Outside Inside
Forest YoungAbout this video
Join Forest as he shares a unique perspective moving from the agency world to in-house at Rivian—an early stage company. He reflects on significant projects from a new lens, and the unique opportunities of working inside at a transformational company.
Initially, I had my talk called, outside, inside, and it was about, you know, switching from being agency side to going in-house, ’cause I realized so many folks here are doing the hard work of working inside complex organizations. But I thought in light of the last two to three weeks and questioning tomorrow, what are we all chasing? What are we deeply and sincerely moving towards? For me personally, it's a feeling of total agency, not any agency, but a feeling that I'm synthesizing the most meaningful experiences that resonate, and I'm expressing them in a way that feels uniquely myself.
Hi, Toronto. Hello. Slide. So, questions for now. Where are we going? What's the meaning of life? Why are we sitting here? What do we hope to get from this particular talk? What does the world need? This is what I was taught. Ask what the world needs and what you're good at. At the intersection of those, find a healthy practice. But, the wise Howard Thurman said, don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, ’cause the world needs people who have come alive.
This is, this quote has immense staying power for me because it means that we're not chasing someone else's expectations. We're actually looking deep inside ourselves and asking ourselves. what gives me the sense of being a fully fleshed human. And I feel, it's a process of cultivating deep curiosity and casual curiosity, it’s like a distraction. It's like binge watching. Wonder what that is. Lemme click on that. Lemme like this. Deep curiosity, sometimes scary, sometimes feels like an obsession, but, I believe that cultivating deep curiosity is a daily practice. Sometimes you get from your client interactions, sometimes your colleagues, but it's unfair to put the burden of having to be interesting or inspiring on your colleagues or your clients. This is something you have to feed yourself. You have to be, to be interesting, you have to be insanely interested in the world. And as you cultivate deep curiosity, all of a sudden what seems like a lonely path? Oh, this curiosity is so bizarre, I can't believe I'm actually following this curiosity. All of a sudden you'll find people across space and time who share the same passion. And all of a sudden you're not alone. All of a sudden you realize that, Bosco was asking similar questions, or that sister Crea Kent was also trying to understand how do you reconcile play and work. And all of a sudden these become friends, allies, support systems, even if they're no longer here.
A couple years ago, before Covid, I was asked to give a talk to open the Los Angeles Design Festival. And this is before me moving to Los Angeles before I truly understood what traffic was. So, this was like, ha ha ha. LA's got cars and traffic. But the idea for me was Los Angeles, right? City of Angels, right? And if angels are hopes or wishes, what are we all wishing for? What are we hoping for? And specifically what's driving the driver?
And I'm asking myself this when I'm stuck in the 4 0 5 or the 1 0 1 almost daily. But the idea is that the l, is an aerial perspective of the driver. You know, doing lane changes, turning left, turning right, and the a is what's in front of me. Watch out for the motorcycle, speeding through, I mind the carpool lane, et cetera, et cetera. The foreshadowing on this particular image is immense, and I realize what's driving the driver is ultimately, what's the heart of this talk?
What is on the route to total agency? Well, it starts in the embarrassing years. We're gonna have to go back to 1979 when he was a five year old. Not precocious, but very high energy and definitely a lot of gesticulation. Trying to figure out, even listening to his Montessori school teachers, following things that you’re interested in. Being self-possessed, meant that I learned how to pretend to be sick so that I could go to my mom who worked at Atari because Atari was even more interesting than school. I got exposed to this illustration that she made using an old language called logo. The idea was that you start with this grid, and inside this grid you can populate it like little pixels that you're filling in.
She made a person. I couldn't believe that my mother, who I never thought of as an artist or having any artistic inclination, was just so free and creating a person, a human being from otherwise set of rectangles or cells. I was like, what is this thing? Oh, it's a pixel. I think it's called a pixel. Well, it blew my mind to learn that a pixel is actually a combination of two words. I thought that pixel was like a word that had some, you know, old English or ancient Greek, pixel comes from pictures, comes from pics.
