Raising eyebrows at Pivot

It was a blast to be asked to talk about Transdisciplinary design at the AIGA Pivot conference in Phoenix back in October. Forcing us to think about some of our fundamental ways of working and making them explicit, as well as connecting this to some of the academic thinking in this area (causing prolific nosebleeds) we got to some navigable form of what seems to be a diverse and emergent way of thinking. That means there are a myriad of interpretations, and a whole host of finely different ways of thinking about it. So, easy then. So the talk went well, big audience, lots of good questions, really worth doing.

What was really surprising was the tension between what looked like the more traditional graphic people of AIGA and those who were exploring new social, service and sustainability forms of design. I have always loved AIGA for its ability to be a broad church, far broader than you would expect from such an organization. Back in the day, they sponsored the fantastic Experience Design talks we had that NIco Macdonald curated at the Design Council. Through that one event (pre-Interesting, pre-Unconferences, pre-Playful etc) a huge amount of designers rubbed shoulders in London. At the time it was the best event in town. AIGA have always managed to host a diversity of design stances, and I hope they always will.

This is what Pivot looked like. Our little Pivot slideshow

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