Matters of Experience

“Matters of Experience” with Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan

Hosted by Abigail Honor, Lorem Ipsum’s Partner and Creative Director, and Brenda Cowan, professor and former Chairperson of Graduate Exhibition & Experience Design at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, “Matters of Experience” delves into the creativity, innovation, and psychology behind designed experiences and encounters. Each week, Abigail and Brenda explore the who, how, and why of exhibitions, branded experiences, events, and the extraordinary creations that designers and creatives are offering to an ever-curious audience.
What If It Doesn't Work? (And What If It Does?)

What If It Doesn't Work? (And What If It Does?)

April 2, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
What does it mean to design for dialogue—not just display? In this episode of Matters of Experience, Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan sit down with Jonathan Alger, founding partner at C&G Partners and a leading voice in exhibition and experience design.

Jonathan shares how designing with empathy, navigating creative discomfort, and embracing uncertainty can lead to deeper, more inclusive storytelling. From his work with museums and nonprofits to projects for NASA, Jonathan discusses how personal testimony, collaboration, and trust shape impactful experiences that resonate across boundaries.

Whether you’re a creative leader, designer, or simply curious about the thinking behind the world’s most meaningful exhibitions—this episode offers insight into how design can be both a process and a conversation.
Jonathan Alger is Managing Partner and Co-founder of the design firm C&G Partners. He is a multi-specialist working in interactive cultural space and experiential design. He is also the host and author of "Making the Museum,” a podcast and newsletter for the cultural experience field. Jonathan’s clients include the 9/11 Museum, Bronx Zoo, Cornell, Federal Reserve, Gates Foundation, Holocaust Museum, Library of Congress, NASA, National Archives, Princeton, Smithsonian, and US Department of State. Jonathan has been honored by the AIGA, AAM, AASLH, Anthem Awards, Apex Awards, ADC, CA, IDSA, NEH, SEGD, TDC and the Webbys. He is a National Design Award Finalist and two-time winner of the AAM MUSE awards, and served two terms as President of the Society for Experiential Graphic Design. Before co-founding C&G Partners, Jonathan was a Principal at the design firm Chermayeff & Geismar Inc. Jonathan graduated from Yale with honors and distinction in Architecture, magna cum laude. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons.

Abigail Honor: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you are new to the show, a hardy welcome to our regular listeners. Thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor. Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

Abigail Honor: Today we are talking with a very recognizable voice in our community, literally and figuratively. Jonathan Alger, Jonathan, many know you as the co-founder and managing partner of CNG Partners, where your clients run the gamut and include the nine 11 Museum, nasa, Cornell, the Smithsonian, US Department of State.

Abigail Honor: I, I can go on. You’ve been honored. Buy more initialisms than I can pronounce sequentially on this show. ’cause I tried. As well as being a two time winner of the A Am Muse Awards, he’s also served two terms of the president of SEGD and recently we’re all enjoying your podcast and newsletter, making the museum.

Abigail Honor: Jonathan, a huge welcome to the show.

Jonathan Alger: Very happy to be here. Thank you both for having me. I’m a big fan of your show.

Brenda Cowan: Thank you Jonathan. I happen to know that you’re a musician, you’re an avid reader, and I think of it as a collector of amazing true or sometimes not so true facts and anecdotes. You always seem to have an incredible story to share.

Brenda Cowan: That inevitably leaves me wondering. Is that for real? I also know that you appreciate it when others in your firm have and share what I’ll call out of work talents such as art making and music. So tell us how do your myriad personal and professional interests and talents synergize into the work that you do?

Jonathan Alger: I don’t know. Uh, I think that if I were giving advice to somebody today about pursuing a career or creating a company or both, I’m not sure I would advise them to do what we have done because I’m not sure that the environment is really conducive to that. You know, nowadays it’s all about specializing and, and what we do is sort of neither specializing nor generalizing, but, somewhere in between. And I think that’s a, that’s a difficult spot to be in, I think. But for us, it’s been great. We love the lifestyle of multi-specialty work, and so we’re in, in my firm, I, I do a lot of exhibition design and experience design. That’s what I write about. That’s what I podcast about. That’s what I’m sort of most known for, but coming up in the business, I did all the other things that you would think a traditional communication design person would do: branding and, uh, way finding and digital projects and print and all of that sort of stuff. So it was sort of a apprenticeship that felt a little bit more like learning how to run or learning how to do the decathlon rather than learning how to run the a hundred meter dash only.

Jonathan Alger: But you know, again, I’m not sure that that’s business advice I would give any, anyone today. Do not, do not set out to become a medium sized Swiss army knife.

Abigail Honor: I feel the exact same way. We don’t have an elevator pitch for what we do. Every time I meet a client, it’s really hard because when you are medium size, small to medium.

Abigail Honor: I think we’re probably a bit smaller than you guys and you’re trying to pitch what you do, but you have a depth or a multidisciplinary team that can actually do branding, do wayfinding, for example, experience design, um, you know, vr, ar, digital, whatever it is in your Swiss Army knife. It’s really hard to be able to pitch that to clients when they’re often just looking for one thing

Jonathan Alger: That’s right.

Abigail Honor: I’m always trying to say, what’s your problem and let us fix it. Don’t come to us for a set specific task. How are some of the challenges? As you mentioned, you have this rich team and they have a lot of things they can do. How do you see the next five years in terms of your business? Do you ever think, oh, we need to specialize.

Abigail Honor: It will be better to be one size fits all for people or like, what’s your perception on that?

Jonathan Alger: I have no idea. I’d like to be able to answer with a very fluid and cogent, uh, words to live by that people could whip their notebook out on and start scribbling away, but I don’t really, I don’t really have an answer for that.

Jonathan Alger: I think we’re maybe birds of a feather. Um, we’ve been around long enough that we’ve just got a pretty big portfolio in each one of those areas. So when a client comes to us with a particular specialty they want, we just show them that. Every once in a while we come across a client that needs, you know, pineapples, storm doors, and to be flown in an airplane and we can handle them as well.

Abigail Honor: So in terms of like CNG, you know, you’re very much known for a focus on cultural nonprofit work. What, why, why is it tell us like that special focus and why it’s important for you?

Jonathan Alger: Our firm, uh, CNG Partners is a descended firm and of another firm called, uh, Chermayeff & Geismar, and Chermayeff & Geismar is a, a sort of a original gangster, uh, formed in the fifties old school, New York graphic design firm. One of the firms that invented or popularized the term graphic design and was one of the very first firms ever to do exhibition design as a firm actually.

Jonathan Alger: And I just happened to luckily get an opportunity to work there and I, I started there as a junior designer and I left there as, as one of the principles of the firm, and then started this firm, which is a descendant. And that firm for whatever reason, and probably personal interest, et cetera, just didn’t do much commercial work, didn’t do much marketing, didn’t sell soap as we used to say.

Jonathan Alger: And so the firm that I now am the managing partner of and one of the owners of is following suit, and that started to refine itself even more when we created this firm 20 years ago. We started eventually, after five, 10 years in, we realized that 85, 90% of of our clients and our financial health was coming from the broadly defined cultural sector.

Jonathan Alger: And so we said, let’s just plant a flag. And not actively go after commercial projects as much.

Abigail Honor: Oh, that’s really interesting. Financially, was that a gamble?

Jonathan Alger: You know, like, I’m, I’m fond of saying like, nonprofit is a tax status, not a business goal. So, uh, well run nonprofits. We work with a lot of nonprofits, we work with a lot of government entities. We work with NGOs, et cetera. Let’s think about some nonprofits that we know well by name: Harvard, the Smithsonian, National Geographic. I don’t know, NASA, if you want to include government entities. These, I don’t think you’d think of any of those entities as being poorly funded. So I think something like 10% of the workforce in the United States works in the nonprofit sector writ large.

Jonathan Alger: And so it’s, it’s a good place to be. You can even be a niche within a niche, and that’s, that’s where we are doing arts and culture.

Brenda Cowan: So when I think about how it is that CNG brings voices, people, the human into your exhibition projects and how it is that, in my interpretation, it makes for very inclusive environments, it makes for, again, very human environments.

Brenda Cowan: And I’m curious to hear a little bit about how it is that you think or you approach projects with a human element in mind. Or is it the kind of thing that just sort of develops heuristically?

Jonathan Alger: There’s always been an issue with museums taking a stand and having a very firm opinion about something. In some cases, it’s sort of incontrovertible.

Jonathan Alger: We are the Museum of Forks. Forks have tines and on the other end is a part where you hold them. Right? You can say that if you’re the museum of for, you’re the curator of the Museum of Forks. You can say things like that. But otherwise, we work with a lot of museums and museum-like entities that are a little bit uncomfortable with sort of taking a stand.

Jonathan Alger: So one of the, I don’t know, tricks or hacks or rules of thumb that, that we’ve stumbled on and and gone with is this idea of the personal testimony trick. The idea that, if we can get someone who’s maybe not a subject matter expert, they’re not an SME, they’re just somebody else who has lived experience or they’re adjacent to the subject, or they may not know everything about chemistry, but they work in a lab and we have them say what they feel about a subject, then that’s a great way for visitors to have a way in that’s a little bit more understandable to them.

Jonathan Alger: It’s also a great way for museums to avoid looking like there’s only one answer and that people are supposed to look to them for some kind of absolute truth. So that’s the sort of the personal testimony trick, and you can do that a number of ways. You can do that like we’re doing right now, recording something in audio.

Jonathan Alger: You can also do it in writing.

Brenda Cowan: I’m really curious as a leader, how it is that you effectively communicate or even educate clients about the work that you do. It’s a particular form of communication, um, I would suggest, and I’m really curious, how do you approach that?

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I’d say I, some people refer to that as sort of, uh, consulting or educational consultative relationship with your clients. Other people refer to it as being long-winded and pedantic. I guess it, it depends on the, the situation, but I don’t mind at all trying to help clients understand every aspect of something that they might want to understand. Uh, and some people are like that, you know, on the show that I do, I just had a guest who is a specialist in museum display cases, and you can tell that she loves to explain that stuff to people, and that is stuff that really needs to be explained to people. And nine times out of 10, the clients that we’re working with are people who have never done this before. They may very well never do it again. They may decide never to do it again. Every once in a while they decide to do it again.

Jonathan Alger: But when you go in and you want to have your knee operated on, and there’s some people that are just like, hey, fix my knee, okay, knock me out, take care of it. But there are other people that said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. What are my options? What’s entailed? I think you just have to do that.

Abigail Honor: Given what you’ve just said in terms of the education, if you have money and you need to build a museum, they automatically, the clients think, I need an architect. I keep finding us in situations where whenever we are brought in, the client has already made some decisions, like even buying hardware too early.

Jonathan Alger: Oh yeah. We get that all the time.

Abigail Honor: And it’s,

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, the, the AV salespeople got to them.

Jonathan Alger: They got to them.

Abigail Honor: Exactly. How do we,

Jonathan Alger: That’s a really big LED wall. It’s curving.

Abigail Honor: It’s exactly like that. Yeah. So how do we build a better understanding of our industry and how to work through these projects and our process with clients or build that awareness so they’re doing it in the right order at least?

Jonathan Alger: That’s a really, that’s a super question I’ve never really thought exactly about that, you know, we are, everyone around this table is sort of around the same table, right? We don’t have a client sitting in the fourth chair over there. So if I take your question correctly, it is, how can we make sure that before we show up, the clients know what it is that we’re gonna do and they’re starting to make the right decisions, et cetera.

Jonathan Alger: So, I don’t know, maybe, uh, you know, uh, SEGD, the Society for Experiential Graph Design has just started this new group, a professional, uh, practice group, uh, that is for people to do exhibition and experience design. Maybe we should focus one of the committees of that group on creating some kind of website or page at SEGD.org or literature or something that could somehow be distributed. You could use the, the sort of the power and the force of a larger organization, uh, and kind of do a got milk campaign. Like if we’re all dairy farmers, you could do a bit of a got milk campaign, not to, not to create demand for our bovine liquid, but to make the client sort of understand, you know, what, what the basic steps are.

Abigail Honor: Yeah. And who they need sitting around the table at the beginning.

Jonathan Alger: That’s a great idea. I’m gonna go do that right now. I’m gonna leave,

Brenda Cowan: I would suggest that you’re already underway with doing this, or at least into, into begin our segue actually into talking about making the museum, part of what I see happening is you making a very substantial contribution to providing everyone and certainly, you know, prospective clients or existing clients with a vocabulary, with an understanding of the tools, the techniques, and understanding the functions and the possibilities of, you know, what I think of as a very kaleidoscopic profession. And I’m curious, was that your intention or do you see yourself doing that? Because from the outside, it seems that that is a huge part of your outcomes.

Jonathan Alger: So making the museum, shameless plug. You can look at makingthemuseum.com, dear Listener, is both a podcast, which is attempting to be as good as the podcast that I’m on right now, but is falling very short.

Brenda Cowan: Au contraire.

Jonathan Alger: But is also a newsletter. It started out as a newsletter. I was writing five very short one minute read, uh, newsletters per week and now it’s three times a week by popular demand or popular un-demand. And that started, uh, two ways. One was sort of a selfish way. I’d, I’d had a lifelong dream to attempt to get over my absolutely fundamental terror of writing, uh, in public, uh, doing something where it wasn’t just business emails, but something where I was purely writing and I was asking people to look at my writing.

Jonathan Alger: I, I, I went through school, uh, with a whole bunch of friends who are, you know, writers for a, for a business, and I always thought that that was great, and I thought that I, I couldn’t do it. I tried and it was terrible, and I wanted to tackle that monster. And so I did that and I took courses and yada yada.

Jonathan Alger: And the other thing was this thing that people do is a small community. Even if you were to say, okay, all the people that do museum exhibition and let’s add all the people that do theme park work, let’s add them in and let’s add people who do themed retail and let’s add cruise ships and uh, visitor centers and alumni centers and zoos, you know, all of that.

Jonathan Alger: Even if we brought all of those people together, it’d still be a fairly small number. So, back to architects, last time I checked, there was like 80,000. There’s probably 120,000 members of the AIA right now. But SEGD itself has what, 2000. So it’s a relatively small group, and that means that there isn’t a critical mass adequate to generate a, uh, criticism, uh, textual communication. There isn’t writing in the field per se, except here and there. And the other gap is professional development, that there isn’t a way that you can get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and get your one word a day calendar about your profession. Or, you know, every month you take a little continuing education unit or something and it’s like, ooh, storm drain flashing great.

Jonathan Alger: You know? And I just felt that, uh, I could combine those two things. I can combine that interest in writing, the fact that I’ve been doing it for a number of years, and I can share what I’ve learned.

Abigail Honor: One of the things I just wanna pick on what you said, Jonathan, is you had a need to write. You didn’t feel comfortable writing, and you forced yourself through that discomfort to achieve the goal that was pushing you forwards.

Abigail Honor: But only from doing that and facing those fears and facing those obstacles and overcoming do you ever accomplish anything? So unfortunately, in order to accomplish anything, you have to go through the, through the quagmire and put yourself in an uncomfortable situation to get the other side.

Jonathan Alger: Uh, Abby, you’re uh, totally right.

Jonathan Alger: I think that there’s this big realm of discomfort that you have to aim for. I’ve done projects with clients, some of my client work has been insanely uncomfortable for me. Things we’re, we’re working with a client group that I don’t think I have anything in common with, I don’t agree with in some ways. I agree with the project they’re doing, but there’s something else about, uh, who they are that may be on a personal basis I wouldn’t agree with.

Jonathan Alger: And the thing that I find all the time is once you get through this sort of weird more Mordor on the other side, you’re like: What? That wasn’t Mordor at all. Who has so worried about that zone of discomfort turns out in retrospect, looking back at it to be wonderful. I’ve had clients that I thought were gonna be just, I, I don’t, I don’t know how we’re gonna get through this.

Jonathan Alger: And you kind of figure it out. And after the first meeting, everybody is like, you know, going out to lunch together individually, you are like, what?

Abigail Honor: Yeah, I completely agree. Completely agree. And also dealing in the moment that it’s not comfortable with the job where you’ve overreached somewhere or you feel you may be overreaching or you’re not all on the same page, whatever the challenge is, learning to deal with the stress of that is something that I’m constantly challenged with.

Brenda Cowan: Well, this is something, uh, we had, uh, on a recent podcast, Sarana Pringle from Yale who does studies and research in creativity and emotional intelligence. And this was a piece of what she was talking about and what she studies, which is for the creative person, and I would say for a creative leader as well, being able to enter into discomfort and being able to manage not knowing. How this is going to turn out or where this is going to go is an enormous skill and it’s something that you have as a significant tool in your toolbox.

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I think that’s often the case when you’re, when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a business leader, or you’re a partner in a firm, or you’re trying to, uh, negotiate any kind of new possibility. It’s highly likely that some aspect of what you’re being asked to do is something that you currently are not a master of, and it simply doesn’t work that you would attempt to become a master of the thing in advance and then seek out somebody because all of the engagements are unique. They’re all one-offs, right? They’re all very individual. We just finished a project for. It’s an interactive university project at a lab of Ornithology where the, the median visitor is a 62-year-old, uh, white female with expensive binoculars. If I had attempted to become the master of that before we began that, I don’t know, I’d have a very long gray beard and then they would’ve chosen somebody else. So you have to be willing to knit the parachute on the way down a little bit. You, you have to be confident that you can do it. You have to have a, a record of having done that many times. Before to be confident, like, sure, I can jump out the plane.

Abigail Honor: Mm-hmm. What about fear of failure? Do you think some of the motivation is because you’re like, I’m not gonna fail. I cannot fail. Or how do you deal with failure? Because we all fail. Right? You fail forward. That’s how you learn. That’s how you grow. I’m a big believer in failure, so how do you deal with it?

Jonathan Alger: I like it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a mug. I’m a big believer in failure. I like that. Yeah. You have to acknowledge that you will have a failure, but. You have to make the right bets, right? Everything is thinking in bets, so there are situations where you’re guaranteed to fail. Take on situations like that deliberately and for a specific reason. Otherwise, try to find situations where you could possibly not fail and just do everything you can to not fail.

Abigail Honor: It’s a delicate balance though, right? Because as you are boldly going where you haven’t gone before, trying something new or part new, there is still probably, if we were betting people, a percentage of failure always.

Jonathan Alger: Right, and you do fail. You do fail. That’s, that’s for sure. You get more points for, you know, most improved player is sort of more impressive than player who yet again, one player of the year.

Brenda Cowan: Well, you’re never starting from zero after you have gone for something you’ve attempted, something, you fail, and when you go again, you’re not starting from zero. And I think that that is a reality, and it’s also a mindset that can really, you know, it’s like an abundance mindset. It really enables you, I would suggest, to be able to build the skill and to perhaps end up mastering. Whatever the case might be.

Abigail Honor: Yesterday, we did a pitch for a big commercial campaign and we made the images in ai. We brought them to life in ai and these were science images and technology images, and so we basically made a video in four hours. We got the job simply because we just outworked everyone in this four hours and made what looked like you. The client could see the spots, right? We gave them that wet their appetite. And so I’m sort of shocked at how quickly it’s going and I just wondered how you felt about it because we are already seeing clients using it.

Abigail Honor: So if we are not doing it, they’ll come to the table and show us what, well, last night we did this and so we have to keep up with our clients now. Because you get a client who happens to be, have a creative director who’s very techie and suddenly we can’t be outworked by them. So I just wondered what your, we’re in a frenetic race to keep up with AI and to see how we can use it effectively, and I just wondered what your thinking was on it all.

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I, I think that, uh, you know, the advances in AI are not evenly distributed. Mm-hmm. It’s not a, it’s not a yeah’s kind of a linear way that’s moving up the beech tsunami that’s coming towards our island or whatever. It’s, I don’t know. It’s, it’s an army where some of the phalanx are further ahead than the other ones or something.

Jonathan Alger: But in, in what we do when we’re trying to work on a physical space, it’s a complex, unique, three-dimensional puzzle. In, um, a situation like that, there is no way that AI can solve the problem for you. Uh, once you’ve solved it, AI could, you know, render up something similar. Uh, in the early days of Dall-E and Midjourney.

Jonathan Alger: I said, you know, Dall-E, hey, I’m gonna experiment with you. I’d like to you to make me, uh, an uh, photographic realistic image of a young woman in a sundress in a museum looking at a sword that’s in a vitrine. And the results were absolutely laughable. So the more specific in the early days right now for ai, the more specific that you want to get, the less joy you’re gonna have and things that are already well chewed and masticated by the computers of the internet where there’s already ample material to learn on. You’ll be able to do something like that. So if I were to say, Hey, AI, give me a picture of a multicultural group of preppy kids drinking sodas. Boy, I could get some great stuff for that. But if I were to say like, give me an image of a really cool concept for an exhibit that’s about, uh, shepherding in Iceland. It’s gonna, it’s gonna balk.

Abigail Honor: Yep. Last question. Advice to young exhibit designers?

Jonathan Alger: I would say in, it depends. If you would like to make yourself indispensable and get a well-rounded, a little bit of everything, kind of an experience to go work at a firm that is looking for that. You should go sign up for Brenda’s program. If you would like to work for a firm like mine and there aren’t many or like yours, Abby, there, there’s maybe 20, 25 firms like ours in the entire country. If you wanna work for a firm like that, it’s a little bit more of a mercenary outlook. And for people like that, I would recommend, uh, that you should, first, you should become a T-shaped person. You should get a very broad understanding, but there should be one thing that you’re very deep in. And, um, that, that might be architecture. We have our, um, our head, our most senior staff member in 3D design has two degrees in architecture.

Jonathan Alger: So, uh, and you know, likewise with graphic design, uh, likewise with media, et cetera. So, um, when people are hiring us and they, they need to get the job done well, and they need to get it done quickly, et cetera, that’s, that’s the kind of, um, talent pool that we’re, that we’re looking for.

Abigail Honor: Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us. This was really, really interesting and entertaining. And yeah, everybody check out MTM. It’s a fantastic podcast.

Brenda Cowan: It really is.

Abigail Honor: Podcast. Absolutely. Essential. Essential, I think.

Jonathan Alger: Aw, I like that word. Yeah.