We have an image that we have in one hand, and we want to insert or populate this image into an elemental structure. The L. Pixel itself is a process of inserting an image into an elemental structure that otherwise would be barren, would be, something that feels inhospitable or unwelcoming. And then, ultimately, the artifact is this lovely human, whose, you know, rugged features and sharp geometry reminded me of a lot of the things that I saw around the house. It wasn't a tech obsession or tech obsession with novelty, it was actually creating figures that were familiar, that felt like they could have been from Mali or it could have been a Chiari mask, or it could have been all that I knew had deep, you know, sculptural and spiritual importance. I never saw these as quote, unquote, low res. They were things that felt familiar.
To pixelate over time, I realized that's your process. It's not about being digital, first, it's about understanding the process of seeing the world as your canvas, the world as something that you can ultimately see as something that you can remap or write sometimes in restroom stalls where you wanna write. breathe. And realizing, in super studio, called this the continuous monument, where you're looking at the world as a place that needs a new foundation. You're looking at remapping this grid as a sense of beginning again. Then I see, grid as a sense of beginning again, even if the grid is something that you're projecting or mapping onto space, we're actually choosing to see inanimate objects as pixels, pixels that you can layer.
This was a poster, for Irma Boom, when she came to Yale, where cut lines and perforations mark the passage of time. Or, maybe you actually need to stretch the pixels from the beautiful and rational metric square to this bizarre American default. Eight and a half by 11, which we won't get into right now, but ultimately embracing this default format to actually create a new typo graphic grid. This was actually a typeface they worked on with Matthew Carter called eight and a half, just embracing all the dysfunctions of American default formats to ultimately be able to do a book and to create type at scale user imagination. And to create an exhibition which embraced this default format to create a super grid ultimately to welcome in all different types of work.
Growing up, I loved cartoons, Saturday morning cartoons. Every opportunity to then, take that into the cartoon network to be able to understand how this same grid, this idea of pixelation would actually be the structure of the cartoon network, where all these interlocking pixels would come together to celebrate different types of animation styles. As I started to realize these pixels were moving, I thought to myself, pixels aren't static, right? They have B sides just like vinyl, right? What's on the B side of this pixel? This idea of then finding substrate or papers or discarded flyers and saying, actually I'm gonna do a flyer on the backside of this flyer to repurpose it, to reclaim it as something that has value. Alan Fletcher said it best, which is design is not a thing you do, it is a way of life.
This idea that curiosity is this, muscle that you have to keep exercising. Again, that's your own duty, your own responsibility as a designer. So I created an alter ego called the red hero. The red hero would run around, and that's actually me. I would wear this ridiculous red outfit and just, go and repurpose the world and say, oh no, it's not a stop sign. That's a this or this isn't a wall to be feared. This is the thing that I can scale in a single leap. I almost broke my ankle doing that. Jump in reverse. But this idea that you're encouraging a fearlessness of the world of how you want to interact with it. And I realized that I was not alone, right?
Gee, Debor created this, map of Paris, the naked city, where he would take a map and he would cut it up in different pieces. And the idea was to defamiliarize the city that you know so well, to actually embrace the beauty of being lost. Because then you can see that there are spaces that are overlooked, cavities to be filled in. Or for the Yale School of Architecture, this wonderful installation for the Yale Women in Architecture announcing their presence could be visible within a largely male-dominated institution.
What's the second part? You cultivate deep curiosity and then what's next? I liken my own career path as a desire path. What's a desire path? When you walk in any college campus and you're walking around and all of a sudden you see this beautiful organized quad, and, all of a sudden you see this bizarre and knowing line that's just over here on the right side, and you realize, well, that's probably, either the shortest distance between the most meaningful path that's actually on the quad, or it's some curiosity that someone had, someone very charismatic, that was chasing something, and ultimately, they created a breadcrumb for others to follow.
Over time, that becomes the artifact of your own curiosity. Forging a desire path is incredible for yourself to retrain. It's not just a path that's prescribed to you, it's ultimately the way that you want to inhabit the world and maybe the way you wanna invite others to do the do so the same. I would love for my career, when I am about to go six feet under, to look like this. These are the roads and the quads, and the disciplinary expectations and some of the cultural context. There are all these just bizarre lines and zigzags and things, connecting things. And oh my gosh, there's a squirrel crawling up that tree and, oh, my gosh, that dog, you know, it's hopping on three legs, but looks so happy and amazing. Here's this blue Jay, sister Creta Kent, who's one of my, just, you know, I feel like she's really dear to my heart, said that doing and making our acts of hope.
