WORK/SPACE
As an art student, I’ve often wondered (or battled with) how to find inspiration, and what can be done to encourage (or force) creativity. Every once in a while, the path to an idea and its realization feels like a bright, clear line, but most of the time it just feels like fumbling for a light switch in the dark. Idea-having, ingenuity, and creation are frustrating, magical things that, somehow, my life and career are predicated on. The classes I’ve taken and jobs I’ve had over the course of my life so far depend on purposefully tapping into creativity, even though what “creativity” looks like in the first place is so nebulous. I read an article by Thomas Dutton that described the design process as “problems without known results” that must be played with, explored, and experimented on in order to invent a solution—something full of “vulnerability” and “ambiguity”. So, how’s it possible to navigate that process and make it work on any kind of a schedule?
In dealing with this uncertainty, I knew there was one unspoken consistency in my own work: the necessity of other people. I’ve always employed friends, roommates, boyfriends, parents, and teachers as sounding boards for ideas. You could call this a spoken extension of the usual visual research and development. But, I’ve also always been uncomfortable with this dependency—wanting (or needing) the presence and feedback of others in order to produce good work has always felt like a weakness. Outside of class critiques, I’ve had trouble finding community within the school itself, or the larger design world, and in some ways assumed that I was supposed to be able to do things on my own. I’ve always wanted more feedback and support, but never known where to find it. Over the first few weeks of my senior year, this conflict became the basis for my thesis project.
The first step I took to figure out what the heck I was doing was to survey other students; I wanted to know, did they have a similar problem? Of the (admittedly small group of) 22 respondents, 82% said they wanted more opportunities for feedback and discussion than they were currently getting, and many wrote about lacking community. I looked into websites meant for creative feedback, but found none that actually helped to find a source—all were digital platforms for existing design teams. Then, I brainstormed: what options were already out there for creative community offline? Networking events, gallery openings, meetup groups, open studios, lectures, figure drawing sessions, and workshops, to name some. Many of these options had a cover fee, took place in a 21+ space like a bar, and/or catered to established professionals. To be honest, I’ve tried a lot of these myself—for the three years I’ve lived in New York, I’ve been hit on by 40 year old men at drink & draw events and been turned away from panels by ticket prices enough times for anybody. Paradoxically, it seems there’s not much of a network for students or recent graduates because the art school is supposed to be the best networking opportunity of all.
The need for any kind of community, professional or not, is pretty well trodden subject these days. Everyone with Internet access has probably seen at least a think piece or two about how the rise of social media and the “millennial” move away from tradition is responsible for some kind of rift in society. This is the so-called vacuum in which free-wifi coffee shops and membership coworking spaces have flourished. Clearly, people are attracted to the idea of getting up out of their pajamas and paying to do their writing, designing, or Facebooking in a space with other people, outside of their own apartment. We all know, I think, the feeling of going through the motions of productivity in order to actually get productive, or needing a change of scenery to do work. I know that I experience a brain shift that I can’t really explain when I sit down in a cafe with my laptop. Interestingly, a study by psychologists at Vrije Universiteit (as explained by Business Insider) showed that just sitting near someone who seemed to be working hard made people work harder, even if they couldn’t see the work that was being done. There are some theories about why this happens, whether it’s body language or pheromones or something else, but the important conclusion is that “the exertion of effort is contagious”. Author Steven Johnson, too, writes about how communal space, in this case the coffeehouse, was crucial to Enlightenment thinking, as “a network of different people with different perspectives coming together” that fostered new ideas. Essentially, all signs point to community when it comes to creative work.