Abigail Honor: So, um, yeah, thank you and thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience and make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend.

Abigail Honor: We’ll see you next time.

Engineer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lauren Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Jonathan Alger is Managing Partner and Co-founder of the design firm C&G Partners. He is a multi-specialist working in interactive cultural space and experiential design. He is also the host and author of "Making the Museum,” a podcast and newsletter for the cultural experience field. Jonathan’s clients include the 9/11 Museum, Bronx Zoo, Cornell, Federal Reserve, Gates Foundation, Holocaust Museum, Library of Congress, NASA, National Archives, Princeton, Smithsonian, and US Department of State. Jonathan has been honored by the AIGA, AAM, AASLH, Anthem Awards, Apex Awards, ADC, CA, IDSA, NEH, SEGD, TDC and the Webbys. He is a National Design Award Finalist and two-time winner of the AAM MUSE awards, and served two terms as President of the Society for Experiential Graphic Design. Before co-founding C&G Partners, Jonathan was a Principal at the design firm Chermayeff & Geismar Inc. Jonathan graduated from Yale with honors and distinction in Architecture, magna cum laude. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons.

Abigail Honor: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you are new to the show, a hardy welcome to our regular listeners. Thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor. Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

Abigail Honor: Today we are talking with a very recognizable voice in our community, literally and figuratively. Jonathan Alger, Jonathan, many know you as the co-founder and managing partner of CNG Partners, where your clients run the gamut and include the nine 11 Museum, nasa, Cornell, the Smithsonian, US Department of State.

Abigail Honor: I, I can go on. You’ve been honored. Buy more initialisms than I can pronounce sequentially on this show. ’cause I tried. As well as being a two time winner of the A Am Muse Awards, he’s also served two terms of the president of SEGD and recently we’re all enjoying your podcast and newsletter, making the museum.

Abigail Honor: Jonathan, a huge welcome to the show.

Jonathan Alger: Very happy to be here. Thank you both for having me. I’m a big fan of your show.

Brenda Cowan: Thank you Jonathan. I happen to know that you’re a musician, you’re an avid reader, and I think of it as a collector of amazing true or sometimes not so true facts and anecdotes. You always seem to have an incredible story to share.

Brenda Cowan: That inevitably leaves me wondering. Is that for real? I also know that you appreciate it when others in your firm have and share what I’ll call out of work talents such as art making and music. So tell us how do your myriad personal and professional interests and talents synergize into the work that you do?

Jonathan Alger: I don’t know. Uh, I think that if I were giving advice to somebody today about pursuing a career or creating a company or both, I’m not sure I would advise them to do what we have done because I’m not sure that the environment is really conducive to that. You know, nowadays it’s all about specializing and, and what we do is sort of neither specializing nor generalizing, but, somewhere in between. And I think that’s a, that’s a difficult spot to be in, I think. But for us, it’s been great. We love the lifestyle of multi-specialty work, and so we’re in, in my firm, I, I do a lot of exhibition design and experience design. That’s what I write about. That’s what I podcast about. That’s what I’m sort of most known for, but coming up in the business, I did all the other things that you would think a traditional communication design person would do: branding and, uh, way finding and digital projects and print and all of that sort of stuff. So it was sort of a apprenticeship that felt a little bit more like learning how to run or learning how to do the decathlon rather than learning how to run the a hundred meter dash only.

Jonathan Alger: But you know, again, I’m not sure that that’s business advice I would give any, anyone today. Do not, do not set out to become a medium sized Swiss army knife.

Abigail Honor: I feel the exact same way. We don’t have an elevator pitch for what we do. Every time I meet a client, it’s really hard because when you are medium size, small to medium.

Abigail Honor: I think we’re probably a bit smaller than you guys and you’re trying to pitch what you do, but you have a depth or a multidisciplinary team that can actually do branding, do wayfinding, for example, experience design, um, you know, vr, ar, digital, whatever it is in your Swiss Army knife. It’s really hard to be able to pitch that to clients when they’re often just looking for one thing

Jonathan Alger: That’s right.

Abigail Honor: I’m always trying to say, what’s your problem and let us fix it. Don’t come to us for a set specific task. How are some of the challenges? As you mentioned, you have this rich team and they have a lot of things they can do. How do you see the next five years in terms of your business? Do you ever think, oh, we need to specialize.

Abigail Honor: It will be better to be one size fits all for people or like, what’s your perception on that?

Jonathan Alger: I have no idea. I’d like to be able to answer with a very fluid and cogent, uh, words to live by that people could whip their notebook out on and start scribbling away, but I don’t really, I don’t really have an answer for that.

Jonathan Alger: I think we’re maybe birds of a feather. Um, we’ve been around long enough that we’ve just got a pretty big portfolio in each one of those areas. So when a client comes to us with a particular specialty they want, we just show them that. Every once in a while we come across a client that needs, you know, pineapples, storm doors, and to be flown in an airplane and we can handle them as well.

Abigail Honor: So in terms of like CNG, you know, you’re very much known for a focus on cultural nonprofit work. What, why, why is it tell us like that special focus and why it’s important for you?

Jonathan Alger: Our firm, uh, CNG Partners is a descended firm and of another firm called, uh, Chermayeff & Geismar, and Chermayeff & Geismar is a, a sort of a original gangster, uh, formed in the fifties old school, New York graphic design firm. One of the firms that invented or popularized the term graphic design and was one of the very first firms ever to do exhibition design as a firm actually.

Jonathan Alger: And I just happened to luckily get an opportunity to work there and I, I started there as a junior designer and I left there as, as one of the principles of the firm, and then started this firm, which is a descendant. And that firm for whatever reason, and probably personal interest, et cetera, just didn’t do much commercial work, didn’t do much marketing, didn’t sell soap as we used to say.

Jonathan Alger: And so the firm that I now am the managing partner of and one of the owners of is following suit, and that started to refine itself even more when we created this firm 20 years ago. We started eventually, after five, 10 years in, we realized that 85, 90% of of our clients and our financial health was coming from the broadly defined cultural sector.

Jonathan Alger: And so we said, let’s just plant a flag. And not actively go after commercial projects as much.

Abigail Honor: Oh, that’s really interesting. Financially, was that a gamble?

Jonathan Alger: You know, like, I’m, I’m fond of saying like, nonprofit is a tax status, not a business goal. So, uh, well run nonprofits. We work with a lot of nonprofits, we work with a lot of government entities. We work with NGOs, et cetera. Let’s think about some nonprofits that we know well by name: Harvard, the Smithsonian, National Geographic. I don’t know, NASA, if you want to include government entities. These, I don’t think you’d think of any of those entities as being poorly funded. So I think something like 10% of the workforce in the United States works in the nonprofit sector writ large.

Jonathan Alger: And so it’s, it’s a good place to be. You can even be a niche within a niche, and that’s, that’s where we are doing arts and culture.

Brenda Cowan: So when I think about how it is that CNG brings voices, people, the human into your exhibition projects and how it is that, in my interpretation, it makes for very inclusive environments, it makes for, again, very human environments.

Brenda Cowan: And I’m curious to hear a little bit about how it is that you think or you approach projects with a human element in mind. Or is it the kind of thing that just sort of develops heuristically?

Jonathan Alger: There’s always been an issue with museums taking a stand and having a very firm opinion about something. In some cases, it’s sort of incontrovertible.

Jonathan Alger: We are the Museum of Forks. Forks have tines and on the other end is a part where you hold them. Right? You can say that if you’re the museum of for, you’re the curator of the Museum of Forks. You can say things like that. But otherwise, we work with a lot of museums and museum-like entities that are a little bit uncomfortable with sort of taking a stand.

Jonathan Alger: So one of the, I don’t know, tricks or hacks or rules of thumb that, that we’ve stumbled on and and gone with is this idea of the personal testimony trick. The idea that, if we can get someone who’s maybe not a subject matter expert, they’re not an SME, they’re just somebody else who has lived experience or they’re adjacent to the subject, or they may not know everything about chemistry, but they work in a lab and we have them say what they feel about a subject, then that’s a great way for visitors to have a way in that’s a little bit more understandable to them.

Jonathan Alger: It’s also a great way for museums to avoid looking like there’s only one answer and that people are supposed to look to them for some kind of absolute truth. So that’s the sort of the personal testimony trick, and you can do that a number of ways. You can do that like we’re doing right now, recording something in audio.

Jonathan Alger: You can also do it in writing.

Brenda Cowan: I’m really curious as a leader, how it is that you effectively communicate or even educate clients about the work that you do. It’s a particular form of communication, um, I would suggest, and I’m really curious, how do you approach that?

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I’d say I, some people refer to that as sort of, uh, consulting or educational consultative relationship with your clients. Other people refer to it as being long-winded and pedantic. I guess it, it depends on the, the situation, but I don’t mind at all trying to help clients understand every aspect of something that they might want to understand. Uh, and some people are like that, you know, on the show that I do, I just had a guest who is a specialist in museum display cases, and you can tell that she loves to explain that stuff to people, and that is stuff that really needs to be explained to people. And nine times out of 10, the clients that we’re working with are people who have never done this before. They may very well never do it again. They may decide never to do it again. Every once in a while they decide to do it again.

Jonathan Alger: But when you go in and you want to have your knee operated on, and there’s some people that are just like, hey, fix my knee, okay, knock me out, take care of it. But there are other people that said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. What are my options? What’s entailed? I think you just have to do that.

Abigail Honor: Given what you’ve just said in terms of the education, if you have money and you need to build a museum, they automatically, the clients think, I need an architect. I keep finding us in situations where whenever we are brought in, the client has already made some decisions, like even buying hardware too early.

Jonathan Alger: Oh yeah. We get that all the time.

Abigail Honor: And it’s,

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, the, the AV salespeople got to them.

Jonathan Alger: They got to them.

Abigail Honor: Exactly. How do we,

Jonathan Alger: That’s a really big LED wall. It’s curving.

Abigail Honor: It’s exactly like that. Yeah. So how do we build a better understanding of our industry and how to work through these projects and our process with clients or build that awareness so they’re doing it in the right order at least?

Jonathan Alger: That’s a really, that’s a super question I’ve never really thought exactly about that, you know, we are, everyone around this table is sort of around the same table, right? We don’t have a client sitting in the fourth chair over there. So if I take your question correctly, it is, how can we make sure that before we show up, the clients know what it is that we’re gonna do and they’re starting to make the right decisions, et cetera.

Jonathan Alger: So, I don’t know, maybe, uh, you know, uh, SEGD, the Society for Experiential Graph Design has just started this new group, a professional, uh, practice group, uh, that is for people to do exhibition and experience design. Maybe we should focus one of the committees of that group on creating some kind of website or page at SEGD.org or literature or something that could somehow be distributed. You could use the, the sort of the power and the force of a larger organization, uh, and kind of do a got milk campaign. Like if we’re all dairy farmers, you could do a bit of a got milk campaign, not to, not to create demand for our bovine liquid, but to make the client sort of understand, you know, what, what the basic steps are.

Abigail Honor: Yeah. And who they need sitting around the table at the beginning.

Jonathan Alger: That’s a great idea. I’m gonna go do that right now. I’m gonna leave,

Brenda Cowan: I would suggest that you’re already underway with doing this, or at least into, into begin our segue actually into talking about making the museum, part of what I see happening is you making a very substantial contribution to providing everyone and certainly, you know, prospective clients or existing clients with a vocabulary, with an understanding of the tools, the techniques, and understanding the functions and the possibilities of, you know, what I think of as a very kaleidoscopic profession. And I’m curious, was that your intention or do you see yourself doing that? Because from the outside, it seems that that is a huge part of your outcomes.

Jonathan Alger: So making the museum, shameless plug. You can look at makingthemuseum.com, dear Listener, is both a podcast, which is attempting to be as good as the podcast that I’m on right now, but is falling very short.

Brenda Cowan: Au contraire.

Jonathan Alger: But is also a newsletter. It started out as a newsletter. I was writing five very short one minute read, uh, newsletters per week and now it’s three times a week by popular demand or popular un-demand. And that started, uh, two ways. One was sort of a selfish way. I’d, I’d had a lifelong dream to attempt to get over my absolutely fundamental terror of writing, uh, in public, uh, doing something where it wasn’t just business emails, but something where I was purely writing and I was asking people to look at my writing.

Jonathan Alger: I, I, I went through school, uh, with a whole bunch of friends who are, you know, writers for a, for a business, and I always thought that that was great, and I thought that I, I couldn’t do it. I tried and it was terrible, and I wanted to tackle that monster. And so I did that and I took courses and yada yada.

Jonathan Alger: And the other thing was this thing that people do is a small community. Even if you were to say, okay, all the people that do museum exhibition and let’s add all the people that do theme park work, let’s add them in and let’s add people who do themed retail and let’s add cruise ships and uh, visitor centers and alumni centers and zoos, you know, all of that.

Jonathan Alger: Even if we brought all of those people together, it’d still be a fairly small number. So, back to architects, last time I checked, there was like 80,000. There’s probably 120,000 members of the AIA right now. But SEGD itself has what, 2000. So it’s a relatively small group, and that means that there isn’t a critical mass adequate to generate a, uh, criticism, uh, textual communication. There isn’t writing in the field per se, except here and there. And the other gap is professional development, that there isn’t a way that you can get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and get your one word a day calendar about your profession. Or, you know, every month you take a little continuing education unit or something and it’s like, ooh, storm drain flashing great.

Jonathan Alger: You know? And I just felt that, uh, I could combine those two things. I can combine that interest in writing, the fact that I’ve been doing it for a number of years, and I can share what I’ve learned.

Abigail Honor: One of the things I just wanna pick on what you said, Jonathan, is you had a need to write. You didn’t feel comfortable writing, and you forced yourself through that discomfort to achieve the goal that was pushing you forwards.

Abigail Honor: But only from doing that and facing those fears and facing those obstacles and overcoming do you ever accomplish anything? So unfortunately, in order to accomplish anything, you have to go through the, through the quagmire and put yourself in an uncomfortable situation to get the other side.

Jonathan Alger: Uh, Abby, you’re uh, totally right.

Jonathan Alger: I think that there’s this big realm of discomfort that you have to aim for. I’ve done projects with clients, some of my client work has been insanely uncomfortable for me. Things we’re, we’re working with a client group that I don’t think I have anything in common with, I don’t agree with in some ways. I agree with the project they’re doing, but there’s something else about, uh, who they are that may be on a personal basis I wouldn’t agree with.

Jonathan Alger: And the thing that I find all the time is once you get through this sort of weird more Mordor on the other side, you’re like: What? That wasn’t Mordor at all. Who has so worried about that zone of discomfort turns out in retrospect, looking back at it to be wonderful. I’ve had clients that I thought were gonna be just, I, I don’t, I don’t know how we’re gonna get through this.

Jonathan Alger: And you kind of figure it out. And after the first meeting, everybody is like, you know, going out to lunch together individually, you are like, what?

Abigail Honor: Yeah, I completely agree. Completely agree. And also dealing in the moment that it’s not comfortable with the job where you’ve overreached somewhere or you feel you may be overreaching or you’re not all on the same page, whatever the challenge is, learning to deal with the stress of that is something that I’m constantly challenged with.

Brenda Cowan: Well, this is something, uh, we had, uh, on a recent podcast, Sarana Pringle from Yale who does studies and research in creativity and emotional intelligence. And this was a piece of what she was talking about and what she studies, which is for the creative person, and I would say for a creative leader as well, being able to enter into discomfort and being able to manage not knowing. How this is going to turn out or where this is going to go is an enormous skill and it’s something that you have as a significant tool in your toolbox.

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I think that’s often the case when you’re, when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a business leader, or you’re a partner in a firm, or you’re trying to, uh, negotiate any kind of new possibility. It’s highly likely that some aspect of what you’re being asked to do is something that you currently are not a master of, and it simply doesn’t work that you would attempt to become a master of the thing in advance and then seek out somebody because all of the engagements are unique. They’re all one-offs, right? They’re all very individual. We just finished a project for. It’s an interactive university project at a lab of Ornithology where the, the median visitor is a 62-year-old, uh, white female with expensive binoculars. If I had attempted to become the master of that before we began that, I don’t know, I’d have a very long gray beard and then they would’ve chosen somebody else. So you have to be willing to knit the parachute on the way down a little bit. You, you have to be confident that you can do it. You have to have a, a record of having done that many times. Before to be confident, like, sure, I can jump out the plane.

Abigail Honor: Mm-hmm. What about fear of failure? Do you think some of the motivation is because you’re like, I’m not gonna fail. I cannot fail. Or how do you deal with failure? Because we all fail. Right? You fail forward. That’s how you learn. That’s how you grow. I’m a big believer in failure, so how do you deal with it?

Jonathan Alger: I like it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a mug. I’m a big believer in failure. I like that. Yeah. You have to acknowledge that you will have a failure, but. You have to make the right bets, right? Everything is thinking in bets, so there are situations where you’re guaranteed to fail. Take on situations like that deliberately and for a specific reason. Otherwise, try to find situations where you could possibly not fail and just do everything you can to not fail.

Abigail Honor: It’s a delicate balance though, right? Because as you are boldly going where you haven’t gone before, trying something new or part new, there is still probably, if we were betting people, a percentage of failure always.

Jonathan Alger: Right, and you do fail. You do fail. That’s, that’s for sure. You get more points for, you know, most improved player is sort of more impressive than player who yet again, one player of the year.

Brenda Cowan: Well, you’re never starting from zero after you have gone for something you’ve attempted, something, you fail, and when you go again, you’re not starting from zero. And I think that that is a reality, and it’s also a mindset that can really, you know, it’s like an abundance mindset. It really enables you, I would suggest, to be able to build the skill and to perhaps end up mastering. Whatever the case might be.

Abigail Honor: Yesterday, we did a pitch for a big commercial campaign and we made the images in ai. We brought them to life in ai and these were science images and technology images, and so we basically made a video in four hours. We got the job simply because we just outworked everyone in this four hours and made what looked like you. The client could see the spots, right? We gave them that wet their appetite. And so I’m sort of shocked at how quickly it’s going and I just wondered how you felt about it because we are already seeing clients using it.

Abigail Honor: So if we are not doing it, they’ll come to the table and show us what, well, last night we did this and so we have to keep up with our clients now. Because you get a client who happens to be, have a creative director who’s very techie and suddenly we can’t be outworked by them. So I just wondered what your, we’re in a frenetic race to keep up with AI and to see how we can use it effectively, and I just wondered what your thinking was on it all.

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I, I think that, uh, you know, the advances in AI are not evenly distributed. Mm-hmm. It’s not a, it’s not a yeah’s kind of a linear way that’s moving up the beech tsunami that’s coming towards our island or whatever. It’s, I don’t know. It’s, it’s an army where some of the phalanx are further ahead than the other ones or something.

Jonathan Alger: But in, in what we do when we’re trying to work on a physical space, it’s a complex, unique, three-dimensional puzzle. In, um, a situation like that, there is no way that AI can solve the problem for you. Uh, once you’ve solved it, AI could, you know, render up something similar. Uh, in the early days of Dall-E and Midjourney.

Jonathan Alger: I said, you know, Dall-E, hey, I’m gonna experiment with you. I’d like to you to make me, uh, an uh, photographic realistic image of a young woman in a sundress in a museum looking at a sword that’s in a vitrine. And the results were absolutely laughable. So the more specific in the early days right now for ai, the more specific that you want to get, the less joy you’re gonna have and things that are already well chewed and masticated by the computers of the internet where there’s already ample material to learn on. You’ll be able to do something like that. So if I were to say, Hey, AI, give me a picture of a multicultural group of preppy kids drinking sodas. Boy, I could get some great stuff for that. But if I were to say like, give me an image of a really cool concept for an exhibit that’s about, uh, shepherding in Iceland. It’s gonna, it’s gonna balk.

Abigail Honor: Yep. Last question. Advice to young exhibit designers?

Jonathan Alger: I would say in, it depends. If you would like to make yourself indispensable and get a well-rounded, a little bit of everything, kind of an experience to go work at a firm that is looking for that. You should go sign up for Brenda’s program. If you would like to work for a firm like mine and there aren’t many or like yours, Abby, there, there’s maybe 20, 25 firms like ours in the entire country. If you wanna work for a firm like that, it’s a little bit more of a mercenary outlook. And for people like that, I would recommend, uh, that you should, first, you should become a T-shaped person. You should get a very broad understanding, but there should be one thing that you’re very deep in. And, um, that, that might be architecture. We have our, um, our head, our most senior staff member in 3D design has two degrees in architecture.

Jonathan Alger: So, uh, and you know, likewise with graphic design, uh, likewise with media, et cetera. So, um, when people are hiring us and they, they need to get the job done well, and they need to get it done quickly, et cetera, that’s, that’s the kind of, um, talent pool that we’re, that we’re looking for.

Abigail Honor: Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us. This was really, really interesting and entertaining. And yeah, everybody check out MTM. It’s a fantastic podcast.

Brenda Cowan: It really is.

Abigail Honor: Podcast. Absolutely. Essential. Essential, I think.

Jonathan Alger: Aw, I like that word. Yeah.

Abigail Honor: So, um, yeah, thank you and thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience and make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend.

Abigail Honor: We’ll see you next time.

Engineer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lauren Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

What If It Doesn't Work? (And What If It Does?)

What If It Doesn't Work? (And What If It Does?)

April 2, 2025
Creativity and Courage with Murilo Melo

Creativity and Courage with Murilo Melo

March 5, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
How do creativity and courage shape the future of design? In this episode of Matters of Experience, Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan sit down with Murilo Melo, a design leader who believes that great design isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about meaning, connection, and bold decision-making.

Murilo shares insights on the evolving role of designers as problem definers, the power of taking risks in branding, and how creativity and strategy must work hand in hand. He also reflects on the challenges of balancing speed, technology, and thoughtfulness in today’s fast-paced world.