When we're thinking about questioning tomorrow, well what are we hoping for? Because if design is structured hope, how are we making this visible? How are we bringing this to life? How do you crease a pixel? Can you fold a pixel? Of course you can fold a pixel. This was creating new typography from folded pixels. NEXT ultimately gave me a way to imagine that pixels aren't just inert objects. They're actually machines. Machines that can have hinges that can unfold and refold.
Ultimately to think about creating these creatures, if you will, takes them from being inanimate to being animate, if reimagining a flag when an artist tells you they're going to the North Pole, you say, well, of course, you need to need a flag if you're going to the North Pole. But ultimately it's still imagining this pixel crease and realizing that was actually Admiral Perry's flag repurposed, now as a Bahamian flag for artist of ours drawn. We must all suffer from one of two pains. This was a quote, that I was at a really low moment when I saw this quote. And it's that you can suffer from the pain of discipline, which is doing something that you don't enjoy doing, but you know, you must do it. Whether it’s, trying to become a morning person or going for walks or, whether it’s, remembering to breathe or to slow down. But then there's the pain of regret. The pain of regret is one of those things. It's such a heavy burden that I always remind myself that it's the choice of these two pains, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
I'll always choose the pain of discipline. I'm colourgonna very fast click through a lot of things because I realize one of the things that I always find really annoying when I go to conferences is designers get up on stage and they're like, and this was perfect and this is perfect, and this was perfect. Then I somersaulted out of a 10 story building and stuck a landing and then helped a cat out of a tree. So, what I'm gonna do is just basically take you through a bunch of processes where you're basically going to see how my brain is doing a mental operation and how it manifests into actual artifacts. I've never given this presentation before and I was so excited to do it here for the first time because ultimately, I really feel, sincere desire to say, okay, you know, beyond all the smoke and mirrors, you know, how do you actually make things? So can a pixel unfold? Yes, you can take a two poster and it can unfold to be the size of Nelson Mandela's cell in Robin Island for this commemorative poster.
Ultimately what we're talking about with cultivating deep curiosity is the ability to create habits. When we talk about questioning tomorrow, the future is created by habits, and habits are things that you can control today. Ultimately, habits are so incredibly important. Can you highlight a pixel? Well, thinking about the yellow pages and the interesting brief for the yellow pages was, do we need to be yellow? I think the bigger question was how much yellow? Ultimately thinking about the yellow's highlight versus a flood, was this idea that the yellow pages stood for a way to put you in touch with the tools that you can do things, you can accomplish things. Whether it was a ice cream scoop or whether it was an actual highlighter, get things done quicker.
What's inherent in pixelation? You have all these different units in these cells, these cells feel like they're coming together to form this bigger thing. It's an act of unification, it's an act of synergies. I love thinking about this idea of how do these things come together? Pixelation is an act of coordination. It's an act of orchestration. One of my favourite authors and designers, Leo Leone, it's at the heart of everything that he does, whether it's the colour of his own, the chameleon is so sad, he doesn't have a colour of his own. He realizes he needs another chameleon who says, we'll always be the same colour. We're always standing together.
It's such an amazing gesture, or, the ability for fearful fish to come together to create a super fish to scare off the intimidating big tuna. Paul Rand said, the problem of the artist is defamiliarize the ordinary. I know fish swim, I know tunas can get really big, but did you know that small fish can come together to make a super fish? What did you have to unlearn to be able to see what Leo Leone saw? That swimmy, that one black fish could say, I will be the eye. I will give this larger school of fish the courage to be a super fish.
Part of unification is understanding how do things come together? How do you orchestrate, you know, a common language? And so, for dot, dot, it was about a coffee maker trying to speak to a toaster. You know what I'm seeing? I'm seeing here, we got a toaster, we need advance. And the coffee maker's like, well, how hot do we want it to be? 180 degrees? But ultimately, you know, dot.dot is a way for them to say, we can have the perfect toast and coffee. How do you take something as complex as democratizing the internet of things for new protocols of interoperability and make it into a language that people can relate to. But of course, don't call it a face. It's not a face, of course, it's a face. Ultimately it's a way for, left-handed and right-handed people to come together to a tape dispenser and both have successful outcomes. Or, here's your ride at CES that comes and picks you up and somehow you're all getting along because you're being interoperable with each other or off the grid living. Showing how this logo is actually a model for living right off the grid. Photovoltaic panels, little ever charging car, the nice little kiddy pool, and, ultimately a logo that you can text. We think about logos existing in gated portals and brand guidelines, but it’s, what do I look for in Target and Best Buy? And the person just types it. It's a colon in two posts. The logo actually is transmittable by everyone. Democratizing how the brand exists.
