Jan 30, 2025

What Is Design Fiction and Why Does It Matter For Visual Creatives?

Ian Chalmers RGD & Julian Bleecker

About this video

Description

Join us for a 45-minute fireside chat with Julian Bleecker, co-author of The Manual of Design Fiction, and Ian Chalmers RGD as they help make sense of the transformative potential of Design Fiction for visual creatives. This conversation will explore how to integrate speculative design practices into your work, the ways Design Fiction can unlock new creative avenues and provide new value propositions for your practice. Whether you're a designer or simply passionate about creativity, this session will provide actionable insights and inspiration to integrate Design Fiction into your work.

Key Takeaways:

- Understand the core principles of Design Fiction and how it differs from other traditional creative design methodologies

- Discover how Design Fiction can stimulate innovative thinking in design and expand your creative approaches

- Learn practical tools and methods for integrating Design Fiction and speculative design into your creative process

- Explore how real-world examples of Design Fiction has been applied successfully in visual design projects

Ian Chalmers RGD & Julian Bleecker

As a graduate of the OCAD U, Ian brings a creative curiosity and influence to the design research work he does across a spectrum of corporate, healthcare and academic pursuits. As Founder of Pivot Design Group, his professional focus is in the healthcare vertical, bringing a people-centric design focus to the work Pivot creates for researchers, scientists and institutions. He is also the founder of DesignMeets, a 10-year in the making event forum to bring the design conversation to the community.

Julian is synonymous with Near Future Laboratory, the platform he founded originally as a blog. He is also often associated with the product company OMATA, which he founded in 2014 and sold in 2022. He is the author of Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction and It's Time To Imagine Harder, and a co-author of The Manual of Design Fiction, the canonical reference for the eponymous practice that has evolved creative practices globally. In addition to his work as an entrepreneur, Julian is an active researcher with strong ties to academia, pedagogy and professional development. Julian has a Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz. He has an MSEng from the University of Washington and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.