Whether you’re a designer, brand strategist, or creative professional, this episode offers a fresh perspective on how to make brands truly matter.
Murilo Melo is the Global Head of Design at GUT. With over 20 years of experience, Murilo has worked at agencies such as: F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Wunderman Thompson, Leo Burnett, Publicis Brazil, BETC/Havas, DM9DDB (DDB Brazil). He has directly contributed to iconic projects for clients such as: Coca Cola, AB Inbev, Netflix, Google, Hersheys, Kraft Heinz, Mercado Livre, FIAT, Honda, among others. He has won awards at all national and international festivals such as Cannes Lions Grand Prix + more than 30 Cannes lions, D&AD Pencils, Effie, One Show, Clio, Andys and ADC.

Murilo Melo

HERSHE

Grad in Black

New York Festivals Advertising Awards

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, a hearty welcome, and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, everyone. This is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: So today we’re chatting with Murilo Melo, who is the global head of design at Gut. He has over 20 years of experience working at agencies like Leo Burnett, Publicis Brazil, and Havas. He’s worked on iconic projects for clients like Coca-Cola, Netflix, Google and Hershey: I’m not a huge fan of the taste of that chocolate, but what I do like was the HERSHE campaign for International Women’s Day, where you showcased female artists of all types on the packaging and across digital.

 

It was absolutely beautiful and told our story really, really effectively. And you’ve also won awards like such a long list of awards, top national, international festivals like Cannes Lions, D&AD, Effie, One Show, Clio, the list goes on. And now your career is most definitely climaxing as you join my design jury at New York Festival Advertising Awards this year, as we have the opportunity to review and award the top talent in design experience design for the past year, which we’re going to talk about later. Murilo, welcome to the show.

 

Murilo: Thank you so much, Abigail. Thank you, Brenda. And after this introduction, I might call you for every meeting I do with my team.

 

Abby: We’re available. We’re available. I’ve never been to Brazil. I’m right there.

 

Brenda: Oh my gosh. And I’m right there with you. And what is so delightful is that you make it very easy for us to be very enthusiastic about your work and what you do and where you’ve been. I’d love to dive in and get us kickstarted with thinking about what it’s like to design for iconic brands, iconic brands that are household names around the world, and even through your design work, how it is that you’re at once thinking on a massive scale, right, globally, but also about everyday people, everyday lives. Can you tell us about how you craft messages, how you craft experiences that work for the whole world, so to speak, and yet resonate with just individual people? The human scale.

 

Murilo: Yeah, this, this Brenda, is a challenge because these brands, most of these brands we are talking about, they are loved brands and people love brands, people connect with the brands, they talk about it, they’re reacting to their social media. So, when you’re working with these kind of major brands around the world, it is a responsibility to know what to do. But also the payoff is amazing because of course you have great minds at the brand side, from the marketing team, from the, even the design team inside the companies, and I feel this is important. I’m super respectful for what the relationship between brands and people, and the goal is always to be impactful in a good way, because people, people get it, you know, when you’re pushing too hard or when it’s not related and you’re just doing something to call the attention. So, what I try to do, and I think it really works, is to be true to the brand and to the consumers.

 

Abby: That’s really interesting.

 

Brenda: What does it look like to be true to the consumer? Like, is there a way of thinking about the person so that we can resonate with, you know, the brand with them? Is there a particular like headspace that you get into, or is there a method?

 

Murilo: I don’t think there’s an established method, but I think it’s something related to, deliver to the people what the brand has to give, because sometimes we see some, some brands, or some communication pushing so hard into a direction that the brand does not represent. They don’t have that commitment inside of their marketing team. And then it sounds fake, you know. So, I think it’s, it’s a kind of a respectful thing. And I think brands are more—they are more aware of this nowadays. We lived at a time, a recent period that anything was worth it to say if it looked good for the brands. And people are not buying that anymore and brands are taking more care. I think it’s something that the market is more mature about, which is great.

 

Abby: But how do you like, in, like taking Hershey or Coca-Cola, I know a lot of people enjoy Hershey, lots of people enjoy Coca-Cola. How are you putting yourself in the mind’s eye of the consumer? Do you look on social? Are you seeing the way they talk about the brand, what they like about the brand? How is it that you know how to successfully address that consumer? Words to use, visuals to choose, or concept to make the campaign about? Do you know what I mean? Because you’re over there, you’re in Brazil, you may or may not like the brand you’re working for. So how do you bridge that gap?

 

Murilo: Yeah, for example, the Hershey’s campaign, HERSHE, it all started with the finding that on the name and in the packaging, you have “her,” and you have “she,” which is nice, a nice finding, and we are all excited about that. But we’re like, what are we doing with this? Like, are we just saying, hey, there’s “her” and “she,” here, congratulate woman. Well, I don’t think that’s enough. But that’s kind of what I was saying before, like why, why are you saying that?

 

Then we took a step further and say, hey, we should elevate women, her, artists, she writes, her poems, her paintings, and then bring the community in. And like I was saying, inside the company at the time we worked on this project, there was, a department that was, the leadership was filled, I mean, majority of the leadership was women. So, it was all true to the brand, but it came to the consumers to be part of that. And the initiative really worked because it has a large scale of showing the artists and making a gallery and exporting the idea to many countries. And the community got excited because we can, you can do these kind of things, and the community refuses, and that’s okay, it’s part of the job. But it was interesting for everyone. So, I think when we got into that place, we said, well, we are actually doing something relevant, influential, and not only communication or advertising, you know.

 

Brenda: Yeah, it was a dialogue.

 

Murilo: Yes.

 

Abby: When you think about design, it can mean a lot of things. It’s a huge umbrella, right? There’s visual and communication design, digital and user experience design, UX, product industrial design, environmental experiential design, marketing, advertising design, fashion design, spatial design. So, talk to us about what your focus is or what types of design you’re drawn to in your sort of everyday life, so not necessarily what you put out, but what influences you.

 

Murilo: Yeah, sure, and design is everywhere, is in everything. And that is hard for us that are obsessed about design because it’s like, where do I look? So, I mean, I live in a constant, like, overwhelming about everything that is being done, especially now that we have access to everything throughout social media. And it’s too much, actually, because it’s too much good stuff that you see, interesting stuff and it’s hard to follow everything.

 

But what really caught my attention and what I like, I love the most when I talk about design and talking about the day by day, is when I see design connected to creativity. And it could sound redundant because it is a creative expression. But when design is connected to a creative purpose or something behind it, I think it’s, it elevates the creativity and the creativity, it’s really beneficiated by design.

 

I’ve been seeing a lot of luxury brands on social media, and they’re working so well with design, and animation, and kind of unusual things visually. And this is, is more interesting for me at least, than what we saw in the past that was kind of a blasé thing, something more distant. So, I mean, it’s a random example, but I think creativity elevates design, and since my day-by-day work is—I have a design studio inside of an advertising agency, right? So, my sweet spot in curiosity in my heart is between this connection: design and creativity coming to impact and to amuse people.

 

Brenda: We had a wonderful conversation a while ago with Zorana Pringle, who is an expert in creativity. She does research at Yale, and I really appreciate listening to you talk about creativity right now and its relationship with design and also thinking about how it is that creativity is kind of like a muscle that we exercise, and it sounds like, you know, when you talk about imagination, when you talk about inspiration, when you talk about creativity, you very much so are bringing a lot of that, you know, that muscle to the table, if you will, which certainly must make a big difference, or at least it seems to result in some pretty remarkable projects.

 

So, thinking about some remarkable projects, one of the things that I was really curious about was about pitching to clients. And I’m curious when you know that you truly have something special to share, what’s it like when you know that you’ve really created this amazing idea, and is there a trick to getting everybody else on board?

 

Murilo: That’s a good question, and I wish I had the trick answer, but I think it’s deeper than that because it’s a construction. In the past, I think designers from, especially from this environment, advertising, creativity, branding, they were often seen as finishers of an idea, right, like executing, developed the concept, so let’s put the design team now that things are coming right. And this perception is shifting. For me, it already shifted completely. So, designers are no longer just problem solvers, they are problem definers. So, they help shape conversation before a single visual idea is created, and this is where I think is the heart of the, the thing when you want to, let’s call it sell a design piece. You got to show the relevance before because it’s a business decision because it’s important for the brand to create value. And then I show you the idea of how doing that. And it’s not just like, being a showman, a showwoman in presenting, but about making the client realize how important the design is for its brand or its projects.

 

Abby: I have a quick, quick sort of build on to that because we’ve had some experiences where we’ve pitched something, a concept, and the client initially has loved it, and then over successive meetings, or it even could be the next one, something internally shifted and the feedbacks almost gets 180ed. Has that ever happened to you, when client feedback has started off really onboard to an idea and sort of got watered down, maybe somehow.

 

Brenda: Something got lost in the process.

 

Murilo: Yeah, yeah, this is really frequent because the clients, they have more complex structures nowadays, like I think before it was one-on-one, just a team of decision makers and now the big clients, they have a whole marketing team, a lot of layers, and we work with something that is kind of subjective. We sell like ideas and there is risk on that.

 

That’s why I think the most important thing is to push courage from the clients. It is brave to approve something that has not been done, or that’s kind of not what the brand has always worked on. And we at Gut, we have a methodology which is amazing, which is the bravery scale. We bring clients in and we say, hey, let’s look at the bravery scale, from 1 to 10, and we talk about what is being 10, brave, like living like there’s no tomorrow. And 1 is like, hey, I don’t know if I should. And there are a lot of steps on this bravery scale. And maybe the thing on some projects is to go from 2 to 3, which is amazing. It’s incredible. It’s not being like; I’m going to throw the papers and put my job in risk. No, it’s something, it’s one thing that’s going to maybe be rewarded and then you’re going to jump more. It’s going to make you feel secure and more brave. So, it’s this kind of thing we talk about this with the clients and it sometimes works.

 

Brenda: That’s such a beautiful answer.

 

Abby: Yeah, what a great idea as well to get people on board with where they’re coming from, because a lot of our guests talk about boards, if we’re creating exhibitions for museums and lots of different stakeholders, as you mentioned, often 50 up to 100 different stakeholders, all with different appetites for risk, all perceiving the job to be done with different risks involved and wanting to, as you just mentioned, move the needle. So, it’s a really great method that you’ve just described for making sure that at least from your perspective, as the agency, you understand where the client’s risk adversity lies or bravery lies. I think that’s fantastic.

 

Brenda: It is good. And also, I would imagine that your, your awareness of the consumer and, some of those sort of emotional connections that people have with the products, with the brands makes a big difference.

 

Murilo: It’s super does, and we live in a world that it’s possible to test and learn faster. You can try with a small group, you can try it on social media and see how, how is the appetite of people, if the client is a low score on the brave scale, it is a way to start, like, let’s push the tone a little bit and try this with this group. Well, it’s a good reaction. Let’s amplify. Can we scale that? And when we scale that the bravery will be rewarded. And if it is rewarded, it is something that it’s inspiring. Colleagues, the juniors of the team will say, hey, you look what he did, he, it was risky, and it was worth it. I mean, I’m talking like a dreamer because I believe in this. I think this really works.

 

Abby: Do you think that being a dreamer, like you’re obviously great, very personable, I would imagine fantastic with clients, very articulate. You just mentioned juniors. Can you teach what you have?

 

Murilo: Well, I think it’s about trust, intimacy. It’s like everything in life when we are, like, you have to make an impression, you are not yourself, and when you’re not yourself, things sound kind of fake. If you don’t connect, you don’t convince anyone of anything, you know, and that’s not quite easy, because sometimes from the client side or even from inside our team, people are not that open. And how to open their, their hearts and their conversation, and to make this, it’s this kind of soft skill, let’s call it, like that, that I think the world, the world is given so much credit for. Because technically, with all we are seeing the AI things and everything, we are reaching a high level of technical capabilities. But the emotional one, I think that’s the key for these kind of things, you know.

 

Brenda: The pace at which new design tools are being created have sped up projects, and I’m really curious about whether in your experiences, whether or not expectations have shifted in terms of how like rapidly teams are developing and implementing design work. How do you stay so thoughtful? How do you stay so true to the richness of what it is that you’re creating in an industry that seems to be moving increasingly faster?

 

Murilo: It is a paradox because it saves us time, but for us to use it and save us time, we have to invest time to learn. But I think we have to find room to, to breathe, to absorb and to use it and to move it to the next round because it’s a cause of a lot of anxiety. I’m really anxious because when we are working and doing great work and I see something coming out and say, hey, should I have worked less on this project to dedicate time for me and my team to learn that? Because this is the future and if you go into that direction, I mean, I don’t know if we can survive. It’s too much. So, I would, I would take a breath and focus on the work. Stay curious, of course, it’s like, it’s essential for our, has always been for our profession, but at least for me, I don’t see myself always working and producing and learning and testing new. I mean, we have to have space for stuff, you know, that’s at least my point of view.

 

Abby: Well, I think also with, with AI, when you’re making imagery, it’s a whole different way of being creative. So originally, we had pen to paper and it was one way of drawing something, and then you have your tablet and you have your pen, and now we have writing words to create images, which is a whole different mode of processing. And I’m sure if we had a scientist here, when it comes to the brain, like I’m, I’m much more a hold and do, a physical—and so now I’m typing words to articulate an image that I’m trying to get to. But it takes time, and it takes practice. We’re finding it still takes huge amounts of time to get exactly what you want. It takes no time to get something, it’s how well you can start working with it and collaborating with it.

 

Murilo: Yeah, there’s something kind of personal about this. I realized I have always loved notebooks and Moleskines and taking notes, and I realized, it was something that just came to me, that I was not using anymore. I had forgotten my notebooks, and I was searching already, I was thinking on the computer, so I went to Pinterest, to Google, maybe to ChatGPT, anything and was trying to—and then it came to me in December say, no, no, I have to get back to my notebook. And I bought a notebook, and it was game changer. I dedicate ten minutes, I don’t know, some time, thinking, writing, and then I use the machine and I’m trying to do this with the team, hey, hey, let’s, let’s be like AI-free, computer-free for a moment, and then we go—this step is magic, and it already made a lot of difference in my year.

 

Brenda: Oh, good for you.

 

Abby: I have a question for you, Brenda, about your students.

 

Brenda: Sure.

 

Abby: So, in a way, Murilo’s getting his team to slow down, and in answer to your observation that everything’s going faster, how do your students do that? Like how do we fight against the world we live in because everybody’s tempted to just go in and do the prompt, which is a—just get on with it, you know. When you’re talking with your students and guiding them through the world they’re about to go into, what is some advice you give them on how to slow down?

 

Brenda: What I’m able to do with my students is shape an understanding that we’re not fighting, necessarily, the world. The world is, you know, it is changing. It’s developing. It’s growing. The tools are there. They are faster. Ultimately, though, I have a bit of a privilege and I think the students have a bit of a luxury being in the classroom where I can say, we’re going to take a pause right now, and where the majority of the work that I do with them is paper and pencil and it’s, you know, kind of crazy and kind of messy and a little chaotic and very, very creative. And I think that learning that taking that pause, again, like, you know, we’re hearing right now, it’s just simply another tool. A pause is a tool, just like AI is a tool, just like paper and pencil are tools.

 

Murilo: Perfect, yes.

 

Brenda: So, what are like maybe 1 or 2 of the projects that you’re the most proud of?

 

Murilo: We did a project that was really meaningful for so many people. There’s this thing, this, this pain around the world. That is when people are going to graduate, the graduation caps, they are hard to fit into Black people hair. And then our team, which has Black people creating, executing the idea, which of course is their place to think about it, they came up with a solution, said, hey, why shouldn’t we find a designer and make some special graduation caps for all kinds of hairs? And then we said, well, this is amazing. This is a really human thing, and it’s an important moment. It’s about self-esteem, everything. And then we went to talk with a designer, a fashion designer, and he was amazed by the idea. He draw 4 or 5 caps for different kinds of curly hair. And then it was like, it was liquid, people and especially Black people that had passed these into their graduations that work here, they were so excited about the idea. And of course, we were excited too. And then we put it out in the world, and it was amazing. It was amazing. It was really emotional. And now we are actually having the caps into the graduation ceremonies and people are actually wearing them. So, I’m super proud of this, you know.

 

Brenda: Oh my God, this is amazing. This is, like literally, this is a problem in my own program and with my students when they graduate.

 

Murilo: It is Grad In Black, it’s called, the project. And we have an open source for these designs. So, the designers did, we have an open source, a PDF where you can just do it anywhere you want. It tells you how to, and it’s there.

 

Brenda: Amazing.

 

Abby: That’s incredible. Well, so that’s an example of design solving a big problem. Right? That is super rewarding. So, let’s talk about our design jury at New York Festival Advertising Awards. So, you’ll be joining a number of incredible jury members like Jonathan Alger from C&G and Monica Herman from Giant Spoon. So I’m excited to collaborate with Scott Rose, the president, to add sections in the design category that reflect our profession like experiential activations, branded environments, and exhibition design, as well as all the more traditional design entries, because one of the reasons Murilo, that, at least I and I believe Brenda, want to do our podcast is to really build awareness about what we do. And a lot of that is exhibition design, experience design. And so having those categories now under the design umbrella and be recognized for awards is incredibly important to all of the people making amazing work. So, what is it about these awards that are exciting for you?

 

Murilo: The jury will see much more work, creative work because the market is wider. The market is asking for more work. So, we are producing more design work, more relevant design work and it will be amazing to see. I’m actually really curious because I think this past year was game changer for design. So, I think it’s our opportunity to learn, the jury and anyone who applies the work. It is something good because people keep consuming, because people see what have beaten them or what they have beaten. So, it’s a time to study. In advertising and design, we don’t dedicate as much time to study as in medicine, for example. And I think the award shows, they have these, these possibility. Okay, let’s see the golds for New York Festival this year, what the jury said the golds are, where are the industry heading. So, it’s something about the future too, because a lot of these great minds coming together to this conclusion, it is something pointing to the future.

 

Brenda: That is so exciting. Murilo, I’m really hoping you can talk to us about something that you are very, currently, very passionate about. What is—and it could be anything, this is a big, wide open question, but what are you just really, really excited about working with right now?

 

Murilo: I’m trying to go deeper into the entertainment industry. We are doing a project for a rapper/singer in Brazil, and he has such an amazing concept for his album, and we are navigating through that, how to make content for a musician, and the first part was doing a graphic design, and it’s already amazing because you have to study the platforms, how it will look like in Spotify or Apple Music. But beyond that, how is the music industry communicating? Is it a long format? It is a video clip, it is not a video clip anymore, is something on TikTok. So, it’s like a reinvention and there are no answers for these questions, as every time is a new thing. Like Beyoncé comes with an album that talks about, I mean, all the legacy from the country music, and it’s something that is a decision. But Rosalía doing something in TikTok, that is making a performance of her whole live album, which is something that shook the industry. So, I’m really curious about that at this moment.

 

And I would expand the music thing to entertainment, like we are working for a project for Netflix and it’s a new series, it’s a title treatment, and then you have to deep dive on how the art direction and the design comes to life inside the series. How can we apply the logo or the, the attitude or the photography inside of the content? So, these are things that are on my radar right now, and I’m really trying to study and to learn about them.

 

Brenda: I don’t know, you know, I listen, I’m listening to you, and I just keep imagining that you think in a very kaleidoscopic way, like how it is that you are able to integrate so many different aspects of design, be curious about so many different kinds of things, and yet altogether you’re able to form a single message, a single image, perhaps a single idea.

 

Abby

This was really enjoyable. I love the way you described us as problem designers. I just love that. And that method of sort of when you’re pitching, showing the relevance to the client, whatever it is you’re pitching and creating that value and then showing the idea is just is it’s a great way to really ease in ideas that are out of the box. Murilo, thank you so much.

 

Brenda: What a pleasure talking to you.

 

Abby: Yeah, this was fantastic.

 

Murilo: It was really a special moment. Thank you.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you liked what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience, wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

 

Brenda: Thank you for joining us, everyone.

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Murilo Melo is the Global Head of Design at GUT. With over 20 years of experience, Murilo has worked at agencies such as: F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Wunderman Thompson, Leo Burnett, Publicis Brazil, BETC/Havas, DM9DDB (DDB Brazil). He has directly contributed to iconic projects for clients such as: Coca Cola, AB Inbev, Netflix, Google, Hersheys, Kraft Heinz, Mercado Livre, FIAT, Honda, among others. He has won awards at all national and international festivals such as Cannes Lions Grand Prix + more than 30 Cannes lions, D&AD Pencils, Effie, One Show, Clio, Andys and ADC.

Murilo Melo

HERSHE

Grad in Black

New York Festivals Advertising Awards

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, a hearty welcome, and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, everyone. This is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: So today we’re chatting with Murilo Melo, who is the global head of design at Gut. He has over 20 years of experience working at agencies like Leo Burnett, Publicis Brazil, and Havas. He’s worked on iconic projects for clients like Coca-Cola, Netflix, Google and Hershey: I’m not a huge fan of the taste of that chocolate, but what I do like was the HERSHE campaign for International Women’s Day, where you showcased female artists of all types on the packaging and across digital.

 

It was absolutely beautiful and told our story really, really effectively. And you’ve also won awards like such a long list of awards, top national, international festivals like Cannes Lions, D&AD, Effie, One Show, Clio, the list goes on. And now your career is most definitely climaxing as you join my design jury at New York Festival Advertising Awards this year, as we have the opportunity to review and award the top talent in design experience design for the past year, which we’re going to talk about later. Murilo, welcome to the show.

 

Murilo: Thank you so much, Abigail. Thank you, Brenda. And after this introduction, I might call you for every meeting I do with my team.

 

Abby: We’re available. We’re available. I’ve never been to Brazil. I’m right there.

 

Brenda: Oh my gosh. And I’m right there with you. And what is so delightful is that you make it very easy for us to be very enthusiastic about your work and what you do and where you’ve been. I’d love to dive in and get us kickstarted with thinking about what it’s like to design for iconic brands, iconic brands that are household names around the world, and even through your design work, how it is that you’re at once thinking on a massive scale, right, globally, but also about everyday people, everyday lives. Can you tell us about how you craft messages, how you craft experiences that work for the whole world, so to speak, and yet resonate with just individual people? The human scale.