And then, now, we're getting into complex maneuvers. The drills to effect, which goes all the way back to this very interesting image of this nurse who is basically serving this cocoa. Basically you realize that she's holding the container on the tray. If you were to look at the container on the tray, you realize that that's the image of the woman. You go and you go into this infinite recursive drawing, which is super, super clever. So, I thought, you know, can I do that with a pixel? Can a pixel, can I go inside the pixel and can I zoom out of a pixel? For the one show, is this idea of applying this operation to the sense of something that could be recursive or looping. Can I actually extend something dimensionally from this flat land that pixels usually live in? Of course, what is a tactile emoji? What's an emoji that I could actually feel, I wanna feel a smiley face without actually looking at it? Well, ultimately this was working with new technology, screen technology that uses electro electrostatic shock to actually trick your brain that it's actually feeling texture. This was an actual tactile emoji.
Can you split a pixel? Of course you can. And, again, back to, you know, this illusion that there's this, that, the school world or the university world, and there's the real world and there's the jobs you love and the jobs you hate. And I would argue, that, if you cultivate deep curiosity and you cultivate the enthusiasm around things that you're completely self-possessed about, you'll bring people along. People will actually say, oh yeah, I really liked how you split that pixel. It kind of looks like a clapper board. It kind of looks like, something we could put together, a whole portfolio of entertainment properties. It’s the idea that you can be incredibly personal at scale. There's this, fantasy that, basically, personal work only happens with small printed matter.
Things at scale are where you check your soul at the door. It's actually, for me, I find it the, actually, the opposite. Or it can be. I feel completely relaxed, being myself at scale. For me, that's incredibly liberating. Anderson Cooper, shout out. And so again, another impossible brief. How do you express the new ways in which we're going to potentially, genetically edit microbial life forms to bio manufacture new types of synthetic materials that will save the ocean from plastic island? What do you do with a brief like that? Well, you think it's, well, what are the three elements of this ask? You have high through put experimentation. You are essentially looking at all the ways and all the variables where you're removing human ego to create an industrial renaissance. Essentially, it's a three part equation. You take those three part equations, you put it inside of a pixel, three bars, you tilt the middle. This reminded me of those robotic arms that were doing all the experiments. So completely automatic. Then ultimately, how do you have fun with this form?
And, so, probably a lot of you are seeing some visual commonality. You're seeing the machines that start to become ghosts that travel from project to project, this kind of continuous voice, because these are curiosities that I'm not done with. I'm still trying to figure out, how does something hinge and what is the meaning between these three shapes? Or, should these things be trapped within a square? Should they break out of a square? And, what's the relationship of a square to another shape? If a square is next to a circle, does it connect in like some type of weird resin, which was perfect for a client named resin? Now we're getting into advanced maneuvers, which was only possible for me, starting with simple things like fold and cut and split and et cetera. Now we're getting into multi stability. Maybe half of you are seeing a cube that looks like it's pointing up and half of you are seeing a cube that looks like it's pointing down, and that's called multi stable image. It’s changing in front of your eyes, the same image. And, so, I love to be able to play with forest's perspective to say, here I have a, what I think is a letter form. Is it a letter form or is it a shape series of shapes? Is a letter form, is it a series of shapes?
I start to imagine if the pixel is static and I move around this pixel. I can start to imagine combining things that maybe are opposites, like something that's typographic or something that's shape based, or thinking about something that's horrible and something that's beautiful and that they actually inhabit the same anatomy from moving around it. Or imagining, the first letter, my name, which is an F, which is from the fanatic alphabet. But ultimately, thinking about my name and other languages, which means tree is a single, is a single unit, and basically those types of pictographic languages in phonetic alphabets could actually inhabit the same character.
