Bevel: Canadian Interiors Conversations Peter Sobchak

“The world is terrible. The world is fantastic. Both statements are true.”

This is a line that opens one of the chapters of Stefan Sagmeister’s new book, and its pragmatic, no-nonsense tone is a perfect indicator of what readers will be presented with: a fact-driven exploration of human progress throughout the ages.

Yet the book’s title, Now Is Better, reveals where Stefan’s heart lies and what his true intentions are: to in his words “foster radical positivity” and nudge audiences towards choosing “gratitude and positivity over pessimism and despair.”

I am in the same camp as Stafan, believing that despite the unrelentingly negative content being force-fed to us in our daily news cycles, things are actually much better now than they used to be, and we would all do much better if we were able to keep that somewhere in our active minds. That theme, coupled with the tools Stefan uses to explore and preach it – communication design, his stock-in-trade – is what compelled me to chat with him for this episode of Bevel.

His pieces blend classic art with quantitative data analysis by rendering complex data sets into geometric symbols and then literally inserting them into nineteenth-century oil paintings. Because Bevel is an audio podcast, we don’t talk about individual pieces directly, but instead I use Stefan’s overall mission as the starting point to explore topics such as communicating “truth” in a post-truth age; how a communication designer measures the effectiveness of a message; why design is compared more to art than science; and even touch on the question of ownership as it relates to the visual arts.

Stefan Sagmeister formed his New York-based firm in 1993 and his work is in museum collections around the world. He’s also designed for a diverse roster of clients including album covers and packaging for bands such as the Rolling Stones, the Talking Heads and Jay-Z, so I even indulge a bit and ask him about the state of album design.

Chatter is exploding about advancements in AI. Every industry is sitting up and taking notice, including, of course, the A&D industry. These creatives are intrigued not only by how AI can help design teams by not only reducing overall project lead times, but also expanding creative discovery by memorizing insights from thousands, if not millions, of previous project data.



Software such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are seen as tools to speed up sketching and other ideation processes, producing a plethora of renderings for comparison and further development.



Advocates praise how AI-enhanced technologies will simplify many routine office and design tasks, replacing current software products and freeing designers to concentrate on other aspects of their business. Yet there are critics urging caution, as debates are emerging around what, if any, regulatory interventions governments should take to protect from potential
fraudulence and exploitation.



In this episode of Bevel we hear from Andrew Lane, co-founder of digby; George Foussias, Creative Director of mood.designlab; and Mark Cichy, Director of Design Technology at HOK, who gathered for the latest INSight session hosted by Canadian Interiors and Black Bread + Jam to explore issues that range from hopeful to concerning, and delve into compelling, real-world examples of how creative industries are already leveraging these emerging technologies and what they mean for the future.

It is a well-known fact that the media loves trends reports. After all, they give us so much to report on: experts providing clairvoyant insights into what they think will happen in the near future; pointing out observable changes in people’s behaviour; identifying key drivers, challenges, threats and opportunities that are influencing industries; and so on. All professions and industries employ trends reports, and the interior design industry is no exception. For example, just recently the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) released its 2023 Trends Outlook report, examining societal shifts and economic trends impacting the design profession and the role of design in addressing issues in our world.



There is a lot of good content in that report, but I decided to take its release as an opportunity to “peek behind the curtain” as it were and speak to its author to get an understanding of how such a document is created. That author is Dr. Michael J. Berens, a writer, editor and researcher with 30 years’ experience in
research and knowledge management, over 14 of which as the director of research and knowledge resources for ASID.



In this episode of Bevel, I enlist Dr. Berens to help unpack the nuts n’ bolts of conducting a survey and the approaches to different types, for example industry metrics surveys versus trends surveys. We discuss how a trends analyst handles paradigm shifts like COVID-19, which literally came out of nowhere, and how often does “fallout” become “trends.”