 

Murilo: Yeah, this, this Brenda, is a challenge because these brands, most of these brands we are talking about, they are loved brands and people love brands, people connect with the brands, they talk about it, they’re reacting to their social media. So, when you’re working with these kind of major brands around the world, it is a responsibility to know what to do. But also the payoff is amazing because of course you have great minds at the brand side, from the marketing team, from the, even the design team inside the companies, and I feel this is important. I’m super respectful for what the relationship between brands and people, and the goal is always to be impactful in a good way, because people, people get it, you know, when you’re pushing too hard or when it’s not related and you’re just doing something to call the attention. So, what I try to do, and I think it really works, is to be true to the brand and to the consumers.

 

Abby: That’s really interesting.

 

Brenda: What does it look like to be true to the consumer? Like, is there a way of thinking about the person so that we can resonate with, you know, the brand with them? Is there a particular like headspace that you get into, or is there a method?

 

Murilo: I don’t think there’s an established method, but I think it’s something related to, deliver to the people what the brand has to give, because sometimes we see some, some brands, or some communication pushing so hard into a direction that the brand does not represent. They don’t have that commitment inside of their marketing team. And then it sounds fake, you know. So, I think it’s, it’s a kind of a respectful thing. And I think brands are more—they are more aware of this nowadays. We lived at a time, a recent period that anything was worth it to say if it looked good for the brands. And people are not buying that anymore and brands are taking more care. I think it’s something that the market is more mature about, which is great.

 

Abby: But how do you like, in, like taking Hershey or Coca-Cola, I know a lot of people enjoy Hershey, lots of people enjoy Coca-Cola. How are you putting yourself in the mind’s eye of the consumer? Do you look on social? Are you seeing the way they talk about the brand, what they like about the brand? How is it that you know how to successfully address that consumer? Words to use, visuals to choose, or concept to make the campaign about? Do you know what I mean? Because you’re over there, you’re in Brazil, you may or may not like the brand you’re working for. So how do you bridge that gap?

 

Murilo: Yeah, for example, the Hershey’s campaign, HERSHE, it all started with the finding that on the name and in the packaging, you have “her,” and you have “she,” which is nice, a nice finding, and we are all excited about that. But we’re like, what are we doing with this? Like, are we just saying, hey, there’s “her” and “she,” here, congratulate woman. Well, I don’t think that’s enough. But that’s kind of what I was saying before, like why, why are you saying that?

 

Then we took a step further and say, hey, we should elevate women, her, artists, she writes, her poems, her paintings, and then bring the community in. And like I was saying, inside the company at the time we worked on this project, there was, a department that was, the leadership was filled, I mean, majority of the leadership was women. So, it was all true to the brand, but it came to the consumers to be part of that. And the initiative really worked because it has a large scale of showing the artists and making a gallery and exporting the idea to many countries. And the community got excited because we can, you can do these kind of things, and the community refuses, and that’s okay, it’s part of the job. But it was interesting for everyone. So, I think when we got into that place, we said, well, we are actually doing something relevant, influential, and not only communication or advertising, you know.

 

Brenda: Yeah, it was a dialogue.

 

Murilo: Yes.

 

Abby: When you think about design, it can mean a lot of things. It’s a huge umbrella, right? There’s visual and communication design, digital and user experience design, UX, product industrial design, environmental experiential design, marketing, advertising design, fashion design, spatial design. So, talk to us about what your focus is or what types of design you’re drawn to in your sort of everyday life, so not necessarily what you put out, but what influences you.

 

Murilo: Yeah, sure, and design is everywhere, is in everything. And that is hard for us that are obsessed about design because it’s like, where do I look? So, I mean, I live in a constant, like, overwhelming about everything that is being done, especially now that we have access to everything throughout social media. And it’s too much, actually, because it’s too much good stuff that you see, interesting stuff and it’s hard to follow everything.

 

But what really caught my attention and what I like, I love the most when I talk about design and talking about the day by day, is when I see design connected to creativity. And it could sound redundant because it is a creative expression. But when design is connected to a creative purpose or something behind it, I think it’s, it elevates the creativity and the creativity, it’s really beneficiated by design.

 

I’ve been seeing a lot of luxury brands on social media, and they’re working so well with design, and animation, and kind of unusual things visually. And this is, is more interesting for me at least, than what we saw in the past that was kind of a blasé thing, something more distant. So, I mean, it’s a random example, but I think creativity elevates design, and since my day-by-day work is—I have a design studio inside of an advertising agency, right? So, my sweet spot in curiosity in my heart is between this connection: design and creativity coming to impact and to amuse people.

 

Brenda: We had a wonderful conversation a while ago with Zorana Pringle, who is an expert in creativity. She does research at Yale, and I really appreciate listening to you talk about creativity right now and its relationship with design and also thinking about how it is that creativity is kind of like a muscle that we exercise, and it sounds like, you know, when you talk about imagination, when you talk about inspiration, when you talk about creativity, you very much so are bringing a lot of that, you know, that muscle to the table, if you will, which certainly must make a big difference, or at least it seems to result in some pretty remarkable projects.

 

So, thinking about some remarkable projects, one of the things that I was really curious about was about pitching to clients. And I’m curious when you know that you truly have something special to share, what’s it like when you know that you’ve really created this amazing idea, and is there a trick to getting everybody else on board?

 

Murilo: That’s a good question, and I wish I had the trick answer, but I think it’s deeper than that because it’s a construction. In the past, I think designers from, especially from this environment, advertising, creativity, branding, they were often seen as finishers of an idea, right, like executing, developed the concept, so let’s put the design team now that things are coming right. And this perception is shifting. For me, it already shifted completely. So, designers are no longer just problem solvers, they are problem definers. So, they help shape conversation before a single visual idea is created, and this is where I think is the heart of the, the thing when you want to, let’s call it sell a design piece. You got to show the relevance before because it’s a business decision because it’s important for the brand to create value. And then I show you the idea of how doing that. And it’s not just like, being a showman, a showwoman in presenting, but about making the client realize how important the design is for its brand or its projects.

 

Abby: I have a quick, quick sort of build on to that because we’ve had some experiences where we’ve pitched something, a concept, and the client initially has loved it, and then over successive meetings, or it even could be the next one, something internally shifted and the feedbacks almost gets 180ed. Has that ever happened to you, when client feedback has started off really onboard to an idea and sort of got watered down, maybe somehow.

 

Brenda: Something got lost in the process.

 

Murilo: Yeah, yeah, this is really frequent because the clients, they have more complex structures nowadays, like I think before it was one-on-one, just a team of decision makers and now the big clients, they have a whole marketing team, a lot of layers, and we work with something that is kind of subjective. We sell like ideas and there is risk on that.

 

That’s why I think the most important thing is to push courage from the clients. It is brave to approve something that has not been done, or that’s kind of not what the brand has always worked on. And we at Gut, we have a methodology which is amazing, which is the bravery scale. We bring clients in and we say, hey, let’s look at the bravery scale, from 1 to 10, and we talk about what is being 10, brave, like living like there’s no tomorrow. And 1 is like, hey, I don’t know if I should. And there are a lot of steps on this bravery scale. And maybe the thing on some projects is to go from 2 to 3, which is amazing. It’s incredible. It’s not being like; I’m going to throw the papers and put my job in risk. No, it’s something, it’s one thing that’s going to maybe be rewarded and then you’re going to jump more. It’s going to make you feel secure and more brave. So, it’s this kind of thing we talk about this with the clients and it sometimes works.

 

Brenda: That’s such a beautiful answer.

 

Abby: Yeah, what a great idea as well to get people on board with where they’re coming from, because a lot of our guests talk about boards, if we’re creating exhibitions for museums and lots of different stakeholders, as you mentioned, often 50 up to 100 different stakeholders, all with different appetites for risk, all perceiving the job to be done with different risks involved and wanting to, as you just mentioned, move the needle. So, it’s a really great method that you’ve just described for making sure that at least from your perspective, as the agency, you understand where the client’s risk adversity lies or bravery lies. I think that’s fantastic.

 

Brenda: It is good. And also, I would imagine that your, your awareness of the consumer and, some of those sort of emotional connections that people have with the products, with the brands makes a big difference.

 

Murilo: It’s super does, and we live in a world that it’s possible to test and learn faster. You can try with a small group, you can try it on social media and see how, how is the appetite of people, if the client is a low score on the brave scale, it is a way to start, like, let’s push the tone a little bit and try this with this group. Well, it’s a good reaction. Let’s amplify. Can we scale that? And when we scale that the bravery will be rewarded. And if it is rewarded, it is something that it’s inspiring. Colleagues, the juniors of the team will say, hey, you look what he did, he, it was risky, and it was worth it. I mean, I’m talking like a dreamer because I believe in this. I think this really works.

 

Abby: Do you think that being a dreamer, like you’re obviously great, very personable, I would imagine fantastic with clients, very articulate. You just mentioned juniors. Can you teach what you have?

 

Murilo: Well, I think it’s about trust, intimacy. It’s like everything in life when we are, like, you have to make an impression, you are not yourself, and when you’re not yourself, things sound kind of fake. If you don’t connect, you don’t convince anyone of anything, you know, and that’s not quite easy, because sometimes from the client side or even from inside our team, people are not that open. And how to open their, their hearts and their conversation, and to make this, it’s this kind of soft skill, let’s call it, like that, that I think the world, the world is given so much credit for. Because technically, with all we are seeing the AI things and everything, we are reaching a high level of technical capabilities. But the emotional one, I think that’s the key for these kind of things, you know.

 

Brenda: The pace at which new design tools are being created have sped up projects, and I’m really curious about whether in your experiences, whether or not expectations have shifted in terms of how like rapidly teams are developing and implementing design work. How do you stay so thoughtful? How do you stay so true to the richness of what it is that you’re creating in an industry that seems to be moving increasingly faster?

 

Murilo: It is a paradox because it saves us time, but for us to use it and save us time, we have to invest time to learn. But I think we have to find room to, to breathe, to absorb and to use it and to move it to the next round because it’s a cause of a lot of anxiety. I’m really anxious because when we are working and doing great work and I see something coming out and say, hey, should I have worked less on this project to dedicate time for me and my team to learn that? Because this is the future and if you go into that direction, I mean, I don’t know if we can survive. It’s too much. So, I would, I would take a breath and focus on the work. Stay curious, of course, it’s like, it’s essential for our, has always been for our profession, but at least for me, I don’t see myself always working and producing and learning and testing new. I mean, we have to have space for stuff, you know, that’s at least my point of view.

 

Abby: Well, I think also with, with AI, when you’re making imagery, it’s a whole different way of being creative. So originally, we had pen to paper and it was one way of drawing something, and then you have your tablet and you have your pen, and now we have writing words to create images, which is a whole different mode of processing. And I’m sure if we had a scientist here, when it comes to the brain, like I’m, I’m much more a hold and do, a physical—and so now I’m typing words to articulate an image that I’m trying to get to. But it takes time, and it takes practice. We’re finding it still takes huge amounts of time to get exactly what you want. It takes no time to get something, it’s how well you can start working with it and collaborating with it.

 

Murilo: Yeah, there’s something kind of personal about this. I realized I have always loved notebooks and Moleskines and taking notes, and I realized, it was something that just came to me, that I was not using anymore. I had forgotten my notebooks, and I was searching already, I was thinking on the computer, so I went to Pinterest, to Google, maybe to ChatGPT, anything and was trying to—and then it came to me in December say, no, no, I have to get back to my notebook. And I bought a notebook, and it was game changer. I dedicate ten minutes, I don’t know, some time, thinking, writing, and then I use the machine and I’m trying to do this with the team, hey, hey, let’s, let’s be like AI-free, computer-free for a moment, and then we go—this step is magic, and it already made a lot of difference in my year.

 

Brenda: Oh, good for you.

 

Abby: I have a question for you, Brenda, about your students.

 

Brenda: Sure.

 

Abby: So, in a way, Murilo’s getting his team to slow down, and in answer to your observation that everything’s going faster, how do your students do that? Like how do we fight against the world we live in because everybody’s tempted to just go in and do the prompt, which is a—just get on with it, you know. When you’re talking with your students and guiding them through the world they’re about to go into, what is some advice you give them on how to slow down?

 

Brenda: What I’m able to do with my students is shape an understanding that we’re not fighting, necessarily, the world. The world is, you know, it is changing. It’s developing. It’s growing. The tools are there. They are faster. Ultimately, though, I have a bit of a privilege and I think the students have a bit of a luxury being in the classroom where I can say, we’re going to take a pause right now, and where the majority of the work that I do with them is paper and pencil and it’s, you know, kind of crazy and kind of messy and a little chaotic and very, very creative. And I think that learning that taking that pause, again, like, you know, we’re hearing right now, it’s just simply another tool. A pause is a tool, just like AI is a tool, just like paper and pencil are tools.

 

Murilo: Perfect, yes.

 

Brenda: So, what are like maybe 1 or 2 of the projects that you’re the most proud of?

 

Murilo: We did a project that was really meaningful for so many people. There’s this thing, this, this pain around the world. That is when people are going to graduate, the graduation caps, they are hard to fit into Black people hair. And then our team, which has Black people creating, executing the idea, which of course is their place to think about it, they came up with a solution, said, hey, why shouldn’t we find a designer and make some special graduation caps for all kinds of hairs? And then we said, well, this is amazing. This is a really human thing, and it’s an important moment. It’s about self-esteem, everything. And then we went to talk with a designer, a fashion designer, and he was amazed by the idea. He draw 4 or 5 caps for different kinds of curly hair. And then it was like, it was liquid, people and especially Black people that had passed these into their graduations that work here, they were so excited about the idea. And of course, we were excited too. And then we put it out in the world, and it was amazing. It was amazing. It was really emotional. And now we are actually having the caps into the graduation ceremonies and people are actually wearing them. So, I’m super proud of this, you know.

 

Brenda: Oh my God, this is amazing. This is, like literally, this is a problem in my own program and with my students when they graduate.

 

Murilo: It is Grad In Black, it’s called, the project. And we have an open source for these designs. So, the designers did, we have an open source, a PDF where you can just do it anywhere you want. It tells you how to, and it’s there.

 

Brenda: Amazing.

 

Abby: That’s incredible. Well, so that’s an example of design solving a big problem. Right? That is super rewarding. So, let’s talk about our design jury at New York Festival Advertising Awards. So, you’ll be joining a number of incredible jury members like Jonathan Alger from C&G and Monica Herman from Giant Spoon. So I’m excited to collaborate with Scott Rose, the president, to add sections in the design category that reflect our profession like experiential activations, branded environments, and exhibition design, as well as all the more traditional design entries, because one of the reasons Murilo, that, at least I and I believe Brenda, want to do our podcast is to really build awareness about what we do. And a lot of that is exhibition design, experience design. And so having those categories now under the design umbrella and be recognized for awards is incredibly important to all of the people making amazing work. So, what is it about these awards that are exciting for you?

 

Murilo: The jury will see much more work, creative work because the market is wider. The market is asking for more work. So, we are producing more design work, more relevant design work and it will be amazing to see. I’m actually really curious because I think this past year was game changer for design. So, I think it’s our opportunity to learn, the jury and anyone who applies the work. It is something good because people keep consuming, because people see what have beaten them or what they have beaten. So, it’s a time to study. In advertising and design, we don’t dedicate as much time to study as in medicine, for example. And I think the award shows, they have these, these possibility. Okay, let’s see the golds for New York Festival this year, what the jury said the golds are, where are the industry heading. So, it’s something about the future too, because a lot of these great minds coming together to this conclusion, it is something pointing to the future.

 

Brenda: That is so exciting. Murilo, I’m really hoping you can talk to us about something that you are very, currently, very passionate about. What is—and it could be anything, this is a big, wide open question, but what are you just really, really excited about working with right now?

 

Murilo: I’m trying to go deeper into the entertainment industry. We are doing a project for a rapper/singer in Brazil, and he has such an amazing concept for his album, and we are navigating through that, how to make content for a musician, and the first part was doing a graphic design, and it’s already amazing because you have to study the platforms, how it will look like in Spotify or Apple Music. But beyond that, how is the music industry communicating? Is it a long format? It is a video clip, it is not a video clip anymore, is something on TikTok. So, it’s like a reinvention and there are no answers for these questions, as every time is a new thing. Like Beyoncé comes with an album that talks about, I mean, all the legacy from the country music, and it’s something that is a decision. But Rosalía doing something in TikTok, that is making a performance of her whole live album, which is something that shook the industry. So, I’m really curious about that at this moment.

 

And I would expand the music thing to entertainment, like we are working for a project for Netflix and it’s a new series, it’s a title treatment, and then you have to deep dive on how the art direction and the design comes to life inside the series. How can we apply the logo or the, the attitude or the photography inside of the content? So, these are things that are on my radar right now, and I’m really trying to study and to learn about them.

 

Brenda: I don’t know, you know, I listen, I’m listening to you, and I just keep imagining that you think in a very kaleidoscopic way, like how it is that you are able to integrate so many different aspects of design, be curious about so many different kinds of things, and yet altogether you’re able to form a single message, a single image, perhaps a single idea.

 

Abby

This was really enjoyable. I love the way you described us as problem designers. I just love that. And that method of sort of when you’re pitching, showing the relevance to the client, whatever it is you’re pitching and creating that value and then showing the idea is just is it’s a great way to really ease in ideas that are out of the box. Murilo, thank you so much.

 

Brenda: What a pleasure talking to you.

 

Abby: Yeah, this was fantastic.

 

Murilo: It was really a special moment. Thank you.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you liked what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience, wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

 

Brenda: Thank you for joining us, everyone.

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Creativity and Courage with Murilo Melo

Creativity and Courage with Murilo Melo

March 5, 2025
Experience as a Catalyst for Connection with Monica Herman

Experience as a Catalyst for Connection with Monica Herman

February 5, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
In this episode of Matters of Experience, Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan sit down with Monica Herman, a seasoned experiential design strategist, to explore the transformative power of meaningful experiences. Monica shares how her work moves beyond “cool” designs, focusing instead on creating moments that address real needs—whether building awareness, shifting perceptions, or evoking awe.

Discover how experiential design bridges the gap between brands and audiences, turning awareness into emotion and inspiring action. From pop-ups to shared urban moments, Monica unpacks the art and strategy of designing experiences that truly matter.

This is a must-listen for anyone passionate about creativity, connection, and the evolving role of design in shaping how we live, work, and feel.
Monica Herman is the VP ECD of Experiential at Giant Spoon. Previous to joining Giant Spoon, Monica led experiential creative globally across VICE Media Group, where she managed the team responsible for the award-winning viral sensation, 29Rooms. With both an architecture and agency background, Monica offers expertise in multiple fields of design and creative direction, including environmental design, graphic design, UX and art direction and ranging in scope from conceptual visual storytelling to advanced fabrication and construction techniques for built environments. Monica has been named to Adweek Creative 100 & Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Madison Avenue. In 2023, her team's work helped land Giant Spoon on Fast Company’s list of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.

Monica Herman

Giant Spoon

29ROOMS — Monica Herman

SAMSUNG YOUNIVERSE — Monica Herman

ADIDAS FORUM CITY TAKEOVER — Monica Herman

UNBOTHERED WASH DAY — Monica Herman

HOUSE OF DRAGONS — Monica Herman

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: This podcast is produced by Lorem Ipsum, a multimedia experience design company headquartered in New York City, and our podcast explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Hello to anybody listening for the first time, and welcome back to our regular listeners.

 

So today we’d like to welcome Monica Herman to the show, who currently works at Giant Spoon as their VP Executive Creative Director. Now, besides being responsible for the now pretty iconic House of Dragons second season promotion—which was awesome, and from my apartment I can see the Empire State Building, and there was suddenly this huge dragon creeping around the top and I was stoked, and like, “who is the genius behind this?”—and part of a fantastic integrated campaign across the city and around the world, Monica has also led experiential creative globally across Vice Media Group. And you were responsible for 29Rooms, which was another viral sensation, and you’ve got what, interestingly, both an architectural and agency background, which seems like really that sweet spot in so many ways right now. So, Monica, I’m excited to talk with you. Welcome to the show.

 

Monica: Thank you so much, Abigail and Brenda. I really appreciate you having me. I’ve known Brenda for years now, and I’ve been, it’s been such a pleasure visiting her class at FIT and just hearing all the great things she’s working on, and I’m so excited to talk to you both.

 

Brenda: We are really excited to have you, in part because you have such a breadth of areas of experience, exploration and expertise, and you’ve worn many different hats throughout your career thus far. And when I think about your work, I think about how it is that you always create with an eye for storytelling and creating epic experiences in different kinds of ways. So, we’re going to begin by just asking you about where your journey began. How did your creative world begin?

 

Monica: You know, it’s funny because I had parents, you know, who loved the arts, who encouraged me to do whatever. And I think, you know, I came to that very naturally. But I’d say the origin story starts with Sex and the City, which came out, I think, when I was like in sixth grade or eighth grade or somewhere around there. And I remember, like my rich friend had HBO, right, and like I would go over to their house and like when their parents weren’t watching, we would like, turn on Sex and the City, and like, my mind exploded, you know, I was like, this is New York City?! And like, the clothes and like the fantasy and it’s, it’s funny, you know, you watch it now and, you know, there’s 6000 ways it’s problematic, but for, you know, a 13-year-old in Michigan, I was like, must get there. Must do those things.

 

Brenda: I was just going to say, so were you like in like an urban setting or—

 

Monica: No.

 

Brenda: More of a suburb?

 

Monica: Small town.

 

Brenda: So, this was new in a whole variety of ways for you?

 

Monica: Yeah, it was, it was. And, you know, my mother’s family is from Chicago, so, you know, been going to the city, it wasn’t like I was on the farm, like seeing, you know, television for the first time. But just this idea that cities were just full of possibility and again, being a very aesthetically driven person, just really being blown away by this idea.

 

And of course, not just that, but any other cultural reference at the time where you just saw like the, like I said, the fashion and the architecture, and so I was very single minded sort of in that approach and I, I remember I think it was in like my, like a school play program in my, you know, senior year where I said, like, I wanted to be like Charlotte York. I wanted to go in art and business. Like, that sounded right to me. You know, I was like, yeah, that I get that.

 

Abby: So, yeah, what happened next?

 

Monica: Well, what happened next is I did get that art history degree at University of Michigan, and I came to the city actually planning, in all seriousness, to go into art business. And I had wanted to—I always knew I wanted a master’s degree, but I moved to the city, I graduated from undergrad, came to the city in 2008, which is when the economy crashed and I had gotten a job through some connections at a textile and rug gallery in Soho, which was like amazing.

