy produced a video indicting society's drive to automation.

In her video, Lucy "humanized" the effects of automation, while at the same time, slyly pointing to the negative effects if has on social fabric.

On development

In undergrad I would do a bit of research then I would do a collage and then do six pages of sketches and then take those sketches and refine them. Then do more detailed sketches until I’ll have the requisite four options. It was a useful process and it was a good way to work but it was very linear. I had a system — however intense — but it applied to pretty much all projects. Now that I am in the master’s program my process is not as consistent project-to-project. It involves a lot more research and concept-based experimentation. My approach is not prescribed in advance.

The focus here is on what we are trying to say and on what we’re doing and finding a way to visualize that, as opposed to thinking of visual things first and then refining them. We approach a project with research or reading or looking at how different designers are working or what they’re writing about. It’s very open and we move forward while maintaining that open attitude.

On influences

I tend to gravitate towards museums and galleries and learning about artists and designers. It’s not an influence but I suppose part of my process: I like to explore how others approach their own work. I also have an interest in the institutional structures of museum sand galleries. I really like learning — which is kind of a basic thing to say — but I have an interest in how knowledge is structured. I think that the acts of collecting and archiving are fascinating and I would like to further examine how they influence the practice of design.

On what’s next

I would like to practice and write about design and maybe do some teaching so I can still be in a learning environment. I like not having a nine-to-five routine. And I like being part of a diverse team and working on different projects.

On the program experience

It’s a really good opportunity to examine design without any kind of prerequisites on what you should be doing. I value the opportunity to be here and have the freedom to pursue what I want to learn about and create what I want to make.