Back in 2008, while on a business trip together B.K. had asked me to take this photo for her. She said, "Hmm...look at those colors, there's something there, do you mind taking a picture of it for me." To this day, it is the most viewed photograph in my Flickr account with 8.459 views and 20 favorite tags. Talk about designer intuition.

B.K. Allen is currently an Automotive Color and Materials Designer at Ford Motor Company previously with Color and Trim at Chrysler. She has held a multitude of other positions that included: English and Art teacher at Private schools; Advertising Illustrator, Copy Writer, and Graphic Designer. She is also currently a freelance Design Consultant, Interior Designer, Illustrator, Sculptor, and Portraitist. But her self-described passion and lifelong career that she is pursuing in tandem with Design is that of a writer:

“I am now and always have been, at heart and in practice, a storyteller whether that is through word or imagery.”

Where did your interest in design come about?

For me, it started in childhood. I’d see something that I really liked, play with it, take it apart often without thinking of the consequences at the time. As far as design, I oscillated between science and art, never realizing that they overlap in so may different ways. Art and Science take things that exist in nature and ask, what if? They  push the envelope. Many artists overlapped science and art; most obvious is DaVinci. If you look at Picasso’s work for example, you see how so much of it is tied into science. Picasso looked at things from different dimensions and different angles, different perspectives.

With your diverse knowledge and experience, when you are tasked with resolving a design problem or uncovering new trends what do you find that works and how do you usually approach the process of discovery?

The biggest thing with trends is watching and listening, just being open to possibilities and not assuming certain things are going to be a certain way. A lot of design is duplication but to create new design to see new trends, designers must look at everything else that’s going on around them. How do the politics affect it? What are people wearing? What are they eating? What are they talking about? Life in general affects design–they work in tandem.

The biggest mistake that some designers make is when they look only look at the design trends. I look at everything.

Why do you think it’s a problem to just look at design trends?

Well, you become isolated in a little bubble, with tunnel vision, duplicating what is and has been. To move forward you have to create, not just duplicate. Design trends come from life and you have to open yourself up to see that life. And you find it everywhere, nature, people, the past and the present, science fiction. Here’s an obvious often over looked example. I have at times, recorded soap operas, TV sitcoms, and flipped through them to see what was going on in the set. People watch the soap operas, the sitcoms, the movies, HGTV–that’s a good one; they look at those rooms and imagine themselves in them; want that type of set-up or something near it, in their lives. Then, if you follow politics or history, you know that during times of war and times of peace people wear certain colors, materials, designs, and when times get better they shift. So, understanding the history of things and what is going on, only helps and adds to what you see in current trends; helps to project directions.

Once you do this for a while, you’ll look at everything consciously and unconsciously. It’s being open to seeing things that are obvious and things that are not so obvious. In approaching trends, I keep myself open to all possibilities, and I look at everything that is going on around me.

How do you know you’re on the right path, that your vision has merit?

When you open up and start looking at a lot of different things and you start seeing patterns; revised old ones and if you look hard enough, new ones; eventually things start clicking for you. You start putting things together and they fit; the emotive reaction you get looks just right, or it feels right. You look around you and you simply see signs that the direction you’re on is a good direction;  even if it’s new–especially if it’s new–and people relate to it, react to it.

Sometimes it’s like creating a work of sculpture, a painting, a story. . .design is an art form; after you create it, trying to explain why you did it.  You can’t always immediately say why did it, but it comes at you, comes because you’ve opened yourself up, had so much exposure to different things. I keep saying: exposure, exposure, exposure.  As a designer you are constantly recording information in your designer mind’s eye whether you know it or not.

What has changed in your process over the years?

Aside from being open to infinite possibilities in design, I guess the biggest thing that changed is that I trust my judgment more. Before, I didn’t feel as comfortable expressing ideas that I came up with. I bowed to toward those that were emulations–that’s the biggest difference. An example, everyone’s wearing red so I’ll create something in red…but a “new” red. Now, I try to create direction that is more forward thinking. If it is red today, what will it be tomorrow? That’s what I look for. I feel a lot more confident because I’m basing my choices on years of experience and exposure, and opening myself up on what is going on around me, seeing beyond what is here now. I look at the direction things are moving toward.

Which one of your projects has given you the most satisfaction?

Recently, I’m in the process of finishing up this doctor’s office in the Park Shelton building in Detroit, this old beautiful building. I walked in and saw her new office on the ground floor with boxes strewn everywhere, damaged walls, floor that needed to be replaced, and saw so much repressed beauty and infinite possibility.

I factored in the location of the building, the colors being used in and around, the proximity to the Cultural Center with its cultural influence, the architectural influence–all of those things came into play when I was pulling things together. I met the building manager about restoration of certain existing vintage parts of the office. Then, I added just enough contemporary elements to bring the space up to date, but not so much that it overpowered or overshadowed the actual beauty of the rooms, so there’s a balance. I also sat down with the doctor to get some insight into who she was. The newly redesigned, renovated office is distinctly hers, there is no way you can walk in the office and not know it’s hers. Her personality stamp is on it.