 

So, working in Soho, you know, I was a gallerista, you know, I was at the front, and I was doing all those things. And, you know, I was watching the economy, like, collapse around me. Right? And quite literally, cause you’re in Soho, you’re just like seeing the streets empty out, you know, and people would come in and inquire about this and that, but no one’s buying, you know, $25,000 rugs in 2008. So, watching that experience and watching my boss, who had just recently started that business, sort of grapple with that, I got a little scared, you know, like, and it was okay, and I said, wow, like, I want a, I want a hard skill. Right? And I felt, you know, the luxury market, which is what art really is, you know, for if we’re getting into it didn’t seem like the right thing to go into at the time, especially because, you know, I didn’t necessarily have the connections to like, make it in that market.

 

So, I said, okay, hard skill, hard skill, how do I get one of those? And I remember—I swear, I don’t watch that much television, but maybe this is just younger, in my younger days—Project Runway was very popular. So now I’m Sex and City, Project Runway. I’m definitely gonna regret this podcast later. So, I said, like, maybe there’s something with fashion design. So, I looked up Parsons and I was super interested. But you know, they didn’t have a master. You had to get an undergrad, and I didn’t want to do that at the time, I knew I’d be doing this on my own with student loans, so there’s just a lot of factors there. And I came across a master’s program for architectural lighting, and I saw that, and I said, that, like, I want to do that. I don’t know what that is. It sounded great. I must do that. I ended up going to the dean because I had no portfolio. And I said, like, let me in, let me in. Please. So, he said, okay, go to summer school for architecture, which I did. And then I started my master’s in architectural lighting design, and then I ended up working in that field for two and a half years after grad school.

 

Abby: Wow. That’s amazing.

 

Brenda: No, it’s, you are exactly what I hope all of my graduate students would be like. You know, and actually, I think that they really are because so many of them, right, likewise, they come into the program, they’re just like, gimme, gimme, gimme. I want to get into this industry. I want to get into this business. I don’t even know exactly, entirely precisely what it is, but I know that I want it, and that’s such an important way to think. And I can actually see back to the original idea of, you know, the origin story. It makes sense that you have ended up or at this point in your career, doing things that are really innovative and really different and unexpected and really spectacular in a lot of ways.

 

Abby: How did you decide to sort of move over or include all of the experience design you’re now doing? So, what was that transition like and why did it happen?

 

Monica: So, I was really lucky. I ended up in an incredible architectural lighting agency, I would say the best in the world, the Office for Visual Interaction. And my main client was Zaha Hadid and I was working on—

 

Abby: Wait, your main client off the bat?

 

Monica: Yes, off the bat.

 

Abby: Wow.

 

Monica: Off the bat, that’s right. And so, you know, working on the Zaha work and traveling to Rabat and traveling to London and being under the tutelage of such incredible designers and the founders, Jean and Enrique, absolutely amazing. It was like going to boot camp.

 

Abby: How were you chosen? Why, why you?

 

Monica: You know, you’ll have to call Jean and Enrique and ask. But I do remember, I was lucky, I remember they came to see my thesis presentation. Maybe what they, they saw in my work, which, coming from liberal arts, I was so obsessed with sort of psychology and the human experience, and I remember, so there’s, there’s a tendency, I think, in some of those, theses that I’ve seen now over the years, because I go back to school, for people to, to really focus on sort of like tactical problem solving, and a lot of the themes come up again and again and they’re not bad. They’re ripe for, for discussion, whether it’s like, circadian rhythms or, you know, hospital lighting or all these things.

 

But I really came at it from what I saw as like a very sort of emotional, romantic, and I was, my thesis was about, you know, how lighting profoundly can influence people’s relationships in space, right, so if I’m having this conversation with you at this table and we’re under this fluorescent lighting, that sets the tone, if nothing else was changed except suddenly it’s just me, you and a candle between us, like, everything’s different. Just, just by changing that. And I, you know, I found that subject so fascinating, and I think it was, it was different, and they respected that.

 

So, back to your question, which was okay, but then how did I go from that to, to leaving that. And I think it speaks to okay, I was with the best in the industry. I was, I was working on the best architect in the world. I was working on the most exciting projects, and I wasn’t fundamentally happy. And I don’t know, happiness, if you want to say it that way, but there was something that, I think, about the field was potentially at odds with my personality or the kind of things that drive me, which has to do with probably my worst trait, which is like impatience.

 

And I think to be a successful architect, and you could, I’m sure other people would argue differently, you know, you—patience is really a key virtue. And when I spoke to the really passionate architects, you know, on Zaha’s side, the way they spoke about their work and the idea of legacy and leaving something behind and their dedication to seeing something through with decades, you know, I’m sitting across the table and being like, that’s so cool. I don’t feel that at all. Like I just, I didn’t feel that way.

 

And so, I was sort of fixated on this idea, like, what is this? How could I possibly be bored in this field that’s fundamentally unboring? But to me, who just, like, wants to keep moving on and trying new things like, I don’t know that I have it in me to really sort of dive in for that decades long, which is what the projects deserve, and which is incredible. I wish I was that person.

 

Abby: Is it the legacy part that you weren’t—like if they’re doing these ten-year projects so that they can leave a legacy and the building will stand, is the projects you do now, one, bam, they’re done. You are leaving a legacy of the work that you’ve, I mean incredible work, your portfolio, but a different sort of legacy I guess, not one that people can go and physically enjoy. So, do you think about your legacy in your work right now?

 

Monica: No, I think about my legacy in my personal relationships, and I actually think, so that’s one of the things that gives me the freedom to enjoy my job is that I take my work very seriously, and I am so dedicated to and I have so much gratitude. But it’s a cliche to say, like, we’re not, you know, curing cancer, but it’s a cliche for a reason. You have to approach work that way where it’s, you know, your, you kind of say like, this is fundamentally, it’s a non-necessary thing, that it’s just a joy to create. So yeah. So, I’ve never felt that. I feel very motivated by my career. I love to work. I feel lucky to work. I’m ambitious, but I’ve never felt like I must leave my mark on the world. I’d love to. I mean, I love reading, so I get so jealous of novelists, you know, and I wish that was me, but since it’s not and when I look at that, I’ve never felt like, oh, that’s the thing I need to leave behind.

 

Brenda: You strike me as a very highly present person, and a person who’s really all in, in the moment and being creative and really thinking through what it is that you’re doing and being creative. And it just seems to me that working like that, you know, whether it leaves a legacy or not, who cares? We’re in the moment, we’re making something cool as shit, right?

 

Abby: But she’s making—you are, Monica, communicating with people because you’re making memories and moments for others which leave an indelible mark, and they’ll remember forever and ever. Like when you think about Sex and the City and that little relevance that it played to you in moving to New York City, when you see some of or encounter some of the projects that you’ve worked on, I mean, they really connect with people, and I think that they’ve built those people’s memories and people hopefully will be inspired in whatever it is they do after being immersed in some of the amazing things that you’ve created, that I know we’re going to go on to talk about. So, I think that you’re, the way you are and who you are is very much reflected in the type of work you do.

 

Brenda: I think that there’s a big difference between doing creative work because it’s what you want to do, and it’s where you are, and it’s the headspace that you’re in. There’s a difference between just doing the work and/or protecting your brand, so to speak. And I think that that makes for really different kinds of projects, if I were to guess.

 

Abby: And then moving to your projects, so you work physically, digitally, conceptually, and all of your work really connects people together in very powerful, playful and even I would say introspective ways. So, I’m thinking about the Samsung YOUniverse (y-o-universe to those listening) Experience, the Adidas City Takeover that you did, and Unbothered Wash Day. So, you’ve done a ton of different projects for brands and messaged in ways that really reach out to participants in meaningful and personal ways. So, tell us about some of your projects where you think the story really was evergreen or archetypal and connected with people in fundamental ways?

 

Monica: Well, let’s talk about Unbothered Wash Day. So, this was a virtual event—that cursed phrase, virtual event. But this happened in January, I believe, of 2021, right, so right in the thick of the pandemic. I was working at Vice at the time, and Unbothered was a Refinery29 subbrand focused on our Black female audience. And there had been success editorially with a column called Wash Day that focused on ritual and haircare, and the idea of that sort of time of week where our Black female audience was doing, sort of, wash day, doing hair. And there was so much talk around that, and there was so much online community forming. How can we celebrate that community and kind of make it bigger than people’s personal routines, but find a way to really celebrate that culture with the audience?

 

So actually, kind of inviting everyone to a shared wash day in which we had creators come in to talk about self-care and talk about what self-care meant for our, the community of readers in that time in the pandemic, I mean everything from sort of products to mental health to, all of that coming together. So, I think doing that at the time and just creating that space and sort of more literalizing the idea of a community coming together for a virtual event versus sort of just everyone sharing stories. You actually got to be live and talk face to face and sort of share your experience or meet some of the creators you were interested in. So that was great. And I remember we won an award for that. It felt like a gift. Right? You’re not, you weren’t sitting there saying like, oh, we want you to do this, or we have a message to you. It just felt like we were actually giving something to, to the audience who at that time, it was something to do when no one could do anything and just, a way of sharing experience during a really complicated time.

 

Brenda: I’ve got like so many thousands of thoughts and responses now and what I love about listening to you talk about Unbothered Wash Day, right, is that you talk about it, from the perspective and for the perspective of the audience, right, it’s all about the audience. It’s all about the person who’s going to engage, who’s going to get something out of it.

 

It’s not about your personal brand, right, and it’s probably why you’re able to work with so much speed is if you take that, if you’re taking that approach, are you taking that approach like with every project, like do you, you know, start with, okay, the end user and where are they coming from? Who are they? What do they want? What are their expectations? What are they desiring, you know, and then how do we craft towards that?

 

Abby: I’m going to build on that just for a second and say, yeah, like how do the projects come to you? Are they, help we need, this is our problem as a brand, you know, this is our community, like how is the process of the way the jobs come in and then how’s the process of the way that you’re ideating and who for, the client or the customer?

 

Monica: Well, first of all, it’s always for both, right? So, it’s not binary. And that’s a great, but it’s a great task to say that is it for the client or the, or the customer. You do start with the business problem, right, and that’s, that’s what we’re in, right, like we’re not there just to do cool things because it’s cool.

 

We’re there because we’re addressing something, whether that’s awareness, no one’s ever heard of this brand or perception, it’s maybe a big box brand that wants to look cool and culturally relevant. You’re really thinking about kind of, what is it this business needs to sort of accomplish, you know, it’s viewership, it’s sales, it’s whatever, and you, you start there and we’ve got strategists who come in and they, and they come up with that approach and you sort of figure out what it is that you’re trying to say. And then this is really, really important. And we can talk about this when we get into House of the Dragon or something else, you then craft the medium coming out of that, right, so you never if you’re, you know, you don’t approach it being like, okay, we’re going to do a screening, we’re going to do a pop-up. You can, but that’s not the work I’m interested in doing now.

 

So, it’s like, and I’m talking about this in the ideal state, right. So it’s identifying that and it’s identifying for me a hook, right, and I think like one of the things that is, can be a pitfall both for creatives and for brands is this desire to accomplish or say, every single thing you’ve ever felt about sort of your brand, you know, through the lens of like an experience or something like that. And I get that impulse, like I really, I sympathize with, I empathize with it, you know, so my job is to sort of guide people away from that because I’m like, you know, let’s take, for example, a television show, right? You know, you’re like, I don’t need to recreate the story that your show does that, my job is to not take that and then replicate it out in the world. My job is to just get people excited and wanting to learn more, wanting to do that next step.

 

Brenda: Well, this is, I mean, it’s the perfect timing to just have you talk about House of Dragon. You know, I’m excited and just want to sort of introduce the question by talking about the physicality of House of Dragon, that campaign, which I, I think it was mind boggling in just the best possible way, and not just because of all of the various media elements, but because, you know, there were so many physical, you know, monumental physical attributes to it.

 

And, you know, maybe it’s just like a personal thing for me or whatever, but there’s something about taking over the Manhattan Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, right, and seeing that and driving past that every single day or walking down the block from it. And it would be wonderful for you just to share with our listeners, how did you come to those, and if you would just describe a little bit about what the physicality was, in particular?

 

Monica: We had done House of Dragon Promotion season one, and in that, you know, HBO had come to us and they’re so smart, like, our clients at HBO are great marketers. So, they knew sort of for season one that they wanted to reach the sort of all existing fan base first, people who love Game of Thrones, bring people into the world of the show.

 

So, when we did that, we created an immersive experience at Comic-Con. It was a standalone recreation of the Red Keep, in which we invited fans to actually line up and experience hatching a dragon for themselves, right, so it was very theatrical. There were literally actors there, you know, you are recreating sets in some ways and bringing this to life and tapping into that, like true fantasy element for people who already were sort of invested in that, or we knew we could kind of reignite that.

 

Now, season two, right? They’ve got a foothold and now they want to go big. So right, I said season one, we bring people into the world of the show, season two, we brought the world of the show into our world, and we’re doing that in service of what they had asked us to do, which was kind of tease the narrative structure of season two, which is that basically there’s two warring factions, right? You have two, kind of, competing queens, you have a green council and a black council, and the whole sort of, all of season two is built around the idea that all must choose, right, and like there are two sides, everyone must choose them. Like everyone’s going down, but they’re going to go down fighting and there’s sort of no middle ground.

 

So, in doing that, you know, we’re like, okay, but how you do that, I’m not going to get there and I’m not going to make a billboard experience that’s like, so Queen Rhaenyra did this and Queen Alicent did this, and this is why she—no one gives a shit, right? I’m going to lose people right away. But if I can tap into, if we can tap into people’s sort of existing affinities that you’re already familiar with: Mets versus Yankees, this bagel shop versus that bagel shop, your competing housewives, you know, whatever it is that you already—everyone loves competition and rivalry, you know, whatever that is. If we can find a way to bridge those affiliations suddenly without doing anything at all, we’ve got you, right, and this was a multifaceted campaign.

 

So, you mentioned The Dragon. That was a big stunt. And then we made it really, really simple, right? You know, it is just kind of like green, black, green, black, all must choose, and these inciting messages. So, it was this combination of meeting people where they are and doing it in a very simple and visually ownable way, right, so just saying like green and black banners like, that’s it. And that’s one of the things you’ve got to really think about is, you know, what is the ownable sort of visual symbol for the show.

 

Brenda: Why do you consider season two House the Dragon, one of your best, your very best projects?

 

Monica: Yes. I love it in its simplicity, and I love that it defies categorization in some point. So, I’m very careful, like people say it’s an experiential campaign, I’m like, no it was not. It was a 360 integrated campaign. It’s not a, you know, whatever you want to say about it, it wasn’t, it was totally unique in that respect. So, they didn’t come to us and say, okay, we want necessarily a massive stunt. They just said, what is the best way to get people to raise their banners? World’s your oyster, any canvas you can think of. So that was competing trailers on YouTube. That was the sports partnerships, like I said, we did do the bar nights of sort of competing cocktail bars that, you know, different places in Manhattan, you know, competing pizza spots to the stunt to that—

 

So, it’s like when you. when you really look at the breadth of all the ways we brought that message to life and showing that that simple concept of just sort of assigning allegiances, right, is infinitely scalable. We just, we went wild and that was very fun. So that’s, that’s what’s interesting to me. I’m always looking to build, to break medium.

 

You know, we could talk about this idea of like, what experiences, you know, are or can be, and I think the idea of pushing medium and it’s not always like a pop-up, there’s not always, you know, 6 to 100 pallets of plywood, you know, in a built thing going into this, it really can be everything from a social experience to the sort of shared awe that comes when, you know, all these millions of people in the city walk out and they’re on their commute and they see a dragon on the Empire State Building, and I’m getting texts from people I haven’t heard from years, like, oh, I work on 27th Street, and we looked out and we could see it. So that was really sort of incredible. And I think the one other point you brought up was that mix, and you said this of what was real.

 

And Brenda, you asked about, you said physicality, what was real and what was not real, you know, what was CGI. And that was very important to us too. And we knew, like, okay, we wanted to do some things or show up in places we know we’d never get the permits for, even though if anyone can get permits, it’s Giant Spoon, but we knew if we went like pure CGI, like it wouldn’t land, right? So, what we needed to do is actually mess with people, right? And not in a, like a manipulative way, again, like you’re, you’re trying to trick people, but to just say like, whoa, like this is incredible.

 

Brenda: It’s playful, in a playful way.

 

Monica: It’s playful, you know? So, when you look at that, like those banners on Grand Central, Rockefeller Plaza, the New York Stock Exchange, like all of those were real, right? The dragon was real. So, you see that, and then you’re like, but the bridges, they’re not, you know, and everything, it was just like a total, so people were actually, they didn’t feel tricked. They were having fun. They were having fun, kind of understanding, like what they were seeing.

 

Brenda: If you could have anything that you wanted where, in terms of experiential, where do you hope things go five years from now?

 

Monica: I hope they’re sustainable. Right? That’s going to be a really interesting challenge and one I don’t have the answer for. Everyone’s been trying for years and years. But it’s you know I think substituting you know sustainably sourced MDF versus not is not the answer, right, like it’s going to take like pretty wild innovation to think about what that means. Right? Like it’s not just recycled materials. So, I think it’s a sustainable industry in which we can find ways to bring these stories to life that are low impact, and doing that through technology, through sort of social invitations versus maybe built environments as much. I love built environments, so it’s a tricky—makes me nervous to even say that because I love a built environment, you know? But I’m thinking, well, how could I do that sort of absent of materiality in some ways and just kind of invite people to experience things different?

 

So, I would say in five years I want to define that, and I want to find a way to always keep doubling down on relationships of people in real life. You know, that’s what inspires me is to see kind of what people are, what they’re doing in the world. There’s a reason I’m in experimental and that, you know, I just love that. So, I don’t know, I think it’s that and it’s, it’s making sure that the technology, while that will advance and we’ll find different ways of kind of creating environments, that they’re all in service, of just making things feel more human than they were ever before.

 

Brenda: You just have such an insightful way of thinking about, really, the whole world of experiential and the nature of people, and which gets back to your, right, origin with your interest in psychology.

 

Abby: And community building. A lot of your work brings communities together virtually or in person. So, you’re building communities, which essentially is what we all try to do, whether it’s exhibit design or in all the advertising that you do. Yeah, you bring together these people, so they keep this human connection, and the delight and all that you bring, we don’t have enough of that in the world.

 

So, thank you for all the work you do. I think it’s absolutely incredible and really excited to see what you can do next in New York City, what’s around the corner.

 

Brenda: I don’t know, I see you hitting rural areas next.

 

Monica: I would love that.

 

Brenda: I see that in your future.

 

Monica: I can’t stop dreaming about crop circles. I hope that’s not a hint.

 

Abby: Oh, you heard it here first, crop circles.

 

Brenda: No, I’m seeing you do major earthworks. Okay.

 

Abby: Thank you so much, Monica, for joining us today.

 

Monica: Thank you so much for having me.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. See you next time!

 

Brenda: Thank you everyone!

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Monica Herman is the VP ECD of Experiential at Giant Spoon. Previous to joining Giant Spoon, Monica led experiential creative globally across VICE Media Group, where she managed the team responsible for the award-winning viral sensation, 29Rooms. With both an architecture and agency background, Monica offers expertise in multiple fields of design and creative direction, including environmental design, graphic design, UX and art direction and ranging in scope from conceptual visual storytelling to advanced fabrication and construction techniques for built environments. Monica has been named to Adweek Creative 100 & Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Madison Avenue. In 2023, her team's work helped land Giant Spoon on Fast Company’s list of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.

Monica Herman

Giant Spoon

29ROOMS — Monica Herman

SAMSUNG YOUNIVERSE — Monica Herman

ADIDAS FORUM CITY TAKEOVER — Monica Herman

UNBOTHERED WASH DAY — Monica Herman

HOUSE OF DRAGONS — Monica Herman

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: This podcast is produced by Lorem Ipsum, a multimedia experience design company headquartered in New York City, and our podcast explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Hello to anybody listening for the first time, and welcome back to our regular listeners.

 

So today we’d like to welcome Monica Herman to the show, who currently works at Giant Spoon as their VP Executive Creative Director. Now, besides being responsible for the now pretty iconic House of Dragons second season promotion—which was awesome, and from my apartment I can see the Empire State Building, and there was suddenly this huge dragon creeping around the top and I was stoked, and like, “who is the genius behind this?”—and part of a fantastic integrated campaign across the city and around the world, Monica has also led experiential creative globally across Vice Media Group. And you were responsible for 29Rooms, which was another viral sensation, and you’ve got what, interestingly, both an architectural and agency background, which seems like really that sweet spot in so many ways right now. So, Monica, I’m excited to talk with you. Welcome to the show.

 

Monica: Thank you so much, Abigail and Brenda. I really appreciate you having me. I’ve known Brenda for years now, and I’ve been, it’s been such a pleasure visiting her class at FIT and just hearing all the great things she’s working on, and I’m so excited to talk to you both.

 

Brenda: We are really excited to have you, in part because you have such a breadth of areas of experience, exploration and expertise, and you’ve worn many different hats throughout your career thus far. And when I think about your work, I think about how it is that you always create with an eye for storytelling and creating epic experiences in different kinds of ways. So, we’re going to begin by just asking you about where your journey began. How did your creative world begin?

 

Monica: You know, it’s funny because I had parents, you know, who loved the arts, who encouraged me to do whatever. And I think, you know, I came to that very naturally. But I’d say the origin story starts with Sex and the City, which came out, I think, when I was like in sixth grade or eighth grade or somewhere around there. And I remember, like my rich friend had HBO, right, and like I would go over to their house and like when their parents weren’t watching, we would like, turn on Sex and the City, and like, my mind exploded, you know, I was like, this is New York City?! And like, the clothes and like the fantasy and it’s, it’s funny, you know, you watch it now and, you know, there’s 6000 ways it’s problematic, but for, you know, a 13-year-old in Michigan, I was like, must get there. Must do those things.

 

Brenda: I was just going to say, so were you like in like an urban setting or—

 

Monica: No.