This can go back into client work for Shane Hips, where you start to understand that the five polarities, that he loves to talk about, basically are the containers for his name that kind of jump out of these five slits. So, logo, wonderful work, from Ong Zoo, who ultimately, found a way to flip this s to be AG. It's the same character, but because of the adjacencies of the A and the E, we're reading this as SAGE and then refined by Jeremy Ol. When we think about Twitter, we think of the hashtag, but the hashtag really should be about the world, and we shouldn't talk about what it's become. But ultimately, this is a way to say what I think I know is a hashtag, is really a way to talk about connectivity, happening across the world and maybe the hashtag inspires some other type of square volumes or cubed basketballs. And this idea of multi stability also can play with how we see objects.
This was a book cover working with Dave Eggers and McSweeney's on the Future Dictionary of America, the idea that the fore-edge is a false fore-edge. That's the cover of the book, pretending to be a fore-edge, and you turn it around, it looks like a giant spine, with the call number and this idea that, multi stability can also be a way that you are playing with illusion for other people to experience.
And then 2020 happened and all of a sudden it felt like everything was just coming to a halt. I thought, where's the auto reverse button? Where's the backwards button? Where's the, have we gone too far? And I started to create a lot of some, some people say they're beautiful. I look back at them and I think that they are pretty dystopian. But, this idea of the sands of time, the sands of time running out, and, this was actually the open for the Los Angeles Design Festival. This idea that all the things that I love about Los Angeles, what happens when they're no, longer, like the theme building, or the Forum or Randy's Donuts for those of you who know Randy's donuts or the Hollywood sign.
Then, as it started to intensify, and January 6th, are we actually on the verge of time running out for American democracy and thinking about things that we know and love, like the arch or even the Statue of Liberty and what it stands for potentially being at peril. Unless people started to reexamine the historical past of how America was founded, who founded it, relationships with labor, relationships with indigeneity and all the things that comprise, what is, a living and vibrant revolution. And so, ultimately vote. This was thinking about the limitations of a pixel and the limitations of a circle, a square and a triangle, the basic elements that could create a new typographic form. So, now, putting all this together, you work for a car company that has these very bizarre headlights, and how do you use these headlights as pixels to create new typographic form? How do we look at ways in which we can start to think about the letter forms, having a relationship with space, ultimately, seeing how this comes to life, not only on the physical vehicle, but on all digital surfaces and interfaces inspired by the actual form factors of the vehicle.
The vehicle itself is providing the pixel constraint. Therefore, how do we inhabit the spaces, then the vehicles, create new typographic gestures. It creates new ways to imagine an electric vehicle that can go zero to 60 in three seconds, which is faster than a Lamborghini. And, why do we need that ultimately to create an uncompromising solution for how do we start to electrify transportation?
And, this is a very happy Smurf on IPO day. I went with Big Bird for today and Smurf. Working with LinkedIn. I think one of the things that is so wonderful to feel here, in real life with real people in a real audience, is this idea of community. For LinkedIn, the logo was on, wasn't on the table, but, it was the idea of actually looking into two eyes within LinkedIn and saying, two eyes make a we. So, it's actually the eyes that actually represent the true power of LinkedIn. And, so, from that, what is an I? It's a rectangular form circular form or square form. It's the relationship between the tittle. The main stem. Ultimately, this creates the whole system.
What is a pixel that travels through space as a type of utensil? What is the circle that creates a squiggly line? What is a triangle that rotates in space, that becomes a cone? Thinking a lot about constraints beyond just visual constraints. What are constraints of things, the carceral state or the prison industrial complex? Being asked by a former classmate, can you help envision, a typographic language for a show called redaction? What's the show about? Well, I'm actually joining up with a poet, Dwayne Betts, who's going to write poems based on legal briefs where he's going to redact certain words to create new poetry, kind of whim, as Burough’s style, but with redaction. I'm going to create paintings from those poems, and it's all based on redaction. Could you come up with a typeface for this project? Of course, there's an inner voice that says, run away. This is an impossible brief, but I'm gonna show you a litmus test. When, you get a brief and you say, how do I know when, how to run away, when to stay? You work with great collaborators.