That to me was fun, and it was fun because I did a lot of it without consciously thinking it through. What gives me satisfaction is that this process is second nature to me now and I know it works.

What would be an experience where you had to make compromises, and how did you, or could you, satisfy both your creative vision and that of the client?

Working in a corporate environment is a series of compromises and that can be difficult for a designer. As a designer you are hired to do a particular job, hired because of your level of expertise in that area. Unless the business is wholly design driven, often the people who make many of the major decisions are not designers. It takes time and cultivation to develop a designer’s eye, a designer’s intuition even if you are born with it. In a corporate environment, you deal with numbers, quantifiable numbers. Those numbers are usually based on what has come before. Sometimes counter-decisions are made based on what design was for a particular commodity. The operative word, was. Though as a designer, you are cognizant of what has come before and what is going on around you, design is and should be forward thinking. It requires a leap beyond where we have been.

In a corporate environment, you will be provided with or you’ll research the marketing information on the target customer, the brand identity. You compile information observing what is all around you; what is specific for that product, for that customer; and you, as a designer, know what will work. You start developing things to fit the customer, that niche. Then the direction you are working in is superseded by a non-design directed decision, and you may know the new direction is not the best call. You may know that in developing in the new direction, things will be set back weeks, sometimes months, maybe years.

Can it be circumvented? Sometimes. So how do I get around that? I dual path things. I give what is asked for while, if time, circumstances, and cost parameters permit. I develop what they want, what the product needs.  That gives me satisfaction because in most cases, after I’ve gone through this long development path, that is not quite right, and they see it’s not quite right, I can sometimes pull out the other development and say:  “Well this is what else I was working on,” and four out of five times it’s what they really wanted and what the product needs–and they’ll take it.

So you always have this extra trick in your back pocket?

Not always, but when I can, I do. I didn’t before. It was a hard lesson I learned. There are times you just can’t dual path because of timing and cost, so sometimes I only take it so far, as far as I can. You hope that before the decisions are made to take the product to market, there is recognition that the direction the product is moving in is not the best before launching it in the market.

Do you have any regrets? If you could do a project again, what would you do differently?

That’s a good question. That’s a loaded question.

Yes, I do and no, I don’t. I know if I had been more politically corporate I might have been at a higher corporate position than where I’m at right now. But–if I had done that, I wouldn’t be the person I am now, and I don’t think I would’ve like that other person. I am designer, a good one. I saw my job as to produce the best product I could for the customer.

I like to think of myself as someone who was born with a drive for design and who has tried to develop it over time. To have been a “yes” person would have meant to suppress who I was, who I am.

So while we’re kind of on the topic, where is ethics in design?

[laughs] That’s a good question. Ethics in design, ethics in business–the really great design companies are the ones who allow their designers to get out there and design, to experiment, to make mistakes. They don’t micro-manage.

I don’t think a lot of design is ethical. Are you doing design for design’s sake or design for profit? And is there a way to do a design for profit and for design’s sake? Most people see it either as one or the other, not combined. I think there’s a place for both but it requires a delicate balance

What is design for design’s sake?

Pushing the envelope for new ideas. Literally, when you create something that is a creation of something, and not an emulation nor reproduction. A creation of something aesthetically pleasing, that is emotive, that can be intellectual; it makes you think, drives reaction from you, even if it’s a negative reaction. It’s a design that’s not white noise. That’s where a lot of design is these days: white noise. You don’t stop for white noise, it doesn’t draw you in. Great design goes beyond the white noise.

With that said, where do you see design going in the future? How do you see it evolving past this white noise?

White noise design is becoming popular because soundbites are becoming popular. People aren’t thinking the way they used to; they get a couple of little phrases, they latch on, and build an entire world around a little phrase. It doesn’t require them to think or react to things.

So where do I see design going? An awful lot depends on few people who are willing to take chances, and not just designers. If you get a few people who stand out or who open the door or kick the door down, who defy what’s traditionally acceptable and they pull it off–then there’s hope for design.

You’ve got to have people who get their design images out here into the mainstream media–even if the media hates it–to expose it. Exposure over a period of time gives it acceptability. As long as the people are re-bucking the existing trends, then I see hope for design.

What would your advice be for the next generation?

Take a piece of advice from Picasso! He was probably one of the finest draftsmen of his time; he was phenomenal, he could reproduce almost anything he saw. I say to the next design community: learn the art, learn the design and then distort it. Learn it, learn as much as you can. Don’t reject anything out of the hand. Then, after you have mastered your craft find the comfortable niche for you, where you can go deviate from the norm. Where you can create instead of just emulate.

As we plot our course to the future(s), there are several things we have to be mindful of, foremost being the fact that “many pleasing prospects are irreconcilable with likely human behavior”; that is, the future has to be ‘grounded’. “Nothing is more dangerous for psychological equilibrium than the launching of heady promises incapable of implementation” (de Jouvenel 247).  Thus, as we forecast we have to identify certain valuable fixed points so the change is reasonable; “in between the unachievable and the unchanging stands the ample zone of feasible futures” (de Jouvenel 248).