So, we’ve got our answer, right? If doing work in communal space is so important, why don’t we all get memberships to coworking spaces? Well, in someplace like New York City, a membership is about $250 per month on average. For a young designer or student, that’s pretty damn unaffordable (without rich parents), and that barrier to entry restricts the diversity of work and voices within the space. The same goes for paying $5 per cup to get a spot at a coffee shop—often crowded, loud, or laptop-restrictive—on a regular basis. It’s cheaper, maybe, but still not that viable in the long run. With all of that in mind, I kept looking for a solution without so many restrictions, and that wasn’t just a bandaid on the problem. It was at this point that, out of the blue, I found out the senior studio for Communications Design was opening for the semester. Until then I hadn’t known the department had a studio at all. When I went to check it out, I found it was everything I’d been looking for over the last 3 years. Physically, it had what a studio should: clean table space, natural light, storage, and resources like a scanner and printer. But, most importantly, there were other students there with an understanding of design, who I could work next to and discuss ideas with. The only thing I was left wondering was, why the hell wasn’t this something I had access to all of my previous years of art school, in all creative environments, and why wasn’t it promoted more heavily?
>Somewhere in the search to answer my own questions, I decided I should take a look back at an exercise I’d done at the beginning of the semester: a diagram of my creative process. When it turned up missing, I started asking others in the studio to do one for me. I thought it’d be a good visual support for the work I’d been doing. But by the time I’d collected about 10, it became clear that these diagrams were collectively more compelling, and more telling, than my research, writing, and designing. So, I ended up practicing what I preached: I involved other people. I went door to door on each floor of the studios, asking everyone I saw to document their creative process for me. I talked to hundreds of people. Some of them were excited to participate, some were confused, and some were in the middle of a deadline and wanted me to fuck off. The results were as varied as the works I see come out of Pratt: doodles, pie charts, brainstorm trees, lists, comic strips, and lots of arrows. But, I’ll let them speak for themselves for a while.
It’s probably important for me to acknowledge, at this point, the other available workspaces within the school structure. Primarily, these are the computer and print labs, which are assumed to be the domain of the graphic design student. But in graphic, illustration, and advertising, the ability to communicate is arguably the most important skill to have, even more so than technical ability. That includes visual, written, and spoken communication, since a designer often has to explain concepts before, during, and after their implementation. Pratt’s Communications Design website, after all, describes the ability to convey “a message across all platforms” as the core of the program. In which case, the silent, clinical computer lab and the often-crowded, equipment-filled print lab aren’t conducive to the design process, particularly in its early stages. Both are designed to facilitate quiet solo work, not discussion, exploration, and problem solving. Neither is geared towards long-term work, if only because of bans on food and drinks. As a graphic design student, I’ve spent an uncountable number of hours (and dollars) between the two, so I can say with some certainty that ideas themselves rarely develop in the lab environment.
What’s the answer, then? Accessible, comfortable, consistently available group workspace. For Pratt, it’s ComD studio space for sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and further promotion of the existing studio space, as well as a greater general emphasis on community, not just visual communication. Opportunities for voluntary participation, not just graded participation in class critiques, are important. Creativity only happens on a schedule when there’s flexibility—ideally when time of day, amount of time, and style of work are self-prescribed. Studio space should provide structure while leaving everything else up to the students who use it. The ComD senior studio as it is now covers most of the criteria that companies like LinkedIn and ShareDesk suggest for a coworking space; the issue simply lies in providing it for everyone. Other departments at Pratt, like industrial design, have designated workspace for each year and students are expected to spend most of their time in that environment. I think applying the same mentality to ComD is constructive, and important.
On a larger scale, communal workspace is important for new perspectives, play, and solidarity. Even without the presence of others, a change of location is good for ideas, and the studio environment is good for big, messy explorations that can’t happen in an apartment or coffee shop. In creating this project, I gathered a lot of concrete evidence about working together, but I also learned some less tangible things. For one thing, I thought I’d see a strong difference between the mapped creative process of ComD students, and those from other departments that build studio time into the program, but it turned out not to be the case. Turns out, you don’t know what you have—or what you don’t have—without a frame of reference. There were noticeable differences in thought processes, though. Industrial designers incorporated objects and materials, interior designers thought more spatially, fashion designers tended to look to a lot of sources of inspiration, and so on. I was also reminded that even the best of us struggle sometimes, something I forget easily. But, overall, I found that we are valuable resources to each other. I got the most out of this project from interacting with others, and understanding how they worked. So, the advice I have for you in your creative endeavors is: get up, out, and talk to people.