This was a book that I worked on with James Goggin, Amanda Barrow, but ultimately, partnering with Jeremy Mickel on what is redaction in typographic form. We know, that it's, Times New Roman is the mandated typeface for a lot of the US court system. And Century School Book is the mandated typeface for Supreme Court briefs. So, ultimately we came up with a hybrid that was based on the sharpness and the roundness and the characteristics of merging Times New Roman and Century School Book, which comes up to this idea of stereo typography.
This idea that typefaces are not neutral typefaces carries inherent meaning, whether it's about representing power or legality or colonization or nationalism or vernacular. They're never just letter forms. The letter forms themselves have meaning. How do we start to interrogate what is stereotype? And, looking at the seal of the United States and the eagle is holding in its talons, the olive branches and arrows. It's both the suppleness of the sea and it's also the severity of that terminal. This idea of reconciling the things that are inherent in our own justice system. For those of you know, this of course is not noland, it was my kind of homage to that amazing Tica Jack Summerfield poster. And, just thinking about all these coming to life, another amazing, Zipp Pon Zoo, animation. How do you use design itself and the constraints to them as teaching tools?
For the Land Museum of Art, you have an O, you have an M and you have an A, but, you start off with a triangle and the triangle is a colour wheel from Erta. And then you have a simple combination of what happens when yellow and blue come together to make green. And what happens when you have an albers, stepped colour scheme from orange to gold, you get OMA, but OMA becomes a teaching tool itself. The logo itself is a device for understanding how do you make form and how do you ascribe meaning to form. So, here is the stencil to make your own meaning. Polism, we don't have time to get into the Pollan story, but I encourage you to look that one up.
I unfortunately thought that Paul Rand was an African American when applying to graduate school and wrote a completely embarrassing essay, about how he was an African American culture hero. And I couldn't believe an African American designed UPS and IBM. And, it was just an absolute tragic interview that this is article speaks about. So, back to the glowing pixel. How do we start to think about what a retail environment could be? Is it a source of inspiration? Should retail come to you? Should you not have to leave your own home when you drop your phone and maybe the retail store comes to you and someone actually gives you a new iPhone? Or, maybe it should reflect all the things, your deepest curiosities. Your mirrors?
Is a messenger bubble, a speech bubble, that's actually a volumetric object that has a little lightning bolt on it? Or actually, is it an opening that you're actually peeking in and saying, oh my gosh, what's inside of this cavity? Modern fertility, thinking about skin, the intimacy of skin and sky, and how do those come together to create a unique and ownable language for modern versions of ourselves? Or reclaiming reproductive information from the doctors and the physicians and the clinics to our own living rooms, to diversity and design where we're looking at shapes and volumes as untapped potential. Our design industry looks a certain way, but could it look a different way? And is there space? Is there volume for these other voices to inhabit? Or maybe we need to hack it and look at something like using elite or 1337 to actually write a new code.
This was a logo for the national grid and maybe hashtags aren't about necessarily shifting in perspective. Perhaps it's about a relationship between figure and ground and the vibration that comes from all that connectivity. These are all choices of how we dance around this continuum of branding from the craft of a waffle soul to the symbol of a swoosh from Carolyn Davidson to this idea of just do it and athletic empowerment to the platforming of all these things coming together to now thinking about, the move to zero and sustainability and circular design.
What happens when you are dressed up as a red superhero in New Haven? High fiving, don't walk signs, as you realize that certain stop signs and, don’t walk signs, go all the way up to 60 seconds and if you reverse the footage, you can actually make a clock out of them. So, this was a project we did for the MoMA show, talk to me. And then you have bigger projects, things at scale, large telcos, but ultimately the same idea. Wrapping and then wrapping and circling, moving around this carousel and going from static to going to mobility, going from blue to green. And one of my favourite, you know, slides, and this is one of the, what I'm talking about, the Uber rebrand.
This is really the slide and the brief was, how does movement ignite opportunity? How does movement inspire opportunity? Well, if movement is truly transformational, then if I take a square and I stretch it, it becomes a line. If I spin a line, it becomes a circle. If I fold a square, it becomes a triangle. If the triangle extends, it becomes something new. So, movement is actually a transformational vehicle, and this allowed us to be able to think about this fluidity again, pixelization at scale.