With that said, this does not mean that we should never venture into the conceptual waters and create really unexpected futures. Quite the opposite; this is where forecasting of ideas comes in. “It is through our ideas that we know reality” (de Jouvenel 252).  The forecasting of ideas is of greatest importance as “changes in society are the result of changes in ideas” (256).  We are witnessing the results of this statement in our daily lives, not at the very least the election of President Obama, the first African-American president in the history of United States, an event that would not be feasible in an American society two decades ago, let alone further back.

With that said, future should be discussed continuously, constantly feeding into the pool and regenerating itself with new ideas and possibilities, leading towards—if we think optimistically—progress. de Jouvenel talks about how technology is the key factor that will bring about democratization of societies, opening up knowledge to the masses and leveling the playing field. The progress in technologies however will come about, firstly, in our abilities to imagine a better future, followed by zealous delineation of routes that can take us there, with built in contingency plans and constant revising of the direction based upon the latest knowledge.  Essentially, creating future scenarios is a constant feedback loop that if utilized properly can improve and evolve with each successive iteration, leading us all towards a better tomorrow, however it may look and with whatever it may surprise us along the way.

Godspeed!

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The Art of Conjecture series of blog posts are reflective pieces based on Bertrand de Jouvenel’s book of the same name. de Jouvenel was a 20th Century French philosopher, political economist and futurist.

As much as the qualitative forecasting is natural to our senses, the structure and the premise of a “guarantee” of quantitative forecasting makes it predominant in decision-making circles of today’s business. “Quantitative forecasting has two functions: it can contribute to the solution of specified problems, and it can make us catch sight of new problems” (de Jouvenel 163). The numbers, for one reason or another, allow us to visualize otherwise seemingly abstract information, such as the growth rate of manufacturing production output. However, the data can be presented in several different ways, thus skewing the interpretation to the audience. For example, one could say that the annual rate of increase of population was five per thousand in 1800-1850 and six per thousand in 1850-1900 or alternatively, the information could be shared in terms of the time population needs to double, in which case the same data would state that the growth rate corresponds to a duplication period of 139 years in the first half of the 19^th century (162).

The quantitative forecasting is applied to both short-term and long-term decision-making; short-term informs professional decisions whereas long-term informs “the thought of the more conscious fraction of mankind” (de Jouvenel 162).   Originating in forecasting demographic and population change, quantitative forecasting is predominately used these days in predicting growth as there is an assumption that things will naturally and constantly increase, or grow, with passing time. However, with businesses rising, falling and eventually crumbling, we all know this not the case: growth cannot occur at a uniform rate without a sufficient reason in concrete reality (169). “We have no guarantee the growth rate will hold in the future except that it held in the past…and in such case, our credence must have a short horizon” (de Jouvenel 170).

In order to estimate the future while having only knowledge of the past de Jouvenel suggests utilizing one of three naïve postulates. The first postulate is the postulate of constancy that assumes the subject of interest will act consistently within the time span, and is commonly used in forecasts and plans with a three- to five-year span. The second postulate, the postulate of unchanging change, assumes that the value of the phenomenon will move in the same direction and at the same pace as during the past period. Finally, the third postulate, the postulate of periodic variations, assumes that the value will be subject to fluctuations following a pattern that has been observed in the past (184). Of course, establishing the future from the information of the past is not an ideal and hence why it is naïve; “even the finest model does not free us from the obligation of guessing” (de Jouvenel 195). Basically, the relevance or probability of a well-crafted future scenario mostly lies in the “wealth of means available to the mind” (204).

With that said, this wealth of means available plays quite a different role in terms of economic long-term forecasting, fifteen years or more into the future. “In a long-term economic forecast, the expert must ponder the technological, social, and political changes able to deform the relations he employs” (de Jouvenel 217).  At the time de Jouvenel wrote the book in 1967, he was suggesting that eventually social and economic forecasting will merge in order to provide better direction and decision-making information. We are seeing the fruits of that marriage today as proliferation of market and design research alongside business development continues to flourish in identifying future white space for business, product and service expansion.

Insofar as long-term global forecasting, de Jouvenel suggests that one way in managing the multiple present causes (that may or may not affect the future) is to start from a heavy general tendency “and to assume that future decisions will be adapted to this tendency” (de Jouvenel 227). There also needs to be a place for “spontaneous reactions” to the various future scenarios that lay ahead, as well opportunities for deliberate actions taken to avoid an obstacle or increase progress towards a goal (227).  He goes on to say that more generally,

“we may ask where the technological process is taking man in order to foresee his needs…we may also reverse the question and ask what needs, felt and gratified, will best contribute to man’s fulfilling himself; in what situations should he be places so that he shall feel these needs rather than others; and is it possible, and if so, how, to direct him toward the most fitting situations?” (de Jouvenel 230)

Basically, what de Jouvenel is suggesting is that while we are developing future scenarios we should also consider what tactics we could suggest to make the proposal actionable; to motivate, if we so desire, ourselves and others towards or away from the possible future. While we may never be able to predict or forecast the future precisely, nor completely execute our plans, by setting forth feasible actionable items alongside our forecasts we can at the very least move away from wishful thinking into tangible reality. “It embodies the human struggle for an achievable best” (de Jouvenel 215).

