What drives design choices?

In design disciplines we seek to communicate, elevate the content, form, function, to move the individual somehow. Whether the individual is encountering a building or piece of graphic design or some intersection of both, the designer seeks to guide the individual’s experience – create a narrative filled with surprises for the individual to discover. Michael Rock, founding partner and creative director of multi-disciplinary design studio 2×4 Inc, spoke at a recent AIGA event (All that is Solid Melts into Air) held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, about emerging forms of image production that live in, on, and around architectural space.

Through Rock’s work, he examines design and expressive styles often viewed as separate from architecture now enter that design space as well – branding, advertising, promotion, public relations, publishing, display, film, interactive media and social networking. In this context, alternative forms of architectural practice have a greater influence over the public’s experience of buildings, landscape, and cities.

Rock’s presentation explored how we (as individuals) experience place and how can a graphic designer shape an individual’s experience through integrating big, visual, conceptual design ideas into the architecture of a place. For instance, look at the work 2×4 does at the Prada store in New York. Rather than choosing a permanent design element for one of the store’s 200 ft walls, one is left for Rock’s studio to curate every few months each year. This allows the designers to re-imagine and challenge the user experience through a multitude of explorations. Sometimes these explorations work as flat wallpaper or three dimensional riffs on other cultural ideas or incorporate video screens.

Rock provided several examples of the work 2×4 does as his discussion explored all the different ways his studio incorporates design elements to evoke specific reactions to the places they create. From the identity of the Doha Film Institute to the interactive brand extension of SO-IL’s “Pole Dance,” a summer-long outdoor social and spatial project for the MoMA, Rock’s examples strove for audience engagement.

What struck me most about Rock’s examples was the evolving relationship between the individual (or the audience) to the video screen. Many projects explored on some level how the screen permeates the spaces we occupy. Can it enhance the experience? Hinder it? Does the proliferation of the screen mean we allow the world to be brought to us more? How does the screen allow the digital world to engage with the “real” world?

Rock concluded with a project his group collaborated on with Kanye West, a short video debuted at the Cannes Film Festival filmed with seven different cameras simultaneously to be shown on seven different screens surrounding the audience. West’s concept for a seven screen film experience drove many of the design choices, including the concept for the space in which the film was viewed. Rock shared the final product with the audience, although in a diminished form (the media for all seven screens projected on one large screen meant the audience viewed seven flat “screens” directly in front of us rather than the all encompassing, absorbing experience of the original), and I remembered how often our experiences are shaped by design choices. For instance, the theatre at the ICA features floor to ceiling views of Boston Harbor. At night the Harbor twinkles just outside the theatre with the occasional passing boat. My attention was never solely focused on the film and how could it be with such a majestic view at hand? In West’s project, one design element drove the others, but how can we apply this other projects and design ideas? Rock did not provide a theory regarding this idea, but certainly inspired the wheels to turn.