I also tap into some bigger philosophical questions: for example, where do value-based assessments like “what should happen” fit into reporting “what is happening”? Lastly, we all know that trends report are tools or preparation, but I ask: can they also be tools for challenging one’s own perspective? Preparing for the future is one thing, but how do “trends” help those who want to create the future?

Robotic automation has changed virtually every industry. Their ubiquity has moved from the assembly line to the house, from multi-axis manipulator arms to cute little vacuums and many other examples in between.

I say “virtually” every industry because there is a major one that still lags far behind in embracing the precision, reliability and endless potential of robotics and automation: the making of buildings. Given how this is an industry notorious for inefficiency and waste – problems put into stark relief thanks to the pandemic – one must wonder why are we not seeing robots on the jobsite or in the design office? One reason is access to training.

In this episode of Bevel, I enlist David Correa, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and a partner at experimental design collaboration llLab, to help explore how limited access to robotics education is slowing down an industry already sluggish to adopt the exceptional potential this technology has for the built environment.

We examine why there is no school in Canada (and very few worldwide) that has a dedicated program to explore how robotics integration could transform the building industry; how very few have courses or studios that actually engage research in architecture or construction using robotics; and discuss in what ways this deficiency is harming the A&D profession.

When you hear words like “blockchain” do you immediately conjure up images of Minecraft, that video game your 14-year-old son plays all day? Or when you encounter the phrase “metaverse” do you instantly hear Keanu Reeves utter his famous “Woah!” line from The Matrix? Don’t feel bad, you’re not alone. To many, they feel like buzzwords that gamers and tech savants love to throw around on their discussion boards. But in fact, they are foundational pieces of a larger tech shift that we are in the midst of and may not even know it.

The new frontier, being called web3, is ditching a previous internet dominated by companies that provide services in exchange for personal data, and instead wants to “decentralize” ownership to build interaction, community, and return power to the creator. Why should you care? Because there’s a lot of money at play. J.P. Morgan predicts the metaverse will be a $1 trillion market. Undoubtedly much of that will be purely for entertainment. But there will be another part emerging around productivity and expanding the physical realm, which is where design firms come in.

In an effort to make some sense of all this, for this episode of Bevel I joined forces with my friend and fellow podcaster Arnaud Marthouret, creator of the Single Servesseries, and sat down with Tessa Bain and Andrew Lane, co-founders of the Toronto-based firm Digby, to unpack the meaning and interconnectedness of things like NFTs, augmented reality, the metaverse and understand why web3 represents more opportunities than just being an avatar running around in a cartoon universe.

Ask a designer what the role of a designer is, and you will get as diverse a spectrum of answers as you will designers. Is it one of creative expression or rigorously conducted research? Is it engineering over artistry, or vice versa? Can it be everything, all at once? Many designers will chafe even at that, saying not taking a position is part of the problem of our times.

Designers taking a position, at times referred to as authorship, has always been fertile ground for debate between critics, theorists, educators, and practitioners. There are designers who shy away from authorship because they think of themselves of problem-solvers, not a brand. Then there are those who believe designers are not merely mediators, not just part of an agency that suggest various options to the client, but in fact need a strong voice and make decisions – an attitude that could be seen as in opposition to the prevailing sentiment that design is all about collaboration.

A collection of interviews and essays by editors Louise Schouwenberg and Michael Kaethler in a new book titled The Auto-Ethnographic Turn in Design (2021, Valiz) gives me a good opportunity to explore these issues. In this episode of Bevel, I chat with Michael (our first returning guest to the series) about making sense of phenomena in design described as auto-ethnographic and how, if at all, authorship fits into the discourse.

“Auto-ethnography gives an authority to the designer as someone with something to say and a means to say it,” says Michael in one of his essays. It “situates the designer at the heart of the research and connects this position to the culture of design and the broader cultural realm.”

Michael Kaethler is a sociologist of design whose work focuses on the transmission, production and embodiment of knowledge in art and design-oriented practices.