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The Art of Conjecture series of blog posts are reflective pieces based on Bertrand de Jouvenel’s book of the same name. de Jouvenel was a 20th Century French philosopher, political economist and futurist.

Montesqueieu-Rousseau law postulates three positions in regards to future predictions that can essentially be summed up as: conditional prediction with a suggestion of course of action, prediction with varying degrees of impact of possible interventions and finally, prediction with no interventions as they have already been incorporated into the scenario. Essentially, control, some control and no control over the potential future outcomes. “Our understanding naturally prefers a unique prediction to a multiple forecast” since “each representation of a possible future costs the mind an effort” (de Jouvenel 103).

As we think about our futures, be they personal, professional or community-wide we tend to lock ourselves down to only one and stake the claim. We then proceed to stipulate the course of action, invest our time in it and ignore any other potential possibilities. We oftentimes simply cannot, due to our “subjective certainty about the future”, contemplate several future outcomes at the same time. Even if we are to invest time in imagining alternative outcomes, we are hesitant as this only devaluates our hypothesis and “dispossess ourselves of a certainty” (103).

So is our desire to speculate and form forecasts for the future(s) futile? Not necessarily. While we may not have the capability to predict the exact future, we do have the capability to imagine potential possibilities, tactics and strategies, which in and of themselves fall in the category of impressive, and advanced levels of cognitive abilities. What complete predictions require is an understanding of a process, and “although our knowledge of social and political processes is inferior—in both actual and potential development—to our knowledge of natural processes, it is sufficient for us to make timely interventions that have some chances of success” (110).   This is all, of course relative, relative to our knowledge at the time, relative to our understanding of the past and present and relative to the sensitivity of multiple factors affecting a course.

Undoubtedly, “we want to forecast in order to act” (de Jouvenel 112). Once we are stuck in a mind-state that bears no actionable results or directions we feel stuck and discouraged. Anxieties arise and helplessness kicks in. Once this happens, we again go back to our future visions and either revise them and conform accordingly or create completely new courses of action to accommodate the new knowledge and input. We have the opportunity, hence, to either be dominated by the future on one end, or master it on another. This opportunity is dependant on our capabilities, and at times, state of mind or level of power (over ourselves or circumstances surrounding us). All of our power resides in our intelligence, which “puts [us] in a position to know [the] laws by observation” foreseeing their effects and making them work in combination “to produce the goals” set before us, “always provided [we] utilize these forces in accordance with their nature” (116).

Looking down the horizon, forecasting and decision-making thus help us “make decisions whose necessity we are already aware of, and can suggest that decisions we have not previously thought of will need to be faced” (de Jouvenel 128).  Albeit, this horizon is limited but it can help us prepare to either seek shelter or alter the course, ensuring the survival and reducing regret. Needless to say, we are not always correct in our predictions and we are often caught in the whirlwind of “If only” sighs of lament. This failure to predict a result indicates that our undesired outcome has stemmed from an unforeseen event that was not included in the “set of contemplated states”. Such occurrences are upsetting because “nature and mind are in harmony or in concert only as long as the former produces no event the latter has not acknowledge as a possibility” (de Jouvenel 139).  There are myriad reasons as to why we are not always cognizant of multiple possibilities, mostly boiling down to the fact that despite our seemingly advanced evolution on this planet, we are still merely human.

Hence, one of the things that de Jouvenel suggests in his writing is that forums should be formed in which forecasts would be presented and debated. “It is vital that a large number of competing propositions be offered” (de Jouvenel 153). In these forums, the forecasters would debate over general concerns of society, formulating the problems and via forecasts inspire decisions. The process would showcase how a considered idea turns into a source of questions, resulting in calls for choice and action (157).  The process is appropriately cyclical as it moves from one aspect to another where questions lead to potential futures and potential futures lead to questions, refining and redefining the futures once over and vice versa.

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The Art of Conjecture series of blog posts are reflective pieces based on Bertrand de Jouvenel’s book of the same name. de Jouvenel was a 20th Century French philosopher, political economist and futurist.

The predictions that we create are all based on our present knowledge and past experiences. “The mind spontaneously uses certain tricks for transforming present knowledge into “pseudo-knowledge” of the future” (de Jouvenel 60). We are oftentimes swayed by convictions that certain things will continue on to be as they were because they always were as such, and will remain as such in the future. “The sharper the awareness of a past movement, the stronger our conviction of its future continuation” (de Jouvenel 61).  We should be forewarned, however, as ignoring or dismissing potential changes even within the realm of a “guaranteed” constant decreases our ability to anticipate a possible adverse event(s).

We have a tendency to think that similar situations will yield similar outcomes. Anticipating through analogy implies that there is such a close correlation between events that they can reference one another near directly.  Comparing determining factors of two separate, yet seemingly similar events, and deducing a similar outcome in both cases overlooks the complexity of real situations. Even the smallest difference can have tremendous impact on the outcome down the road, henceforth every possible and potential alteration has a capability in resulting in a different future scenario, yielding nearly unlimited number of variations.

