The Collaborative, Multi-Hyphenate, Political Creative Future

Until recently, I hadn’t given much thought to the future of art and design. Sure, in my career as a graphic designer I looked forward to the next Photoshop release, the launch of “the cloud,” the end of Quark Xpress, and other tech advances that made my job easier. I was too busy burning myself out (and loving it, I admit) to dream about the bigger picture. I was only looking as far ahead as the next client presentation.

That changed when I came to Otis College and started working with the students in Design Lab. Part of my role is to prepare students for their professional future, so naturally I’m spending more time thinking about it. I’m reading about it, I’m envisioning it, I’m anticipating it. And I’m even catching glimpses of it. The way the students approach their work, the things they’re thinking about, talking about, and wrestling with—these are all clues to what the future of art and design will look like. (And for a truly unique view of the future, be sure to read Design Lab student Treyvon X’s poem in this same feature, linked in the tab above.)

I don’t think I ever did a group project in design school—I saw designers as solo artists, superstars, and above all as specialists. But if Design Lab is any indication, that’s not where we’re headed. This is a group of students who are proactively collaborative, who refuse to specialize, and purposely place themselves outside their comfort zones. Instead of niche designers, they idolize multihyphenate creatives with no boundaries. And this openness seeps into our work in Design Lab as well—it shows up as a lack of fear, a willingness to tackle the untried (furniture design, no problem!), and an open invitation to build on the ideas of others. When I think about how fast the world is changing, I realize how critical these skills are becoming. Where will all the divas go? I don’t think we’ll have room for them.

The format of the work isn’t the only thing that’s changing. It’s the very foundation of our practice—how we think about the work of design. I see these young designers wrestling with the idea that design is not neutral but inherently political. They’re discovering that they bear responsibility for their creations, and that their intersectional identities are not irrelevant (as we were once taught) but are in fact the cornerstones of their creative process. As they uncover their biases, they’re using that information to create more equitable solutions. They are realizing that everything is connected, and only becoming more so, and that design has the potential to bring about change on a societal level.

I had a conversation recently with one of my designers; I was reviewing his work on a project, and I noted that his imagery predominantly featured white people. I encouraged him to spend more time looking for stock images. He appreciated the comment, and mentioned to me later that it had been incredibly difficult to find high-quality, free stock photos of people of color, although he eventually did. He spent hours and hours on that part of the project. We ended up in a lengthy Slack conversation about diverse representation in stock imagery, the complex ethics of free stock photography, and how using it might ultimately harm both photographers and communities of color. Spoiler alert—this conversation didn’t result in massive societal change. But the fact that we’re having conversations like this, thinking critically about things we took for granted until very recently, gives me hope.

The future of art and design seems to be continually expanding, much like our universe. When I imagine what these Design Lab students will be doing in 25 years, I can only tell you that they’ll be doing everything. All the things. And they’ll be doing it in partnership with one another, for the greater good.