We're thinking about the U frame as a way to create a window or frame or a container for footage and ways to travel, ways in which we can see ourselves in a brand. The brand is not telling us who we should be, but how we inhabit it and how we're supported. How do you unify, your rides, eats and freight within a common language. It doesn't even require a logo because this becomes a new signature.
And thinking about all the BSides, the BSides, constantly flipping these pixels as animate objects across the world from India to Berlin, Paris metro to the airport nearest you, and, ultimately one day flying. Now they've sold out the Joby Aviation, but we might see flying cars as soon as, 2024, 2025, probably 25. This was our prototype, for what it might look like, how not to be afraid of self-driving cars when they tell you my favourite men are the Beatles and I love the yellow submarine, or my favourite movie is Back to the Future or my favourite things.
And so, thinking about ways in which we can take the unfamiliar and familiarize them, giving maybe, identities to animated objects or even to machines designing the vehicles and the way the vehicles appear in the app and bringing to life a system based in motion that feels in motion when you are actually having to execute it on IPO. This was, well I shouldn't tell you, there's going to be a potential scavenger hunt information that's about to happen. Please disregard the last comment. When I come into any fork in the road in my professional career, I realize that I'm encountering a polarity. And a polarity is a necessary tension between two things. And, so, I thought I would very quickly go through these because I've been told, when I've discussed these, these have been very helpful.
And so, thinking about ways in which we can take the unfamiliar and familiarize them, giving maybe, identities to animated objects or even to machines designing the vehicles and the way the vehicles appear in the app and bringing to life a system based in motion that feels in motion when you are actually having to execute it on IPO. This was, well I shouldn't tell you, there's going to be a potential scavenger hunt information that's about to happen. Please disregard the last comment. When I come into any fork in the road in my professional career, I realize that I'm encountering a polarity. And a polarity is a necessary tension between two things. And, so, I thought I would very quickly go through these because I've been told, when I've discussed these, these have been very helpful.
Do I want to evolve the profession? Do I actually want to be an originator and create form that no one has seen? People are gonna say, well, this person blazed a trail and here are the breadcrumbs. Or I just want to echo and amplify something that is working. If it's not broke, don't fix it. So, are you evolving or are you echoing? Do you need control? High fidelity control, every micro decision, micro detail, crease, bone folding? Or do you need something that happens at scale, where you are removed from a lot of these, a lot of the minutiae.
This is my absolute client filter, which is, that if a client has taste, that's great. They're gonna be a collaborator, they're gonna be somebody you can, you share, you know, inspiration, or they say, I don't have taste, but I trust you as the expert to lead me to some type of conclusion. But if the client or the collaborator has neither taste nor trust, you must run away.
This is my absolute client filter, which is, that if a client has taste, that's great. They're gonna be a collaborator, they're gonna be somebody you can, you share, you know, inspiration, or they say, I don't have taste, but I trust you as the expert to lead me to some type of conclusion. But if the client or the collaborator has neither taste nor trust, you must run away.
What's the relationship between what we might categorize as art versus design visible? I want my work to be visible in the world. I can see it, I can touch it, I can feel it, I can hear it. Or, do I actually want it to be like a benevolent ghost just moving through the world, maybe has greater impact because it's not attributable to a single person. Do I want to be a general that soars at 45,000 feet and looks down? Or, do I wanna be something that has immense focus and is looking at what’s directly in front of me? To summarize, cultivate deep curiosity. If you cultivate deep curiosity, it will propel you into action. You'll not have a choice. You say how'd to figure that out? And then, you start walking over here and all of a sudden, whoa, what just happened? That's a desire path. Forge desire paths because they make these paths known to you. They retrain the paths that you should take and their invitations for others to follow. And, always choose the pain of discipline over the pain of regret.
Forest Young
Forest is the former Global Head of Brand at Rivian, where he was responsible for the expression of the Rivian brand across its people, products and services. Previous to this, Forest was the Chief Creative Officer at Wolff Olins. Forest is a Senior Critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art, where he is also a distinguished MFA alumnus. He is a founding advisor for Miller-Knoll’s Diversity in Design collaborative. Forest’s work has been exhibited at MoMA, the ROM, the Royal College of Art and at numerous international biennials. He is a recipient of the Gold Design Lion at Cannes and the Art Directors Club Black Cube.