In his writing, de Jouvenel points attention to the intervention of a personal qualitative judgment in causal relations, where we tend to project our values and opinions onto present events to project the future, as well as to rationalize the past. The more “impressions of similarity” a thing has, the more confident we are of our judgment of the sequence following it; however this may not always be the case. Again, this confidence or bias can skew the predictions about the future disregarding certain facts of the present, as well as over-simplifying the past into digestible morsels that neatly fit into one’s entire past-present-future linear progression of events. This is a result of the complexity of situations and our inability to distinguish which traits will be the ones of significant impact.

“It is unquestionably true that we are able to make safe predictions, and everything we call ‘progress’ rests on successive extensions of the field they embrace” (de Jouvenel 83). Thus, the use of predictions should not be completely frowned upon since the lack of significant “real” knowledge, we truly do not have any other tools at our disposal to foresee what may happen down the road. “In each definite group of human beings, the number of ways in which people will behave in a particular set of circumstances is not infinite: some ways of behaving are rare; others are more common; and one way of behaving is more frequent than any other” (de Jouvenel 91). However, it is up to us to reflect on that fact with sensitivity when looking towards the future with an understanding that an average of human behaviors is a summary rather than a tangible reality. Generalizations about human behavior, actions and outcomes are to be considered carefully but ultimately not to be used as a concrete guides nor templates; not unlike the fact that because we all have fingerprints does not imply that they are all the same.

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The Art of Conjecture series of blog posts are reflective pieces based on Bertrand de Jouvenel’s book of the same name. de Jouvenel was a 20th Century French philosopher, political economist and futurist.

As human beings, we spend a significant amount of our waking time daydreaming and fantasizing, mostly about the potentials that the future may hold. These daydreams and fantasies may be positive or negative in nature; that is, we could be hypothesizing about future outcomes resulting in a spectacular disaster or story-book happy ending. Those futures or scenarios that we classify as potentially becoming real, we tend to either guard against by preparing ourselves for the impending blow or in case of a desired future, we act towards realizing it by planning and executing strategies towards the goal. “Our actions properly so called seek to validate appealing images and invalidate the repugnant ones” (de Jouvenel 27).

In majority of the cases, we seek the path of least resistance: the path that will get us to the desired future (or away from the undesired) fastest with least amount of obstacles, hurling towards our proverbial beacon. We tend to be preoccupied with which choice to take, if the decision will be correct in getting to or avoiding a certain path. The uncertainties of the futures that will spring forth from the decisions we commit to provide us with a lifetime of anxieties.  One may even dare to ask, with so many uncertainties, how we ever even make a decision and stick to it in the first place? “…any man knows that life is filled with accidents, but it is impossible for him to imagine in a specific manner all the different accidents that could occur, and if he attempted to do it, he would go mad” (de Jouvenel 36).

However, we need the future—“into this domain [we] project the image toward which [our] will directs [our] action…” (de Jouvenel 40). In order to effectively “plan” or direct our present actions to will the desirable future, we form subjective structural certainties, even as simple as “the fact” that the sun will rise again the next morning. Situating our goals within this structural “reliable” framework of subjective certainties allows us to take our bearings and focus our attention on realizing the goal. This is the same reason why it is very important to us to have somebody’s “word”, their consistency in behavior—or certainty—as their reliable behavior allows us to reduce one future uncertainty and thus have a hold on one aspect of the future, even if in such a minute way. In a way, these certainties allow us to project and imagine potential novelties that may lay ahead (If all things being consistent, then…).

Our ability to imagine, daydream or fantasize is often misperceived as ability to foretell or predict the future. The belief that we can do as such raises all sorts of paradoxes; for example, “if we fore-know the future, we can change it, and it is no longer known…and if we cannot change the future, prior knowledge ceases to be good” (de Jouvenel 51).  The best we can do is forecast, but forecasting is not foretelling the future—we can note the potential of an impending tornado looming, but we have no way of guaranteeing the exact time and spot where it will touch down. Nevertheless, this inability to “see” what is ahead, does not prevent us in indulging in predicting potential futures. “…Our motive in formulating [the forecasts] is to provoke action apt to change it” (de Jouvenel 51).

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The Art of Conjecture series of blog posts are reflective pieces based on Bertrand de Jouvenel’s book of the same name. de Jouvenel was a 20th Century French philosopher, political economist and futurist.

My video response to an assignment for Experience Studio regarding identity. Thank you, Fellini, Godard, Cave and Ellis.

So what is design and who is a designer? These days, it seems, everything and everyone.

It feels that in the last decade, if not more, design has really been trying to elevate itself as a legitimate player in the American culture, business or otherwise. Picking up their plastic buckets, designers have in droves started leaving their sandboxes in order to proselytize the importance and significance of their field, aside from the mere aesthetics and styling. However, have they (we) been successful? Personally, the propagation of such things as “design thinking”, the prevalence of crude prototyping and the near endless variations of “structured” brainstorming and uninspiring research gets my blood boiling, and not in a good way. This process driven approach to design, not without its merits, attempts to demystify and rationalize an otherwise intuitive and irrational approach and suggests that anyone can be a designer, if one only applies this or that “toolkit”.