 

Brenda: More of a suburb?

 

Monica: Small town.

 

Brenda: So, this was new in a whole variety of ways for you?

 

Monica: Yeah, it was, it was. And, you know, my mother’s family is from Chicago, so, you know, been going to the city, it wasn’t like I was on the farm, like seeing, you know, television for the first time. But just this idea that cities were just full of possibility and again, being a very aesthetically driven person, just really being blown away by this idea.

 

And of course, not just that, but any other cultural reference at the time where you just saw like the, like I said, the fashion and the architecture, and so I was very single minded sort of in that approach and I, I remember I think it was in like my, like a school play program in my, you know, senior year where I said, like, I wanted to be like Charlotte York. I wanted to go in art and business. Like, that sounded right to me. You know, I was like, yeah, that I get that.

 

Abby: So, yeah, what happened next?

 

Monica: Well, what happened next is I did get that art history degree at University of Michigan, and I came to the city actually planning, in all seriousness, to go into art business. And I had wanted to—I always knew I wanted a master’s degree, but I moved to the city, I graduated from undergrad, came to the city in 2008, which is when the economy crashed and I had gotten a job through some connections at a textile and rug gallery in Soho, which was like amazing.

 

So, working in Soho, you know, I was a gallerista, you know, I was at the front, and I was doing all those things. And, you know, I was watching the economy, like, collapse around me. Right? And quite literally, cause you’re in Soho, you’re just like seeing the streets empty out, you know, and people would come in and inquire about this and that, but no one’s buying, you know, $25,000 rugs in 2008. So, watching that experience and watching my boss, who had just recently started that business, sort of grapple with that, I got a little scared, you know, like, and it was okay, and I said, wow, like, I want a, I want a hard skill. Right? And I felt, you know, the luxury market, which is what art really is, you know, for if we’re getting into it didn’t seem like the right thing to go into at the time, especially because, you know, I didn’t necessarily have the connections to like, make it in that market.

 

So, I said, okay, hard skill, hard skill, how do I get one of those? And I remember—I swear, I don’t watch that much television, but maybe this is just younger, in my younger days—Project Runway was very popular. So now I’m Sex and City, Project Runway. I’m definitely gonna regret this podcast later. So, I said, like, maybe there’s something with fashion design. So, I looked up Parsons and I was super interested. But you know, they didn’t have a master. You had to get an undergrad, and I didn’t want to do that at the time, I knew I’d be doing this on my own with student loans, so there’s just a lot of factors there. And I came across a master’s program for architectural lighting, and I saw that, and I said, that, like, I want to do that. I don’t know what that is. It sounded great. I must do that. I ended up going to the dean because I had no portfolio. And I said, like, let me in, let me in. Please. So, he said, okay, go to summer school for architecture, which I did. And then I started my master’s in architectural lighting design, and then I ended up working in that field for two and a half years after grad school.

 

Abby: Wow. That’s amazing.

 

Brenda: No, it’s, you are exactly what I hope all of my graduate students would be like. You know, and actually, I think that they really are because so many of them, right, likewise, they come into the program, they’re just like, gimme, gimme, gimme. I want to get into this industry. I want to get into this business. I don’t even know exactly, entirely precisely what it is, but I know that I want it, and that’s such an important way to think. And I can actually see back to the original idea of, you know, the origin story. It makes sense that you have ended up or at this point in your career, doing things that are really innovative and really different and unexpected and really spectacular in a lot of ways.

 

Abby: How did you decide to sort of move over or include all of the experience design you’re now doing? So, what was that transition like and why did it happen?

 

Monica: So, I was really lucky. I ended up in an incredible architectural lighting agency, I would say the best in the world, the Office for Visual Interaction. And my main client was Zaha Hadid and I was working on—

 

Abby: Wait, your main client off the bat?

 

Monica: Yes, off the bat.

 

Abby: Wow.

 

Monica: Off the bat, that’s right. And so, you know, working on the Zaha work and traveling to Rabat and traveling to London and being under the tutelage of such incredible designers and the founders, Jean and Enrique, absolutely amazing. It was like going to boot camp.

 

Abby: How were you chosen? Why, why you?

 

Monica: You know, you’ll have to call Jean and Enrique and ask. But I do remember, I was lucky, I remember they came to see my thesis presentation. Maybe what they, they saw in my work, which, coming from liberal arts, I was so obsessed with sort of psychology and the human experience, and I remember, so there’s, there’s a tendency, I think, in some of those, theses that I’ve seen now over the years, because I go back to school, for people to, to really focus on sort of like tactical problem solving, and a lot of the themes come up again and again and they’re not bad. They’re ripe for, for discussion, whether it’s like, circadian rhythms or, you know, hospital lighting or all these things.

 

But I really came at it from what I saw as like a very sort of emotional, romantic, and I was, my thesis was about, you know, how lighting profoundly can influence people’s relationships in space, right, so if I’m having this conversation with you at this table and we’re under this fluorescent lighting, that sets the tone, if nothing else was changed except suddenly it’s just me, you and a candle between us, like, everything’s different. Just, just by changing that. And I, you know, I found that subject so fascinating, and I think it was, it was different, and they respected that.

 

So, back to your question, which was okay, but then how did I go from that to, to leaving that. And I think it speaks to okay, I was with the best in the industry. I was, I was working on the best architect in the world. I was working on the most exciting projects, and I wasn’t fundamentally happy. And I don’t know, happiness, if you want to say it that way, but there was something that, I think, about the field was potentially at odds with my personality or the kind of things that drive me, which has to do with probably my worst trait, which is like impatience.

 

And I think to be a successful architect, and you could, I’m sure other people would argue differently, you know, you—patience is really a key virtue. And when I spoke to the really passionate architects, you know, on Zaha’s side, the way they spoke about their work and the idea of legacy and leaving something behind and their dedication to seeing something through with decades, you know, I’m sitting across the table and being like, that’s so cool. I don’t feel that at all. Like I just, I didn’t feel that way.

 

And so, I was sort of fixated on this idea, like, what is this? How could I possibly be bored in this field that’s fundamentally unboring? But to me, who just, like, wants to keep moving on and trying new things like, I don’t know that I have it in me to really sort of dive in for that decades long, which is what the projects deserve, and which is incredible. I wish I was that person.

 

Abby: Is it the legacy part that you weren’t—like if they’re doing these ten-year projects so that they can leave a legacy and the building will stand, is the projects you do now, one, bam, they’re done. You are leaving a legacy of the work that you’ve, I mean incredible work, your portfolio, but a different sort of legacy I guess, not one that people can go and physically enjoy. So, do you think about your legacy in your work right now?

 

Monica: No, I think about my legacy in my personal relationships, and I actually think, so that’s one of the things that gives me the freedom to enjoy my job is that I take my work very seriously, and I am so dedicated to and I have so much gratitude. But it’s a cliche to say, like, we’re not, you know, curing cancer, but it’s a cliche for a reason. You have to approach work that way where it’s, you know, your, you kind of say like, this is fundamentally, it’s a non-necessary thing, that it’s just a joy to create. So yeah. So, I’ve never felt that. I feel very motivated by my career. I love to work. I feel lucky to work. I’m ambitious, but I’ve never felt like I must leave my mark on the world. I’d love to. I mean, I love reading, so I get so jealous of novelists, you know, and I wish that was me, but since it’s not and when I look at that, I’ve never felt like, oh, that’s the thing I need to leave behind.

 

Brenda: You strike me as a very highly present person, and a person who’s really all in, in the moment and being creative and really thinking through what it is that you’re doing and being creative. And it just seems to me that working like that, you know, whether it leaves a legacy or not, who cares? We’re in the moment, we’re making something cool as shit, right?

 

Abby: But she’s making—you are, Monica, communicating with people because you’re making memories and moments for others which leave an indelible mark, and they’ll remember forever and ever. Like when you think about Sex and the City and that little relevance that it played to you in moving to New York City, when you see some of or encounter some of the projects that you’ve worked on, I mean, they really connect with people, and I think that they’ve built those people’s memories and people hopefully will be inspired in whatever it is they do after being immersed in some of the amazing things that you’ve created, that I know we’re going to go on to talk about. So, I think that you’re, the way you are and who you are is very much reflected in the type of work you do.

 

Brenda: I think that there’s a big difference between doing creative work because it’s what you want to do, and it’s where you are, and it’s the headspace that you’re in. There’s a difference between just doing the work and/or protecting your brand, so to speak. And I think that that makes for really different kinds of projects, if I were to guess.

 

Abby: And then moving to your projects, so you work physically, digitally, conceptually, and all of your work really connects people together in very powerful, playful and even I would say introspective ways. So, I’m thinking about the Samsung YOUniverse (y-o-universe to those listening) Experience, the Adidas City Takeover that you did, and Unbothered Wash Day. So, you’ve done a ton of different projects for brands and messaged in ways that really reach out to participants in meaningful and personal ways. So, tell us about some of your projects where you think the story really was evergreen or archetypal and connected with people in fundamental ways?

 

Monica: Well, let’s talk about Unbothered Wash Day. So, this was a virtual event—that cursed phrase, virtual event. But this happened in January, I believe, of 2021, right, so right in the thick of the pandemic. I was working at Vice at the time, and Unbothered was a Refinery29 subbrand focused on our Black female audience. And there had been success editorially with a column called Wash Day that focused on ritual and haircare, and the idea of that sort of time of week where our Black female audience was doing, sort of, wash day, doing hair. And there was so much talk around that, and there was so much online community forming. How can we celebrate that community and kind of make it bigger than people’s personal routines, but find a way to really celebrate that culture with the audience?

 

So actually, kind of inviting everyone to a shared wash day in which we had creators come in to talk about self-care and talk about what self-care meant for our, the community of readers in that time in the pandemic, I mean everything from sort of products to mental health to, all of that coming together. So, I think doing that at the time and just creating that space and sort of more literalizing the idea of a community coming together for a virtual event versus sort of just everyone sharing stories. You actually got to be live and talk face to face and sort of share your experience or meet some of the creators you were interested in. So that was great. And I remember we won an award for that. It felt like a gift. Right? You’re not, you weren’t sitting there saying like, oh, we want you to do this, or we have a message to you. It just felt like we were actually giving something to, to the audience who at that time, it was something to do when no one could do anything and just, a way of sharing experience during a really complicated time.

 

Brenda: I’ve got like so many thousands of thoughts and responses now and what I love about listening to you talk about Unbothered Wash Day, right, is that you talk about it, from the perspective and for the perspective of the audience, right, it’s all about the audience. It’s all about the person who’s going to engage, who’s going to get something out of it.

 

It’s not about your personal brand, right, and it’s probably why you’re able to work with so much speed is if you take that, if you’re taking that approach, are you taking that approach like with every project, like do you, you know, start with, okay, the end user and where are they coming from? Who are they? What do they want? What are their expectations? What are they desiring, you know, and then how do we craft towards that?

 

Abby: I’m going to build on that just for a second and say, yeah, like how do the projects come to you? Are they, help we need, this is our problem as a brand, you know, this is our community, like how is the process of the way the jobs come in and then how’s the process of the way that you’re ideating and who for, the client or the customer?

 

Monica: Well, first of all, it’s always for both, right? So, it’s not binary. And that’s a great, but it’s a great task to say that is it for the client or the, or the customer. You do start with the business problem, right, and that’s, that’s what we’re in, right, like we’re not there just to do cool things because it’s cool.

 

We’re there because we’re addressing something, whether that’s awareness, no one’s ever heard of this brand or perception, it’s maybe a big box brand that wants to look cool and culturally relevant. You’re really thinking about kind of, what is it this business needs to sort of accomplish, you know, it’s viewership, it’s sales, it’s whatever, and you, you start there and we’ve got strategists who come in and they, and they come up with that approach and you sort of figure out what it is that you’re trying to say. And then this is really, really important. And we can talk about this when we get into House of the Dragon or something else, you then craft the medium coming out of that, right, so you never if you’re, you know, you don’t approach it being like, okay, we’re going to do a screening, we’re going to do a pop-up. You can, but that’s not the work I’m interested in doing now.

 

So, it’s like, and I’m talking about this in the ideal state, right. So it’s identifying that and it’s identifying for me a hook, right, and I think like one of the things that is, can be a pitfall both for creatives and for brands is this desire to accomplish or say, every single thing you’ve ever felt about sort of your brand, you know, through the lens of like an experience or something like that. And I get that impulse, like I really, I sympathize with, I empathize with it, you know, so my job is to sort of guide people away from that because I’m like, you know, let’s take, for example, a television show, right? You know, you’re like, I don’t need to recreate the story that your show does that, my job is to not take that and then replicate it out in the world. My job is to just get people excited and wanting to learn more, wanting to do that next step.

 

Brenda: Well, this is, I mean, it’s the perfect timing to just have you talk about House of Dragon. You know, I’m excited and just want to sort of introduce the question by talking about the physicality of House of Dragon, that campaign, which I, I think it was mind boggling in just the best possible way, and not just because of all of the various media elements, but because, you know, there were so many physical, you know, monumental physical attributes to it.

 

And, you know, maybe it’s just like a personal thing for me or whatever, but there’s something about taking over the Manhattan Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, right, and seeing that and driving past that every single day or walking down the block from it. And it would be wonderful for you just to share with our listeners, how did you come to those, and if you would just describe a little bit about what the physicality was, in particular?

 

Monica: We had done House of Dragon Promotion season one, and in that, you know, HBO had come to us and they’re so smart, like, our clients at HBO are great marketers. So, they knew sort of for season one that they wanted to reach the sort of all existing fan base first, people who love Game of Thrones, bring people into the world of the show.

 

So, when we did that, we created an immersive experience at Comic-Con. It was a standalone recreation of the Red Keep, in which we invited fans to actually line up and experience hatching a dragon for themselves, right, so it was very theatrical. There were literally actors there, you know, you are recreating sets in some ways and bringing this to life and tapping into that, like true fantasy element for people who already were sort of invested in that, or we knew we could kind of reignite that.

 

Now, season two, right? They’ve got a foothold and now they want to go big. So right, I said season one, we bring people into the world of the show, season two, we brought the world of the show into our world, and we’re doing that in service of what they had asked us to do, which was kind of tease the narrative structure of season two, which is that basically there’s two warring factions, right? You have two, kind of, competing queens, you have a green council and a black council, and the whole sort of, all of season two is built around the idea that all must choose, right, and like there are two sides, everyone must choose them. Like everyone’s going down, but they’re going to go down fighting and there’s sort of no middle ground.

 

So, in doing that, you know, we’re like, okay, but how you do that, I’m not going to get there and I’m not going to make a billboard experience that’s like, so Queen Rhaenyra did this and Queen Alicent did this, and this is why she—no one gives a shit, right? I’m going to lose people right away. But if I can tap into, if we can tap into people’s sort of existing affinities that you’re already familiar with: Mets versus Yankees, this bagel shop versus that bagel shop, your competing housewives, you know, whatever it is that you already—everyone loves competition and rivalry, you know, whatever that is. If we can find a way to bridge those affiliations suddenly without doing anything at all, we’ve got you, right, and this was a multifaceted campaign.

 

So, you mentioned The Dragon. That was a big stunt. And then we made it really, really simple, right? You know, it is just kind of like green, black, green, black, all must choose, and these inciting messages. So, it was this combination of meeting people where they are and doing it in a very simple and visually ownable way, right, so just saying like green and black banners like, that’s it. And that’s one of the things you’ve got to really think about is, you know, what is the ownable sort of visual symbol for the show.

 

Brenda: Why do you consider season two House the Dragon, one of your best, your very best projects?

 

Monica: Yes. I love it in its simplicity, and I love that it defies categorization in some point. So, I’m very careful, like people say it’s an experiential campaign, I’m like, no it was not. It was a 360 integrated campaign. It’s not a, you know, whatever you want to say about it, it wasn’t, it was totally unique in that respect. So, they didn’t come to us and say, okay, we want necessarily a massive stunt. They just said, what is the best way to get people to raise their banners? World’s your oyster, any canvas you can think of. So that was competing trailers on YouTube. That was the sports partnerships, like I said, we did do the bar nights of sort of competing cocktail bars that, you know, different places in Manhattan, you know, competing pizza spots to the stunt to that—

 

So, it’s like when you. when you really look at the breadth of all the ways we brought that message to life and showing that that simple concept of just sort of assigning allegiances, right, is infinitely scalable. We just, we went wild and that was very fun. So that’s, that’s what’s interesting to me. I’m always looking to build, to break medium.

 

You know, we could talk about this idea of like, what experiences, you know, are or can be, and I think the idea of pushing medium and it’s not always like a pop-up, there’s not always, you know, 6 to 100 pallets of plywood, you know, in a built thing going into this, it really can be everything from a social experience to the sort of shared awe that comes when, you know, all these millions of people in the city walk out and they’re on their commute and they see a dragon on the Empire State Building, and I’m getting texts from people I haven’t heard from years, like, oh, I work on 27th Street, and we looked out and we could see it. So that was really sort of incredible. And I think the one other point you brought up was that mix, and you said this of what was real.

 

And Brenda, you asked about, you said physicality, what was real and what was not real, you know, what was CGI. And that was very important to us too. And we knew, like, okay, we wanted to do some things or show up in places we know we’d never get the permits for, even though if anyone can get permits, it’s Giant Spoon, but we knew if we went like pure CGI, like it wouldn’t land, right? So, what we needed to do is actually mess with people, right? And not in a, like a manipulative way, again, like you’re, you’re trying to trick people, but to just say like, whoa, like this is incredible.

 

Brenda: It’s playful, in a playful way.

 

Monica: It’s playful, you know? So, when you look at that, like those banners on Grand Central, Rockefeller Plaza, the New York Stock Exchange, like all of those were real, right? The dragon was real. So, you see that, and then you’re like, but the bridges, they’re not, you know, and everything, it was just like a total, so people were actually, they didn’t feel tricked. They were having fun. They were having fun, kind of understanding, like what they were seeing.

 

Brenda: If you could have anything that you wanted where, in terms of experiential, where do you hope things go five years from now?

 

Monica: I hope they’re sustainable. Right? That’s going to be a really interesting challenge and one I don’t have the answer for. Everyone’s been trying for years and years. But it’s you know I think substituting you know sustainably sourced MDF versus not is not the answer, right, like it’s going to take like pretty wild innovation to think about what that means. Right? Like it’s not just recycled materials. So, I think it’s a sustainable industry in which we can find ways to bring these stories to life that are low impact, and doing that through technology, through sort of social invitations versus maybe built environments as much. I love built environments, so it’s a tricky—makes me nervous to even say that because I love a built environment, you know? But I’m thinking, well, how could I do that sort of absent of materiality in some ways and just kind of invite people to experience things different?

 

So, I would say in five years I want to define that, and I want to find a way to always keep doubling down on relationships of people in real life. You know, that’s what inspires me is to see kind of what people are, what they’re doing in the world. There’s a reason I’m in experimental and that, you know, I just love that. So, I don’t know, I think it’s that and it’s, it’s making sure that the technology, while that will advance and we’ll find different ways of kind of creating environments, that they’re all in service, of just making things feel more human than they were ever before.

 

Brenda: You just have such an insightful way of thinking about, really, the whole world of experiential and the nature of people, and which gets back to your, right, origin with your interest in psychology.

 

Abby: And community building. A lot of your work brings communities together virtually or in person. So, you’re building communities, which essentially is what we all try to do, whether it’s exhibit design or in all the advertising that you do. Yeah, you bring together these people, so they keep this human connection, and the delight and all that you bring, we don’t have enough of that in the world.

 

So, thank you for all the work you do. I think it’s absolutely incredible and really excited to see what you can do next in New York City, what’s around the corner.

 

Brenda: I don’t know, I see you hitting rural areas next.

 

Monica: I would love that.

 

Brenda: I see that in your future.

 

Monica: I can’t stop dreaming about crop circles. I hope that’s not a hint.

 

Abby: Oh, you heard it here first, crop circles.

 

Brenda: No, I’m seeing you do major earthworks. Okay.

 

Abby: Thank you so much, Monica, for joining us today.

 

Monica: Thank you so much for having me.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. See you next time!

 

Brenda: Thank you everyone!

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Experience as a Catalyst for Connection with Monica Herman

Experience as a Catalyst for Connection with Monica Herman

February 5, 2025
The Crossroads of Media, Architecture, and Technology with Brandon Harp

The Crossroads of Media, Architecture, and Technology with Brandon Harp

January 8, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
How can digital technology transform our everyday spaces into memorable experiences? In this episode of Matters of Experience, Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan speak with Brandon Harp, Director of Digital Experiences at McCann Systems Experiential Technology Practice. Brandon shares insights into designing multi-sensory environments, the importance of storytelling in digital displays, and how data and creativity intersect to create meaningful connections. From airports to immersive art spaces, discover how Brandon’s innovative approach bridges technology, architecture, and human emotion to craft unforgettable experiences.
Brandon Harp, Director of Digital Experiences, leads McCann Systems' Experiential Technology Practice and works at the crossroads of media, architecture, technology, and storytelling. His 15+ years of experience in the Digital Signage and Pro AV business has driven his interest in how humans interact with digital displays, effective storytelling, how technology enhances and activates brands, and how media speaks to and influences audiences.

McCann Systems

SUMMIT One Vanderbilt

Refik Anadol

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: This podcast is produced by Lorem Ipsum in New York City and explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Hello to anybody listening for the first time, and welcome back to our regular listeners. So, today our guest is my friend Brandon Harp, Director of Digital Experiences, leads McCann Systems’ Experiential Technology Practice. He works at the crossroads of media, architecture, technology and storytelling, which I think is a real sweet spot right now, and for the past 15 years has focused his interest in how humans interact with digital displays, how technology enhances and activates brands, and how media speaks to and influences audience. Brandon, welcome to the show.

 

Brandon: Thank you so much, Abby. Thanks for having me, and Brenda, I really appreciate it.

 

Brenda: Oh, we are so delighted to have you and to kick start off, I know that you have an early sort of origin story to the work that you’re currently doing, and I thought I would share an early memory of mine, which is making an exhibit in my bedroom when I was probably about six years old, and it was because I had found a small toy that I was convinced was the Loch Ness Monster. And I was so overjoyed by this that I decided that the very best thing to do, to share this wealth of information and to celebrate the toy, was to construct an exhibition in my bedroom. So, the rest actually is history for me. What about you, Brandon?

