In design specifically, I usually identify an object type that I'd like to add to MAKR's Collection and then see how my style can be applied to it.
I start by removing the things I don't want, isolating essential elements, and then pushing those elements to be what I deem more innovative or beautiful. I try to achieve multiple things with one gesture: link parts or assemblies in an interesting way or leverage processes and machines to create something new.
I then design the new object in a 3D modeling program and begin the process of prototyping. Once it's in a good place to share with production facilities, I start that conversation. It's quite a long process and typically spawns other ideas for objects or processes during that development.
I’ve made “stuff” my entire life, so I imagine it started with my parents. My mother was an art teacher and my father a contractor/builder. Seeing them make things created a core sense that you can make anything. Making things didn’t seem far away or too precious, so I just experimented with what interested me.
As a child, my mother put me in every possible art class. I went to a VPA Magnet High School and then art college. It’s just in me—I have a double negative term I call “Can’t not.” I literally “can’t not” make things or think in the way that I do. It’s fully integrated into my life, and I feel very lucky for that to be the case.
There are so many things to do in my brand / project / company / whatever that I just move to another task. I force myself to do the work and creativity always finds a way to come back, especially when that creativity can be applied to so many different aspects - design, pattern-making, prototyping, production, photography, website, collaborations and so on.
I don’t really have any time for creative blocks so I don’t view them as such and allow whatever is supposed to be done for that day to come out.
