Small Design inspires Big Ideas at AIGA Meeting

David Small and colleague John Rothenberg of Massachusetts-based Small Design Firm were in England as part of work on the Nobel Centre in Scandinavia and they came to share some ideas and images with the AIGA Experience Design London meeting.

Apart from their current projects, including a prototype for displaying Churchill's documents at the Churchill Museum in the Cabinet War Rooms (a long display based on the idea of running your hand along the edge of a filing cabinet to open different pages), they showed information visualisation work, from commentaries on the Bible to presenting translucent travel information on the transparent glass windows of a bus. And they showed projects that were more beautiful than functional, such as a fountain of water that simultaneously flows out words, displaying in random or programmable order up to 800 quotations on the walls and floor at the Hall of Ideas at a Boston library.

Small said that his role was like that of a landscape designer, laying out paths that people can follow, while creating devices that engage the reader in making the thing they are looking at.

Questions revolved round the practicality of the products. The first issue was usability – someone familiar with the Churchill prototype suggested that it was a lot of fun but not easy to use in to access information, and wondered how far fun and education were tradeoffs. Small suggested that museums were places to be entertained, saying he hoped it would be possible to avoid making fun and study mutually exclusive; indeed that the existence of a prototype might enable him eventually to deliver satisfaction on both counts.

A further question was on the sustainability of products once they have been handed over to the client. Small said that they had tried unsuccessfully to write maintenance contracts into the relationship with their commissions, but now built from the start to anticipate failures. 'The best kind of support is design that doesn't need support.' The company use standard parts wherever possible, arguing that the foundation should not be something new, just the application - as long as the idea isn't compromised.

In general, it was a chance for designers to see what can be done when time and money allow for ingenuity, style and innovative interaction.

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