 

Brandon: Well, I don’t know that my story is as good as yours, Brenda. I mean, who doesn’t like the Loch Ness Monster?

 

Brenda: Who doesn’t? Indeed.

 

Brandon: But, for me, it actually started—I had, as a young kid, I had always wanted to be and had ambitions of being an architect. And so I remember I was at the store with my mother, and I convinced her to buy me a book of floor plans and I used to take those floor plans and mark them up with various different colors and highlighters and things, and kind of expand on the floor plans as if I was putting in an addition on a house and things like that. So, I’ve always had kind of this dream, I guess, of being an architect. And so now my work is taking me in the direction of audiovisual, and how does media fit within spaces and spatial planning, and, you know, how does the, essentially the technology work with the architecture to tell stories and so forth. So, it’s kind of come full circle for me, which is kind of exciting.

 

Abby: One of the things I wanted to chat about is: we talked earlier with the architect Alex Bitus about the importance of bathrooms. And now and again it crops up on our podcast, this theme, because it’s a personal favorite of mine. I really think it’s an underrated space. And so, when we were chatting earlier, you have sort of a very nice epiphany moment, which I can really appreciate, linked to being in a bathroom and it’s not going to be—

 

Brenda: The listeners are definitely interested now.

 

Abby: It’s not going to go to a bad place. So, you know, tell me about your epiphany story.

 

Brandon: Actually, I have two good bathroom stories, believe it or not, so we’ll get real spicy here. My first one was when I first encountered digital signage, which is really where I started my career. It was in a bathroom, believe it or not, and I was using the urinal and staring at the screen that was changing and it was showing advertisements of, you know, that bar that I was at, I believe, and maybe, you know, something else and then it would change and rotate and it, you know, really got me thinking that, you know, this is the wave of the future, right?

 

I guess my other bathroom story while we’re on this topic, which is kind of funny, is, you know, if you haven’t been to SUMMIT One Vanderbilt, they actually have some of the most amazing bathrooms and it’s because as part of the observation deck experience, you get to actually look out over the city from very high up in the air for these, full glass windows. It’s an amazing view and an amazing bathroom, literally, just because of the way that it was designed and the experience that’s involved in that. So I guess moral of the story is you can have an experience in the bathroom.

 

Brenda: You absolutely can.

 

Abby: See, see, it’s catching on. But just because you’ve just mentioned it, do you want to talk just now before we keep going about that project, seeing as you mentioned it, because I know you guys worked on it.

 

Brandon: Sure. Well, without giving it away, because I would encourage everyone to go see it and experience it for yourself. I think, you know, it’s easy in our world of audiovisual to get sucked into, you know, just focusing on the video element of things. And the vision that Kenzo Digital had, who was the immersive artist, was truly exceptional. It came to him in a dream, he presented it to Marc Holliday, the CEO of SL Green, and you have video mixed with audio and interactives and sight and sound and smell and art and all these things just kind of come together and really just blend so well. You get this, just this multi-sensory sort of experience that just changes your perception and your view. And you can be a New Yorker and go there and love every minute of that. You could be from another country around the world and go there and love every minute of it. And it’s never the same thing twice, which is really what’s interesting about it.

 

And, you know, a project like that that was under a grueling timeline, constantly changing of design, and so forth, really just trying to stay, you know, ahead of it, ahead of the design and being agile and limber enough to do so as a company. You know, we stayed on schedule during Covid and there were so many just things I think that could have adversely gone wrong that for us just didn’t. I don’t know if it was a stroke of luck, but maybe there was a little bit of that in there. But it was also, I think, just the sheer ambition of what it was that we were creating and, you know, knowing that the outcome was just going to be that incredible, so we were just constantly pushing to get to that finish line and now it’s, it is truly something. It still gives me goosebumps when I think about it. It’s, to me it’s something that certainly lights up my life, makes me happy every time I think about it, and I’ve loved and still enjoy sharing it with anybody who’s either hasn’t been there or maybe has been, but wants a, just a different experience and so…

 

Brenda: It sounds so amazing, and I also appreciate how you use New Yorkers as, even a New Yorker would go and find that. I have to ask you, you know, you’re describing such an ideal situation in terms of the client being in alignment with you and with all of the different companies and individuals involved in the process. And what a wonderful rarity. And I have to ask, you know, you work on huge projects in major cities. You weave technology into our every day, give us a hit of a challenging project. How do you creatively solve issues when things aren’t necessarily going so well?

 

Brandon: You know, oftentimes the challenges are just getting past, you know, what is the technology to create the experience? Because in our world and the approach that I take and McCann Systems takes is that there’s more to it than just the video wall. Right? And it’s easy for clients and designers and architects and so forth to say, well, hey, I need to understand what it’s going to take from a budgetary perspective to be able to put something like this in, right? Everybody wants the Sphere nowadays, that’s great, but your budget doesn’t necessarily support that in a lot of cases. So, it’s something that, you know, we try to advise our clients on at a very early stage that there’s more to it than just the technology. The technology, we will get it to do what you want it to do. But let’s peel the onion back a little bit. Let’s take a step back. Let’s take the technology off the table and let’s engage with the right partners. Right? Let’s talk about the content. Let’s talk about the storytelling. Let’s talk about the experience. You know, the human interaction as I always say, because what is it at the end of the day that you want people to feel?

 

And I think that’s, you know, going about things that way has been very, very successful for me and in my career. But also, you know, for the companies that I work for, because they understand that and it helps the client really dig deeper, right? Because if you’re just looking at the surface, which to me is the black LED screen, it’s a square or a box on a wall in a lot of cases, you need to be able to understand, you know, and have a strategy, you know, content strategy and what is the experience and how does the journey flow through the space, and if you think about those things, you know, you’re able to overcome a lot of design challenges. You’re able to overcome a lot of the guesswork that comes with trying to establish budgets and things like that, but it also gives the client, I think, a real peace of mind that they know you are an expert at this, and they’re hiring the right person for the right, all the right reasons.

 

Abby: So switching, you were recently on a panel at DOOH conference, and the discussion was about privacy, and I wanted to talk a little bit more about that and share with our listeners that phenomenon that we’re all very happy to share everything with our phone, our name, our phone number, our Social Security, date of birth, you name it, we’ll share it. But when it comes to larger screens, people, the public seem to get really creeped out by the suggestion that a large screen could sort of see them and respond to them, when I’m thinking about the great strides in technology we’ve made, where we can actually build these screens to dim if there aren’t a lot of people there to save energy or dim at night time when there’s nobody there. And so, we can actually make them sensitive to humans. And when we’re there and not there, and even just from a sustainability perspective, that’s good. But we don’t want any of that. Right? Human nature is seeming, and we were chatting a lot about that at the conference. So, you know, what’s your spin on that and perspective on that? Do you think that we’ll get over ourselves and we’ll be getting tracked by all these screens or, you know, I’d love for you to share your thoughts, Brandon.

 

Brandon: It’s always an interesting topic because, you know, how many times have you just been sitting there at night with your husband or wife or partner and you’re talking or whatever, and you mention something, and then all of a sudden you look at your phone and it’s like, oh, Google is listening to me, because now there’s an ad for, you know, whatever it was that you’re talking about. So, you know, I think, yes, there’s a lot of that on, on your personal device. And there can be a lot of it out in, in the wild or in public spaces and so forth. I think what you’re seeing is places where tracking of individuals moving through spaces, understanding their, you know, whether they’re a male or a female, their height, you know, how happy they are, are they smiling or are they not smiling, tracking those kinds of things: I think a lot of that nowadays is anonymous, which is good because really it’s just all about taking that data and then being able to repurpose it or reuse it in a way that it can influence something else.

 

And as somebody who, you know, really loves all things digital signage, call me a nerd or whatever, but I do like the data aspect of it, right, and taking data and utilizing that to influence decision making, but also in the art world, I think a good example of that would be, you know, Refik Anadol. Everyone knows Refik, right, for his work with the machine learning and the data visualizations. I mean, he’s taking data and turning that into art, and I think there’s something very powerful about that. And a lot of different clients that we have are asking about those kinds of things. How can we take financial data or metrics from something and be able to present it in a way that it creates a really unique kind of inviting ambiance, maybe in a lobby or something of that nature and then, you know, present it back to those people, right, and it, but it’s totally anonymous, right? It doesn’t infringe on you as a person. It doesn’t know who you are. It’s just gathering of data and repurposing it in ways that’s pretty exciting.

 

Abby: If I was running a museum and I spent a bunch of money on my brand new build, I would probably want to get anonymous data of what’s working, where people are hanging out, what they’re responding to, or even you might want to put it in to be able, Brandon, to explain to your client, look what’s working really well, what we did here works or it doesn’t work. I’m assuming that everybody would like data, so that they can learn and improve.

 

Brenda: You know, I’m thinking of a billion different things, and I’m really sad that I wasn’t at the DOOH conference, because I do have so many mixed feelings about this as well, and far too many, dinner table conversations with my husband about all of this, because, yes, we also, call us nerdy, talk about this quite a bit. But in terms of, even Abby, what you were just asking about in terms of, you know, museums or any kind of place wanting to be able to share data and also collect data about people’s responses to spaces and stuff like that, I think about a topic that came up at the SEGD Xlab conference, that we were all just at, and the question about a return on emotion and the, sort of, there was a mini conversation, if you all caught it, about, you know, some folks thinking that you can’t even really get that kind of data from people. And for me, that’s the data that I would be most interested in really understanding. And, Brandon, I’m wondering if you have specific thoughts about the idea of return on emotion. Do you see that as data that is able to be collected? And, you know, because emotion is a part of what it is that you try to work with and be sensitive to and understand and utilize within your own work.

 

Brandon: Everything that we do in terms of designing systems and installing them and servicing them, is to provoke emotions at the end of the day, and if it’s a part of an attraction or even if it’s just something, you know, in a lobby where people are passing by, it’s intended to create an emotion.

 

We recently did a project that we did, was for Mercer Labs here in New York City. It’s an immersive environment that’s got kind of the feel of an art gallery and an experience, just experiential spaces that really also captivate all of the senses. We had a partner who is testing out these wristbands that you can wear, and ultimately what it does is it picks up on brainwaves rather than heartbeats and things like that, and utilizing an app with this wristband, once you make your way through this, all the spaces, which took about an hour, we were provided with this data as to your level of immersion and your level of immersion is, you know, tied directly to emotion, right, and how you’re feeling about that space. So it’s interesting to see the data on that, and I found it interesting because prior to going into those spaces with the wristband, I kind of had it in my head, the ones where I would feel that emotion, really, the highest or the greatest, I guess, and in some cases it wasn’t always the case, so it was interesting.

 

I think it’s still kind of in its infancy stage, but I think it does, that anonymous data does lead towards something, right? And we know that it does help understand our emotions and our level of immersion as we are in these spaces, which is great. And if we can use that as part of actionable design and come up with new ways of, you know, helping people create spaces that are truly immersive like that, that every space can really get your senses up and generates this amazing feeling, then, you know, maybe we’re onto something.

 

Brenda: I think it’s, it’s so rich and potent and I think that as a tool for designers and as a tool for developers and planners, it would be so valuable to be able to have as best an understanding as possible about immersion and, you know, the level of engagement and the types of engagement, but also the intensity of emotion that we could, you know, reasonably anticipate, you know, from my perspective, you know, so that we could be particularly sensitive to how it is that we’re telling our stories and how we can be the most effective with a really deep awareness of being able to, frankly, help people and support people as much as get our message across in a way that’s really going to be comprehensive.

 

Abby: So, we’re going to move to airports So we’ve done some large projects in airports, large media projects, and I wanted to talk about airports because I know you, Brandon, have done some large projects. It’s like a new canvas. You know, you have people, unlike I think in a museum when they go into a museum to absorb content, you have them going to an airport to travel somewhere else. And so actually absorbing content or being ready to be told a story is very much secondary, even, if not thirdly or fourthly, on their agenda of why they’re at the airport. And so, it’s a really interesting playground and place to be able to tell these episodic stories. Can you tell us about one of your airport projects and where you see this sort of canvas going in the future?

 

Brandon: Yeah, the airports, you know, really seem to be a place that, you know, we can utilize this technology that we deal with on a day-to-day basis to help set the mode and set the tone for the experience that you’re about to have. And I’ve been talking about this theory of a connected journey, as I like to call it, and for me, it begins as soon as you get out of your Uber or someone drops you off on the sidewalk, then you start to make your way, you know, through TSA to get to your gate, onto your plane, off your plane, go pick up your bag and then get back into an Uber, a taxi, or even taking it a step further all the way to your final destination.

 

But you know, for me, I think in an airport, what really is important is giving people real time information at the right place so that they don’t have to search for, you know, the schedule on the app for that specific airline or for that specific, you know, terminal or anything like that. So, to me, it’s about giving people kind of the right information at the right time, because in general, airports can be overwhelming. They can be a feeling of negativity. Right? You’re maybe upset because your plane is a little delayed. So how do you, how do you change that? And I think that’s what we as people who design and build and service these systems we strive for, is to put, you know, as corny as it sounds, a smile on people’s faces.

 

And if you do that, in turn, you’re creating new revenue channels, right? Because they are a little more happy now. They’re feeling a little more euphoric. They’re feeling more comfortable in their surrounding environment, and therefore they’re going to get something to eat and they’re going to spend more money, or they’re going to go into one of the stores there, the retail stores, and buy a new outfit or a new, you know, piece of luggage or something, right, to just, because they’re feeling that way.

 

So I think it’s, it’s the connectedness of that passenger journey, and, you know, there are ways of, of still really interacting with people in fun, playful ways. Maybe it’s a video wall that has some sort of depth sensing camera that just kind of walks with you and kind of leads you down a path or leads you in the direction that you need to go towards the baggage claim. And maybe it waves at you or blows you a kiss, or does something that, you know, just kind of interacts with you to kind of put a smile on your face and keep you moving through the space, but multifunctional too even, you know, wayfinding is always a big element of an airport, and to me, that’s one of the first things I notice is if I find the wayfinding to be cumbersome or challenging or just, you know, not legible, in some cases, you know, how can you utilize a screen like that that could be interactive but also lead you to a certain destination right, and how does it get you from point A to point B?

 

So I think those are all things that are kind of a part of that connected journey and a lot of just kind of the, the recent things that we’re seeing in trends and ways of engaging people with digital displays throughout airports.

 

Brenda: I have to ask when—so, we’re talking about artistry, and we’re talking about being able to envision environments that are, you know, highly, highly aesthetic, emotion-rich and sculptural. Who on your team—please tell me there’s somebody on your team who brings pencil to paper in these early stages to really envision these kinds of applications and environments. I’m so curious.

 

Brandon: Yeah, there sure is. You know, we’ve got some, some really bright people that work for us. Ken Newbury is our CTO. We’ve got Ryan Palley, who just joined the company, who’s, I’ve been working with for years. And I’ll give those guys a shout out just because I work with them quite a bit on these, this little experiential island, as we call it, that we live on.

 

They understand this technology, they know it very well, and they’re very good at doing exactly like you said, Brenda, these little napkin sketches are helping a client, you know, think through, okay, what is, you know, what is this use case? What’s the application? How can we do something here that’s unique and really offers a, you know, an inviting solution, something that we can all be proud of. So, I think from an engineering standpoint, they’re the brains. They know this kind of stuff really well.

 

Brenda; We love people like them.

 

Brandon: You have to have them. But they’re also, they also have that creative gene, too, which is important. And not everybody has that, I think. But it is important to have the, you know, kind of marry the two, right, and creativity with engineering often don’t go together that well. So, finding people that do have that sort of, you know, blend of both skill sets, I think is really what makes us effective as a company.

 

Abby: Well, and kudos to you, Brandon, because you know, the way you approach what you do is: it’s a lot of custom work, it’s a lot of things that maybe haven’t been done before, and so you and your company are very willing to work with designers and make, as you did, dreams come true, literally. And, you know, that takes a lot of courage and courage from the company you work for. So where do you get the chutzpah from to do that?

 

Brandon: I think it’s always been in our DNA. I mean, when I joined McCann about six months ago, you know, something that really struck me was, that the company has always had the, the feeling and, and kind of wherewithal to not say no to things because they’re challenging. Right? In fact, it’s quite the opposite for us. We like that challenge. We like to take on the projects that others just simply don’t think can be done or refused to do because they see it as, you know, too risky or we just don’t have the right kind of personnel to give it a try. So, for us, I think, you know, that to me was a breath of fresh air. Right? And that’s kind of what we’ve always been known for and how we’ve always gone about our business as a company. So yeah, there’s not much that scares us, if anything, I guess, but, you know, if there’s a will, there’s a way, and I think, you know, McCann is always good at looking at that to find the, find the solution for the client.

 

Abby: Thank you so much, Brandon, for bringing us onto, onto your experiential island today. It’s been really fun.

 

Brandon: Thanks for having me. It was so much fun. And I hope the listenership get something out of it. It’s so inspiring to be a part of this community that we have. You know, there’s so many brilliantly smart people out there who, if you can, just take a little bit from every person and sort of apply that in different ways. I think it’s a great way of doing things. So always keep learning, always keep being creative and imagining. And it’s, it’s all possible.

 

Brenda: Here, here.

 

Abby: Thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you liked what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and please share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

 

Brenda: Thank you so much everyone!

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Brandon Harp, Director of Digital Experiences, leads McCann Systems' Experiential Technology Practice and works at the crossroads of media, architecture, technology, and storytelling. His 15+ years of experience in the Digital Signage and Pro AV business has driven his interest in how humans interact with digital displays, effective storytelling, how technology enhances and activates brands, and how media speaks to and influences audiences.

McCann Systems

SUMMIT One Vanderbilt

Refik Anadol

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: This podcast is produced by Lorem Ipsum in New York City and explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Hello to anybody listening for the first time, and welcome back to our regular listeners. So, today our guest is my friend Brandon Harp, Director of Digital Experiences, leads McCann Systems’ Experiential Technology Practice. He works at the crossroads of media, architecture, technology and storytelling, which I think is a real sweet spot right now, and for the past 15 years has focused his interest in how humans interact with digital displays, how technology enhances and activates brands, and how media speaks to and influences audience. Brandon, welcome to the show.

 

Brandon: Thank you so much, Abby. Thanks for having me, and Brenda, I really appreciate it.

 

Brenda: Oh, we are so delighted to have you and to kick start off, I know that you have an early sort of origin story to the work that you’re currently doing, and I thought I would share an early memory of mine, which is making an exhibit in my bedroom when I was probably about six years old, and it was because I had found a small toy that I was convinced was the Loch Ness Monster. And I was so overjoyed by this that I decided that the very best thing to do, to share this wealth of information and to celebrate the toy, was to construct an exhibition in my bedroom. So, the rest actually is history for me. What about you, Brandon?

 

Brandon: Well, I don’t know that my story is as good as yours, Brenda. I mean, who doesn’t like the Loch Ness Monster?

 

Brenda: Who doesn’t? Indeed.

 

Brandon: But, for me, it actually started—I had, as a young kid, I had always wanted to be and had ambitions of being an architect. And so I remember I was at the store with my mother, and I convinced her to buy me a book of floor plans and I used to take those floor plans and mark them up with various different colors and highlighters and things, and kind of expand on the floor plans as if I was putting in an addition on a house and things like that. So, I’ve always had kind of this dream, I guess, of being an architect. And so now my work is taking me in the direction of audiovisual, and how does media fit within spaces and spatial planning, and, you know, how does the, essentially the technology work with the architecture to tell stories and so forth. So, it’s kind of come full circle for me, which is kind of exciting.

 

Abby: One of the things I wanted to chat about is: we talked earlier with the architect Alex Bitus about the importance of bathrooms. And now and again it crops up on our podcast, this theme, because it’s a personal favorite of mine. I really think it’s an underrated space. And so, when we were chatting earlier, you have sort of a very nice epiphany moment, which I can really appreciate, linked to being in a bathroom and it’s not going to be—

 

Brenda: The listeners are definitely interested now.

 

Abby: It’s not going to go to a bad place. So, you know, tell me about your epiphany story.

 

Brandon: Actually, I have two good bathroom stories, believe it or not, so we’ll get real spicy here. My first one was when I first encountered digital signage, which is really where I started my career. It was in a bathroom, believe it or not, and I was using the urinal and staring at the screen that was changing and it was showing advertisements of, you know, that bar that I was at, I believe, and maybe, you know, something else and then it would change and rotate and it, you know, really got me thinking that, you know, this is the wave of the future, right?

 

I guess my other bathroom story while we’re on this topic, which is kind of funny, is, you know, if you haven’t been to SUMMIT One Vanderbilt, they actually have some of the most amazing bathrooms and it’s because as part of the observation deck experience, you get to actually look out over the city from very high up in the air for these, full glass windows. It’s an amazing view and an amazing bathroom, literally, just because of the way that it was designed and the experience that’s involved in that. So I guess moral of the story is you can have an experience in the bathroom.

 

Brenda: You absolutely can.

 

Abby: See, see, it’s catching on. But just because you’ve just mentioned it, do you want to talk just now before we keep going about that project, seeing as you mentioned it, because I know you guys worked on it.

 

Brandon: Sure. Well, without giving it away, because I would encourage everyone to go see it and experience it for yourself. I think, you know, it’s easy in our world of audiovisual to get sucked into, you know, just focusing on the video element of things. And the vision that Kenzo Digital had, who was the immersive artist, was truly exceptional. It came to him in a dream, he presented it to Marc Holliday, the CEO of SL Green, and you have video mixed with audio and interactives and sight and sound and smell and art and all these things just kind of come together and really just blend so well. You get this, just this multi-sensory sort of experience that just changes your perception and your view. And you can be a New Yorker and go there and love every minute of that. You could be from another country around the world and go there and love every minute of it. And it’s never the same thing twice, which is really what’s interesting about it.