So what have designers been doing and what can they do? How are other creative minds approaching problem solutions, explorations into the unknown? What obstacles do they uncover along the way? How do they tread the fine balance between personal expression and client needs or audience? How do they generate revenue from experimenting? How do they know that they’re on the right path (or do they)? At what point do they compromise? Or do they? What was their biggest professional regret? Where do they see design and its role in the future? I am hoping to get answers to these, and many other questions, by interviewing the brilliant minds I have had the opportunity to cross paths with. Whether there ends up being a pattern or a succinct answer to what design is, is irrelevant. The goal is to legitimize the creative mind; to inspire and uncover what is it exactly about the creative process that is so innately human and natural, even if it is through reading between the lines.

Stay tuned. This will be an interesting quest.

The air is still singed with whatever burned last night, and this aroma of revolution slowly seeps in through the cracked and yellowing window of my tiny studio apartment. I hear the water dripping rhythmically from the nearby kitchen faucet; at least I get some water today. I hear someone pontificating in slurred Mandarin Chinese outside and I grab my earpiece to translate this latest public debauchery. I fidget with the earpiece because it’s so tiny and my hands aren’t as dexterous as they were only a decade ago. Fucking arthritis. I plug in the tiny titanium orb into my ear and hear instant translation of the drunken prophet under my window, he slurs: “I told you…I told you we would crumble under the fifty stars sooner or later.” He makes a dramatic pause, as I peek outside the window and see his disheveled frame and ragged blue worker’s uniform, filled with shrapnel like holes and tears. He continues in Mandarin, pointing at his sweat soiled blue cap, “Look, maaaaaaan, it’s made right here…Look…” he burps, “It says Chiiiiinnnaaa. I’m French Canadian, though.”

I would rather remain in my bed. The daily reality is becoming drudgery and has definitely taken a toll on my usually optimistic mindset. Things will work out, how naïve. I set out to the bathroom and type in my access code to activate the shower. Since the Great Pollution of 2023, water has been rationed, and rationed in a most bureaucratic and non-egalitarian way. When the Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline cracked, spewing its contents in the remoteness of the Irkutsk Oblast, only a few days after the Tibetan Revolutionary Guard nuked the Three Gorges dam, I thought for sure, we had only few more weeks to live. Yet, here we are, almost twenty years past in between cease fires and full-blown revolutions.

Since then the water here in China has only been made available to expats such as myself, and those who pass certain skill levels deemed “productive for the society”, even then in limited quantity. The rest are left to fend for their lives like animals, often drinking the severely polluted rainwater and whatever is left of the near dried up local streams. The rainwater is so polluted with petrochemicals that if not expertly treated and consumed “raw”, it causes human skin to break out in large, green puss-filled circular lesions that grow until they burst. The burst is followed by the foulest sulfuric smell that attracts flies, which have thanks to this cocktail, over the last two decades grown double in size and less susceptible to “population control”. Needless to say, it is easy to spot the Rainmen as they waddle through the streets with their dedicated swarm of flies. These men and women are parched, delusional, and in a constant state of near-hallucination and insanity; most don’t live past their twenties. The rest of us pretend they don’t exist. It’s easier that way.

My shower whirrs and kicks in. The timer says I have been allotted eight minutes and forty three seconds of water for showering today. More than usual. I still have a good supply of soap and other hygienic supplies my brother sent me from Costa Rica last summer. They come super-concentrated, so one capsule mixed with a gallon of water lasts me for at least three months. Such an archaic way to live, considering he, in Costa Rica, is enjoying all sorts of fruits of technological wonder. Not only does he have water on regular basis, but nearly everything in his home is automated and customized for his specific needs. The walls in his home move when they sense he is coming, accommodating for his wheel chair. Actually, it is an insult to call it a wheel chair. It is more of a floating circular pad, made out of carbon fiber with polished aluminum inlays. He had it modified so it does not have a seat, instead he stands on it and “surfs the air”. If it is not apparent already, he is not disabled. He just likes how efficiently he can get across his estate with it, now that the cars have been forbidden south of the Equator…but I digress.

So back here in Shanghai, I have finished my eight minute and forty-three second shower and am looking through my uniforms as if I have to decide what to wear today. Ever since the severely organized daily rioting and upheavals began five years ago, fueled by water reductions and ethnic strife between the fifty-plus different groups of Mainland China, the populace has been regimented into uniforms. Red uniforms went to the Han, painfully obviously. The blue was slated for the minority or foreign working class, yellow for what used to be “white collar” professionals, green for authority and government figures, black for expats such as myself. Those that did not fit into any of these categories: the peasants, vagabonds and ultra-minorities wore what they had, which these days wasn’t much but save for a few pieces of fabric strung together covering their privates. Most of the peasants vaporized along with the Three Gorges dam so there weren’t too many left to justify the expense of creating uniforms for them. The authorities claim the uniforms are for our protection, and by our, I mean the expats’. However, it is really just so the authorities can easily identify who to protect, from those who are “disposable”.

