I’ve been hearing a lot about ‘experiential’ design in the past few years. The idea that it is important for designers to create a holistic experience for those who visit a museum or experience a product in a ‘new and exciting’ way. In thinking about what this means it’s made me realize something rather, obvious. In order for we designers to create an experience, we need to have experiences, outside design.

Looking at photographs of a mountain can in no way, match the experience of climbing one. By taking ourselves outside the confines of the studio, and pushing ourselves to do things, and to experience things outside of our personal taste, I think will make our work much more successful.

With all that said, here are some photos of some experience I’ve been having lately, and I’d encourage everyone to do the same.

My exploration in depth and space is complete. Very satisfying experience and I learned a lot about different ways to interact with the picture plane.

Today I finished a long and grueling project. In my graphic design history class we were all assigned a landmark event in the history of visual arts as it relates to graphic design. We were then charged with designing a poster that educates the viewer about event along with a 500-750 word essay describing its importance. 500 words is a lot of information to put on a poster, especially one that had to be 8.5″ x 22″. Photography is obviously a huge topic, and it wasn’t invented by a single person or even in a single century. Developing a visual language to tell the story of the invention of photography as well as carefully selecting text and images that were concise representations of this invention was a great challenge in editing and concision. There was a lot of wrangling with the structure that I went through and found myself constantly stripping things away. Overall it was a very challenging and rewarding experience, and I’m very pleased with the results I’ve achieved in attempting to create a careful balance between bold and eye catching, but also thorough and informative.

It goes without saying that my skills in observation have increased as a result of being in school. Lately I’ve been seeing little faces here and there, but I think this is the best example of me looking harder at things without necessarily trying to. Thanks RISD.

I lost my camera the other week. An old Nikomat FTN from the 60s that my mom gave me. It was the camera I learned to shoot on and I was really upset about it. I put up posters all over campus and low and behold it was returned to me. I need to shoot more, but I’m happy with where i’ve been taking my photography lately as a result of living in a new environment.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with photography as a means to generate graphics. Instead of looking to capture a subject or an event, I’ve been searching for puzzle pieces, little bits of possible future images. This process has been extremely satisfying and has allowed me to look at photography and the world around me in a new way.

The other day I developed two rolls of negatives. It was incredibly surreal to realize it had been 10 years since I’d been in a dark room. I’m pretty happy with the results, we weren’t charged with doing anything specific on this assignment, just to properly expose two rolls and to develop them.