Design Outside the Box
Cal Russell
Encouraging designers to embrace and connect with nature and use it as a tool/inspiration in their process.
Design Outside the Box is a project that encourages designers to connect with nature and use it as a tool/inspiration in their process. My inspiration behind the project stemmed from the desire to combat creative block and lack of inspiration within designers. With the modernisation of design everything has become so reliant on computers and technology, everything from the initial research of sources to the creation of the design. With designers constantly being stuck inside on their computer I figured there was a real need for a new way of designing that incorporates nature and being outdoors. I often find with my own work that when I use natural textures and materials the work comes out so much stronger than when I source it all online. That’s why I created ‘Design Outside the Box’ a project that encourages designers to work and create in nature.
The idea isn’t that you will make a finished fully designed project, but you will create things that you can go on and further refine in the studio or designs and processes that can inspire you in other projects, all of this while being outside and having fun. The project involved a lot of research into why this way of designing was beneficial and how I could go about documenting and putting it together. After the research process I decided to put on a series of workshops that involved inviting designers out into nature and providing them with my DOTB manifesto and a series of briefs they could pick and choose from. As well as my own manifesto for designing in nature I wanted every designer who took part to create their own manifestos, as it emphasises how everyone’s process of designing in nature can be different. From this I documented each designer’s process and the work they created. I then took the collection of manifestos out into nature myself and followed each of the briefs, while again documenting my experience. I have put all of this together into a book called ‘Designing Outside the Box: Encouraging designers to embrace and connect with nature’ which can be used as a guidebook for implementing designing in nature into your own process.
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Posted Feb 8, 2025
My final year University project where my aim was to encourage designers to embrace and connect with nature and use it as a tool/inspiration in their process.