Luckily, the expats’ black uniforms did not veer too far away from my signature achromatic look. Hah! Only a designer would be concerned with their signature look even in midst of chaos. My black uniform is rare sight on the streets of Shanghai these days, so I tend to get plenty of stares on my way to work. Rain People often come tottering to me with their premature and malnourished raisin-skinned infants in their hands, asking me to help the child and take it away from the miserable life that awaits it, should it survive its first year. At some other stage in my life I would have buckled and probably raised at least fifteen of these children in my home, but at fifty-eight and with my arthritis, I am just too old and too tired. Who am I kidding? I should be honest; I have grown colder with time as well. It’s not about saving the world anymore; it’s about surviving in it.

I zip my uniform up and check that the seams are still solid. The polyester blend does a number on my skin, but it keeps me warm in these unusually cold August days in Shanghai. I remember the summers being very sticky and humid the first time my boyfriend and I moved here back in 2016. A lot has changed dramatically since then, the climate being the least surprising. I brush my hand against my inner wrist, over the scar left over after I was pretty much branded like cattle post the Great Pollution. It is in the shape of the Chinese character for oil, and everyone that was close to the breach of the pipeline burst, like I was—way to pick a vacation spot—is marked with this very same symbol. Even though most of us returned without any health problems and were declared fully healthy by an international medical committee, the Chinese government insisted on marking and tracking us. Aside from this unwanted and imposed scar, I am forced to undergo highly intrusive medical testing, or as they call it “annual physical”, every January. However, the most painful ordeal aside this laser induced poking and prodding, is the fact that I have been forcefully separated from my partner and our children for seventeen years now.

The first few years, I tried every trick in the book in attempts to escape from the boundaries of China through any and every possible channel. The border patrols soon caught onto this trend and finally implanted all of the “tagged ones” with microchips at the base of our skull. Not only does it track my every move, but any proximity of five feet or less of any border or exit point from China sends a disabling jolt down my spine, essentially rendering me disabled. Should I somehow magically overcome this juggernaut assault on my spine, and actually cross or crawl across the border, the chip would activate itself and release just enough of a dose of poison to kill me, but slowly and painfully. Memorably. Why they deemed my family as unsafe to be around me, while allowing me to freely roam the streets and presumably “infect” others, I will never understand. It is yet another one of the mysteries of this cursed regime that fell victim to its own zealousness and uncontrolled greed as they rapidly hurled toward dominating over America. It is this very strategy that caused them to ignore their own problems in the process, essentially green lighting such events as the annihilation of the Three Gorges Dam, as well as the continuous violent uprisings and multiple Civil Wars amongst the diverse, frustrated, hungry and thirsty populace.

At any rate, I run my hair through the built in dryer fan in my wall. I remember it was fantastic when we first had it installed, but now it is definitely in need of desperate service as it cumbersomely propels the heat through the air, barely ionizing and eliminating the frizz that the typical humid air of Shanghai would impose upon my locks. I am running late, as I’m informed by my iButler. Sometimes I wish I could just turn him and his pretentious voice off, yet at times it is the only constant in my life and the one comforting voice for the past seventeen years. It is also the only thing in China that still gets modern day software updates via satellite and is on par with the rest of the world. It’s not surprising, Apple was on top of things and a step ahead even in my youth.

I swing by the kitchen and have my breakfast cocktail which for the longest time has consisted of digitally steamed rice and a handful of little round multi-colored pills that are supposed to be equivalent of carrots, tomatoes, eggs, non-animal protein, spinach, milk and whatever else was considered a luxury or non-existent in Shanghai. I recall my father telling me that one day we will live off of pills and laughing at the absurdity of his suggestion, not aware of how prophetic his words would become once I turned his age.

I gather my air purifier pack, slip the ID lenses onto my eyes and head out to work. The door senses I am coming and unlocks and slides itself open, followed by an automated warning in a soothing woman’s voice with a “proper” British accent: You are exiting into a non-purified air zone. Please lock in your air purifier mask. Facebook Corporation is not responsible for potential health damages that may occur should you venture out without securing your air purifier mask. Have a nice day. The door slides shut after me and instantly locks. I look back at its aluminum fortress-like imposing presence and have a hard time remembering what it was like to walk out of wooden doors with a door handle.

As I exit the building I hear an anti-tank grenade go off in the distance. There were times when I used to duck for cover upon hearing that sound, but having gone through four wars in my lifetime, I have grown immune to it. In fact, I don’t know what a day would be like without hearing something exploding in the distance, something crumbling, someone crying out for help. Again, I start to remember San Francisco at the turn of the century and how the loudest thing outside my window was an occasional drunk college student singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” at two in the morning: Bismillah, Bismillah! No, we will not let you go. Let him go. Bismillah!

I walk through the Bund the same way each day to work, by the same rubbles, chunks of concrete and exposed structural elements. Some have been in such a state of decay for decades that trees have started to grow in the midst of the rubble. Nature always takes over, doesn’t it? I see a gang of teenagers run across the street in front of me, hands filled with whatever latest thing was to loot today. It appears that there was UNEE (United Nations of Eastern Europe) truck nearby, as they ran with hands filled with familiar brown vacuum-sealed packages of food with little flags of Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia silkscreened on the side. Eastern Europe has been a major contributor of humanitarian aid in China over the past few decades, mainly out of interest in propagating their neo-socialist system and cementing a consumer base for their products by establishing trust in the times of need. They were there for me in my time of need, they will say.

I get to the building in which I work—or I should say, in the building for the company I was forced to work for once the American troops took over the Shanghai city proper. I was one of the only expats in the city that knew how to develop proper and effective communication material for the masses, and the troops needed some propaganda to appease the locals. Some things never change.

As I walk up to the gates, the guard scans the barcode on my thumb and opens the doors. Inside, I take off my air purifier mask and step on a scale for the retinal scan. A large glossy black rectangle efficiently and smoothly slides from the top and stops level with my face. It slowly rotates counterclockwise as it is reading the ID lenses in my eyes, registers the time of my arrival and then promptly dispenses the new lenses that are to be used tomorrow, in exchange for the ones that I am wearing. I spend a few minutes there, trying to get the lenses out of my eyes with my arthritic hands. A small line of impatient twenty-something-year olds in yellow uniforms form behind me, huffing about how long it’s taking me to complete this seemingly simple exchange. I do not envy the future they are inheriting.

Once past the security, I step into a small metal cocoon that accommodates four of us and whisks us away deep underground to our offices. Burrowing offices into the ground has proven to be the safest place to work, away from rioters, fly swarms and rebel armies who are equipped with nuclear weapons that were left easily accessible after the fall of Iran to Russia. It takes about five minutes with this super-pod to reach the level of my office. I greet Linda, our robot-secretary, as if she were human because she could definitely pass for one, and a good-looking one at that. The walls of the office project the latest live feeds from around the globe—I see life is looking good in Los Angeles, as always, despite all of the post-apocalyptic scenarios that were thrown its way in the early 2000s. I sigh and yearn for its sunshine, regardless of how skin-cancer-forming it is these days, and I wonder what my kids and my partner are doing.

I reluctantly work for the Facebook Corporation, which has grown far away from its early days as a social networking site. All of the information they gathered about nearly everyone on the planet has allowed them to be major influencer and lobbyist especially considering they had all sorts of unclassified information and photographs from sons and daughters of highly influential people—stored and archived, forever. This highly unethical blackmailing technique has allowed them to rise above the ranks of nearly every corporation and totalitarian government in such a way that they have subsequently won every single multi-billion nation building contract that followed every natural or man-made disaster, war, famine, you name it from 2020 on.

Technically, since the propaganda days of the occupation are over (and since nobody was really buying into the tired fifty year old message of democracy-spreading myth), I was assigned to work on developing a market for multi-national goods owned by the Facebook Corporation in Shanghai. However, considering the dire situation and my own lack of interest I spend most of my time instead on the hacked open channels, catching up with the free world, keeping in touch with my family, and looking for loopholes in the system that will allow me to finally leave this cursed place. The system is projected onto my desk and I control it by attaching a special silver ring on my index finger. It serves as a pointer, and identifies with exact precision the areas I’m selecting for further exploration. Once the office is clear, I “lift” the projection off the table onto the open space in front of me, navigating the complexity of what used to be Internet, and now is a hive of everything and anything ever known by man.

My office looks like something that was made a hundred years ago. Nostalgia runs rampant these days. Even though the world is in this hyper future. in its relative present–here several thousand feet underground–the offices of Facebook Corporation look like the pre-typewriter days, let alone pre-computer. The irony is not lost on anyone. I sit in a vintage black leather chair, surrounded by mid-Century modern furniture and I even have a look-alike landline phone! All of this, while my co-workers walk around with screens projected in front of their faces, translation devices plugged into their ears and true-to-life holographic three-dimensional conference calls. These holographic conference calls project our overseas partners so realistically that we often forget that the person sitting next to us is really sitting several thousand miles away and what we see is just a digital projection of them. I once subconsciously tapped a co-worker from Bogota on the shoulder during a conference call as a gesture of saying hello, only to watch my hand go “through” him and realize that he is really not there, but just projected.

After work, most of the coworkers sneak out into the underground bars that serve all sorts of illegal, forbidden or rare spirits and drugs to help cope with the painful daily routine of chaos upon chaos—however, I am too old for that kind of excitement. So once the lights start dimming in the office to stimulate fading sunlight here several thousand feet under, I gather my things and go back home following my regular walking route.

On the way home, I often contemplate how this is not the life I neither imagined nor envisioned having. My retirement was supposed to be spent enjoying the white sand beaches of Fiji and my biggest concern was supposed to be whether to end the dinner with papaya or passion fruit. Alas, things took a different turn, and as I retire to sleep in my decrepit studio in the middle of Shanghai’s Bund, with urban warfare as my lullaby and street sweepers and disillusioned drunken adults as my alarm clock, I wonder if things would have turned out different had I not taken that job offer so eagerly in Shanghai in 2016. I call out to the iButler to turn off the lights and pull the blanket over me. I close my eyes, recall my childhood in Bosnia, my coming of age in the States and this conclusion in Shanghai and decide it’s time to start writing a book before I forget it all.

I’ll start it with my iAssistant first thing in the morning, before the first Swooshah-Swooshah.
[This piece was written for Strategic Foresight course I am taking as a part of my Master's program. The task was to imagine and write about your day and community in 2040.]