 

And, you know, a project like that that was under a grueling timeline, constantly changing of design, and so forth, really just trying to stay, you know, ahead of it, ahead of the design and being agile and limber enough to do so as a company. You know, we stayed on schedule during Covid and there were so many just things I think that could have adversely gone wrong that for us just didn’t. I don’t know if it was a stroke of luck, but maybe there was a little bit of that in there. But it was also, I think, just the sheer ambition of what it was that we were creating and, you know, knowing that the outcome was just going to be that incredible, so we were just constantly pushing to get to that finish line and now it’s, it is truly something. It still gives me goosebumps when I think about it. It’s, to me it’s something that certainly lights up my life, makes me happy every time I think about it, and I’ve loved and still enjoy sharing it with anybody who’s either hasn’t been there or maybe has been, but wants a, just a different experience and so…

 

Brenda: It sounds so amazing, and I also appreciate how you use New Yorkers as, even a New Yorker would go and find that. I have to ask you, you know, you’re describing such an ideal situation in terms of the client being in alignment with you and with all of the different companies and individuals involved in the process. And what a wonderful rarity. And I have to ask, you know, you work on huge projects in major cities. You weave technology into our every day, give us a hit of a challenging project. How do you creatively solve issues when things aren’t necessarily going so well?

 

Brandon: You know, oftentimes the challenges are just getting past, you know, what is the technology to create the experience? Because in our world and the approach that I take and McCann Systems takes is that there’s more to it than just the video wall. Right? And it’s easy for clients and designers and architects and so forth to say, well, hey, I need to understand what it’s going to take from a budgetary perspective to be able to put something like this in, right? Everybody wants the Sphere nowadays, that’s great, but your budget doesn’t necessarily support that in a lot of cases. So, it’s something that, you know, we try to advise our clients on at a very early stage that there’s more to it than just the technology. The technology, we will get it to do what you want it to do. But let’s peel the onion back a little bit. Let’s take a step back. Let’s take the technology off the table and let’s engage with the right partners. Right? Let’s talk about the content. Let’s talk about the storytelling. Let’s talk about the experience. You know, the human interaction as I always say, because what is it at the end of the day that you want people to feel?

 

And I think that’s, you know, going about things that way has been very, very successful for me and in my career. But also, you know, for the companies that I work for, because they understand that and it helps the client really dig deeper, right? Because if you’re just looking at the surface, which to me is the black LED screen, it’s a square or a box on a wall in a lot of cases, you need to be able to understand, you know, and have a strategy, you know, content strategy and what is the experience and how does the journey flow through the space, and if you think about those things, you know, you’re able to overcome a lot of design challenges. You’re able to overcome a lot of the guesswork that comes with trying to establish budgets and things like that, but it also gives the client, I think, a real peace of mind that they know you are an expert at this, and they’re hiring the right person for the right, all the right reasons.

 

Abby: So switching, you were recently on a panel at DOOH conference, and the discussion was about privacy, and I wanted to talk a little bit more about that and share with our listeners that phenomenon that we’re all very happy to share everything with our phone, our name, our phone number, our Social Security, date of birth, you name it, we’ll share it. But when it comes to larger screens, people, the public seem to get really creeped out by the suggestion that a large screen could sort of see them and respond to them, when I’m thinking about the great strides in technology we’ve made, where we can actually build these screens to dim if there aren’t a lot of people there to save energy or dim at night time when there’s nobody there. And so, we can actually make them sensitive to humans. And when we’re there and not there, and even just from a sustainability perspective, that’s good. But we don’t want any of that. Right? Human nature is seeming, and we were chatting a lot about that at the conference. So, you know, what’s your spin on that and perspective on that? Do you think that we’ll get over ourselves and we’ll be getting tracked by all these screens or, you know, I’d love for you to share your thoughts, Brandon.

 

Brandon: It’s always an interesting topic because, you know, how many times have you just been sitting there at night with your husband or wife or partner and you’re talking or whatever, and you mention something, and then all of a sudden you look at your phone and it’s like, oh, Google is listening to me, because now there’s an ad for, you know, whatever it was that you’re talking about. So, you know, I think, yes, there’s a lot of that on, on your personal device. And there can be a lot of it out in, in the wild or in public spaces and so forth. I think what you’re seeing is places where tracking of individuals moving through spaces, understanding their, you know, whether they’re a male or a female, their height, you know, how happy they are, are they smiling or are they not smiling, tracking those kinds of things: I think a lot of that nowadays is anonymous, which is good because really it’s just all about taking that data and then being able to repurpose it or reuse it in a way that it can influence something else.

 

And as somebody who, you know, really loves all things digital signage, call me a nerd or whatever, but I do like the data aspect of it, right, and taking data and utilizing that to influence decision making, but also in the art world, I think a good example of that would be, you know, Refik Anadol. Everyone knows Refik, right, for his work with the machine learning and the data visualizations. I mean, he’s taking data and turning that into art, and I think there’s something very powerful about that. And a lot of different clients that we have are asking about those kinds of things. How can we take financial data or metrics from something and be able to present it in a way that it creates a really unique kind of inviting ambiance, maybe in a lobby or something of that nature and then, you know, present it back to those people, right, and it, but it’s totally anonymous, right? It doesn’t infringe on you as a person. It doesn’t know who you are. It’s just gathering of data and repurposing it in ways that’s pretty exciting.

 

Abby: If I was running a museum and I spent a bunch of money on my brand new build, I would probably want to get anonymous data of what’s working, where people are hanging out, what they’re responding to, or even you might want to put it in to be able, Brandon, to explain to your client, look what’s working really well, what we did here works or it doesn’t work. I’m assuming that everybody would like data, so that they can learn and improve.

 

Brenda: You know, I’m thinking of a billion different things, and I’m really sad that I wasn’t at the DOOH conference, because I do have so many mixed feelings about this as well, and far too many, dinner table conversations with my husband about all of this, because, yes, we also, call us nerdy, talk about this quite a bit. But in terms of, even Abby, what you were just asking about in terms of, you know, museums or any kind of place wanting to be able to share data and also collect data about people’s responses to spaces and stuff like that, I think about a topic that came up at the SEGD Xlab conference, that we were all just at, and the question about a return on emotion and the, sort of, there was a mini conversation, if you all caught it, about, you know, some folks thinking that you can’t even really get that kind of data from people. And for me, that’s the data that I would be most interested in really understanding. And, Brandon, I’m wondering if you have specific thoughts about the idea of return on emotion. Do you see that as data that is able to be collected? And, you know, because emotion is a part of what it is that you try to work with and be sensitive to and understand and utilize within your own work.

 

Brandon: Everything that we do in terms of designing systems and installing them and servicing them, is to provoke emotions at the end of the day, and if it’s a part of an attraction or even if it’s just something, you know, in a lobby where people are passing by, it’s intended to create an emotion.

 

We recently did a project that we did, was for Mercer Labs here in New York City. It’s an immersive environment that’s got kind of the feel of an art gallery and an experience, just experiential spaces that really also captivate all of the senses. We had a partner who is testing out these wristbands that you can wear, and ultimately what it does is it picks up on brainwaves rather than heartbeats and things like that, and utilizing an app with this wristband, once you make your way through this, all the spaces, which took about an hour, we were provided with this data as to your level of immersion and your level of immersion is, you know, tied directly to emotion, right, and how you’re feeling about that space. So it’s interesting to see the data on that, and I found it interesting because prior to going into those spaces with the wristband, I kind of had it in my head, the ones where I would feel that emotion, really, the highest or the greatest, I guess, and in some cases it wasn’t always the case, so it was interesting.

 

I think it’s still kind of in its infancy stage, but I think it does, that anonymous data does lead towards something, right? And we know that it does help understand our emotions and our level of immersion as we are in these spaces, which is great. And if we can use that as part of actionable design and come up with new ways of, you know, helping people create spaces that are truly immersive like that, that every space can really get your senses up and generates this amazing feeling, then, you know, maybe we’re onto something.

 

Brenda: I think it’s, it’s so rich and potent and I think that as a tool for designers and as a tool for developers and planners, it would be so valuable to be able to have as best an understanding as possible about immersion and, you know, the level of engagement and the types of engagement, but also the intensity of emotion that we could, you know, reasonably anticipate, you know, from my perspective, you know, so that we could be particularly sensitive to how it is that we’re telling our stories and how we can be the most effective with a really deep awareness of being able to, frankly, help people and support people as much as get our message across in a way that’s really going to be comprehensive.

 

Abby: So, we’re going to move to airports So we’ve done some large projects in airports, large media projects, and I wanted to talk about airports because I know you, Brandon, have done some large projects. It’s like a new canvas. You know, you have people, unlike I think in a museum when they go into a museum to absorb content, you have them going to an airport to travel somewhere else. And so actually absorbing content or being ready to be told a story is very much secondary, even, if not thirdly or fourthly, on their agenda of why they’re at the airport. And so, it’s a really interesting playground and place to be able to tell these episodic stories. Can you tell us about one of your airport projects and where you see this sort of canvas going in the future?

 

Brandon: Yeah, the airports, you know, really seem to be a place that, you know, we can utilize this technology that we deal with on a day-to-day basis to help set the mode and set the tone for the experience that you’re about to have. And I’ve been talking about this theory of a connected journey, as I like to call it, and for me, it begins as soon as you get out of your Uber or someone drops you off on the sidewalk, then you start to make your way, you know, through TSA to get to your gate, onto your plane, off your plane, go pick up your bag and then get back into an Uber, a taxi, or even taking it a step further all the way to your final destination.

 

But you know, for me, I think in an airport, what really is important is giving people real time information at the right place so that they don’t have to search for, you know, the schedule on the app for that specific airline or for that specific, you know, terminal or anything like that. So, to me, it’s about giving people kind of the right information at the right time, because in general, airports can be overwhelming. They can be a feeling of negativity. Right? You’re maybe upset because your plane is a little delayed. So how do you, how do you change that? And I think that’s what we as people who design and build and service these systems we strive for, is to put, you know, as corny as it sounds, a smile on people’s faces.

 

And if you do that, in turn, you’re creating new revenue channels, right? Because they are a little more happy now. They’re feeling a little more euphoric. They’re feeling more comfortable in their surrounding environment, and therefore they’re going to get something to eat and they’re going to spend more money, or they’re going to go into one of the stores there, the retail stores, and buy a new outfit or a new, you know, piece of luggage or something, right, to just, because they’re feeling that way.

 

So I think it’s, it’s the connectedness of that passenger journey, and, you know, there are ways of, of still really interacting with people in fun, playful ways. Maybe it’s a video wall that has some sort of depth sensing camera that just kind of walks with you and kind of leads you down a path or leads you in the direction that you need to go towards the baggage claim. And maybe it waves at you or blows you a kiss, or does something that, you know, just kind of interacts with you to kind of put a smile on your face and keep you moving through the space, but multifunctional too even, you know, wayfinding is always a big element of an airport, and to me, that’s one of the first things I notice is if I find the wayfinding to be cumbersome or challenging or just, you know, not legible, in some cases, you know, how can you utilize a screen like that that could be interactive but also lead you to a certain destination right, and how does it get you from point A to point B?

 

So I think those are all things that are kind of a part of that connected journey and a lot of just kind of the, the recent things that we’re seeing in trends and ways of engaging people with digital displays throughout airports.

 

Brenda: I have to ask when—so, we’re talking about artistry, and we’re talking about being able to envision environments that are, you know, highly, highly aesthetic, emotion-rich and sculptural. Who on your team—please tell me there’s somebody on your team who brings pencil to paper in these early stages to really envision these kinds of applications and environments. I’m so curious.

 

Brandon: Yeah, there sure is. You know, we’ve got some, some really bright people that work for us. Ken Newbury is our CTO. We’ve got Ryan Palley, who just joined the company, who’s, I’ve been working with for years. And I’ll give those guys a shout out just because I work with them quite a bit on these, this little experiential island, as we call it, that we live on.

 

They understand this technology, they know it very well, and they’re very good at doing exactly like you said, Brenda, these little napkin sketches are helping a client, you know, think through, okay, what is, you know, what is this use case? What’s the application? How can we do something here that’s unique and really offers a, you know, an inviting solution, something that we can all be proud of. So, I think from an engineering standpoint, they’re the brains. They know this kind of stuff really well.

 

Brenda; We love people like them.

 

Brandon: You have to have them. But they’re also, they also have that creative gene, too, which is important. And not everybody has that, I think. But it is important to have the, you know, kind of marry the two, right, and creativity with engineering often don’t go together that well. So, finding people that do have that sort of, you know, blend of both skill sets, I think is really what makes us effective as a company.

 

Abby: Well, and kudos to you, Brandon, because you know, the way you approach what you do is: it’s a lot of custom work, it’s a lot of things that maybe haven’t been done before, and so you and your company are very willing to work with designers and make, as you did, dreams come true, literally. And, you know, that takes a lot of courage and courage from the company you work for. So where do you get the chutzpah from to do that?

 

Brandon: I think it’s always been in our DNA. I mean, when I joined McCann about six months ago, you know, something that really struck me was, that the company has always had the, the feeling and, and kind of wherewithal to not say no to things because they’re challenging. Right? In fact, it’s quite the opposite for us. We like that challenge. We like to take on the projects that others just simply don’t think can be done or refused to do because they see it as, you know, too risky or we just don’t have the right kind of personnel to give it a try. So, for us, I think, you know, that to me was a breath of fresh air. Right? And that’s kind of what we’ve always been known for and how we’ve always gone about our business as a company. So yeah, there’s not much that scares us, if anything, I guess, but, you know, if there’s a will, there’s a way, and I think, you know, McCann is always good at looking at that to find the, find the solution for the client.

 

Abby: Thank you so much, Brandon, for bringing us onto, onto your experiential island today. It’s been really fun.

 

Brandon: Thanks for having me. It was so much fun. And I hope the listenership get something out of it. It’s so inspiring to be a part of this community that we have. You know, there’s so many brilliantly smart people out there who, if you can, just take a little bit from every person and sort of apply that in different ways. I think it’s a great way of doing things. So always keep learning, always keep being creative and imagining. And it’s, it’s all possible.

 

Brenda: Here, here.

 

Abby: Thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you liked what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and please share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

 

Brenda: Thank you so much everyone!

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

The Crossroads of Media, Architecture, and Technology with Brandon Harp

The Crossroads of Media, Architecture, and Technology with Brandon Harp

January 8, 2025
Emotional Intelligence and Problem-Solving in Design with Zorana Pringle

Emotional Intelligence and Problem-Solving in Design with Zorana Pringle

December 4, 2024
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
What role do emotions play in creativity, and how can emotional intelligence transform the way we innovate? In this episode of Matters of Experience, Abby and Brenda talk with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

Zorana shares insights from her groundbreaking research on emotional intelligence, creativity, and the power of art to deepen understanding. Discover how emotional intelligence can drive creative problem-solving, help us embrace uncertainty, and transform the way we design for others.

This episode is a must-listen for creative professionals, designers, and anyone interested in the role of emotions in shaping experiences.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Zorana studies the role of emotion, emotional intelligence, and self-regulation in creativity and well-being, as well as how to use the arts (and art-related institutions) to promote emotion and creativity skills.

Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, ArtNet, US News, Education Week, Science Daily, El Pais, and others, and she is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and Creativity Post. Zorana received the Award for Excellence in Research from the Mensa Education and Research Foundation, the Berlyne Award for Outstanding Early Career Achievement from the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, and has been elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Zorana is the author of the upcoming The Creativity Choice.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Ph.d.

Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI)

The Creativity Choice by Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle | Hachette Book Group

AR-Powered Interactive Artifacts

[Music] 


Abby:
Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: And I’m Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: This podcast is produced by Lorem Ipsum here in New York City and explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Hello to anybody listening for the first time, and a big welcome back to our regular listeners.

 

So today our podcast guest is Zorana Pringle, who is a senior research scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she primarily studies the role of emotional intelligence and self-regulation in creativity and well-being. She received the Award for Excellence in Research from the Mensa Education and Research Foundation, and the Berlin Award for Outstanding Early Career Achievement from the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. Zorana is also the author of an upcoming book called The Creativity Choice, where she explains how to make ideas into realities and dispels the myth that creativity is a trait that you’re born with. So, I think we can have some fun today with this, Zorana. Big welcome to the show.

 

Zorana: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

 

Brenda: We are so delighted to have you here and to talk about what I think is at the root of so much that makes us human: the relationship between creativity and emotions. Let’s begin with some broad strokes, though. You work at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. How do you define emotional intelligence, and why is this an important area of research?

 

Zorana: So, scientists define emotional intelligence as set of four related abilities: they are abilities to accurately perceive emotions in oneself and others, ability to use emotions to help thinking and problem solving, the ability to understand emotions, and the ability to regulate or manage emotions both in oneself and in others. And if you think of general intelligence that we have all heard about, it is about solving problems. Emotional intelligence is also about solving problems, but those problems are emotional in nature.

 

Abby: Obviously, we all feel we are all trapped in these, our own bodies and and our brains and we feel. But you’re not putting that aside when we’re thinking about how we perceive other people feeling. Because for me, I would say, don’t most people, I guess unless they’ve had some sort of trauma, feel their own emotions and thoughts. You can’t sort of escape those.

 

I’ve met a lot of people who can be very emotional, but completely, like, tick the first four things personally, but when it comes to thinking about somebody else, they’re tone deaf and totally emotionally do not understand other people and hit any of those four things, but you seem to pop them together.

 

Zorana: Yeah, it seems that they largely go together. It is possible to think of individuals who are able to solve problems and figure out what they are feeling themselves and understand what’s going on with themselves, but then not translate that to others. But that’s more of an exception than the rule. When we are trying to understand, perceive what’s going on emotionally, we are solving a problem.

 

It doesn’t seem like we are solving a problem because nobody kind of posed it formally, but essentially, we are solving a problem because we are collecting different pieces of information and making a judgment of what is the solution to those pieces. So, think of, okay, if somebody asks you this moment, how are you? What are you feeling? You are not in that moment thinking what you were feeling. You were just going about your business. And so, for a second you have to say, okay, let me figure that out. Let me solve that problem. Let me answer it. And then you are trying to gather information, and we gather information about emotions. And then we can use emotion as information for other things we do in life.

 

So, if you are trying to say, when you are asked that question, what are you feeling right now, you have to get together the clues. Okay. What am I doing? Are there some physical symptoms I have? Jitteriness, palms sweating, and when you start putting those things together, you can start piecing it and putting labels to it. Okay, if you are feeling very activated in your body and you are feeling unpleasant, well, maybe you are anxious or maybe you are angry. Which one fits the situation better? So, you are solving that problem.

 

But you are using similar kinds of information when you’re making judgments about what somebody else might be feeling. You are not going to have first person information about the internal experience of activation, but you can observe it in behavior to a certain extent, and you can perceive those behavioral signs of what might be going on with somebody else, from facial expressions, from body language, from tone of voice and things like that. So you are, in both cases, you are collecting information and putting information together.

 

Abby: When are you talking about emotional intelligence in the example you gave, like a physical thing, all picking up on audio cues, what about knowing a history of somebody? Are you talking about emotional intelligence of meeting a stranger, or emotional intelligence when you could know why they would be feeling a way they are?

 

Zorana: Sort of both. If we are meeting a stranger, we have fewer cues to make an informed judgment. Think of it as, how much certainty we can have in what somebody is experiencing. We are going to have more margin of error if you are meeting somebody from the first time, because you are going to be relying on more superficial things.

 

If you know already somebody and have a relationship and know how strongly they respond to things, for instance, you can calibrate for that and take it into account. I happen to have a friend who is very emotionally reserved from his cultural background, he is of Scandinavian origin. It is not very expressive for somebody who grew up in the Mediterranean like myself.

 

So, I have to take that into account when making a judgment. The fact that he doesn’t raise his voice very much, whereas people I grew up around do, does not mean that he’s not excited, it’s just you have to take that into account. And if I met him for the first time, there would be more chance of me misjudging it.

 

Brenda: You know, it’s making me think about one of the studies that I did with a museum in Stockholm, and it was an exhibition project that they were co-creating with folks from the Syrian community, both immigrants and also refugees. And I was fortunate to be able to work with like 35 different families across the country, Syrian families, and to talk with them about what their partnership was like with the institution.

 

And I heard over and over and over again about how very, very different emotion and expression was between the two cultures, and it seemed to be one of the biggest difficulties, actually, was, you know, miscommunication and folks just not really syncing with each other until the museum created an exhibition that enabled the Syrian community to tell their individual stories.

 

And all of the sudden there became this sort of this middle ground that the Syrian folks would refer to as their new home, where they could express themselves and actually feel like they were being understood and heard. And in the, you know, in the form of the museum. It was really remarkable.

 

Abby: Let’s talk about creativity. Let’s start with a tough question. What is creativity from your perspective?

 

Zorana: Creativity is something that is in the same time original and in some way meaningful, appropriate, useful or effective, depending on different contexts and depending on what area of work we are talking about. And I don’t want to get into a trap of saying anything specific that is going to limit how creativity can be expressed, because it can be expressed in any medium, in any area of life, from it being in an idea to being in a design to being in a piece of art. And so I want to leave that part open. The key is original and, in some way, meaningful, useful, or effective.

 

Abby: Okay, I’m going to pick up on the original because my background is painting, as our listeners who listen in know, and then filmmaking. And when I researched and studied the history of art, you see that everything evolves, right? You learn from the past, previous artists, you build, technology evolves. And so this idea of originality, from my perspective, seldom happens. When you say original, can you help me understand better what you mean? If I think that everything is a derivative of something, it could be a new version of or a different spin on, but from at least in my experience, there’s nothing that’s truly original.

 

Zorana: And I do not disagree with you. If we take the definition of original as something that is in no way related to what has been done before, but if we go into that territory, I think we are almost getting in territory of religion and starting from nothing. And in creativity studies we don’t do that. We see that there are different ways of being original and different levels of being original.

 

So, it can be an original version of something that is in some ways different from what has been done before. It can be original that is a different kind of reaction to what has been done before. As I think of history of art, I am not an artist myself, but I love art and art history, and I think of it as a series of reactions.

 

So, there is a movement in art and then another movement emerges, oftentimes in reaction to it. It still makes it original, and it’s meaningful because it is interacting with the existing world and getting an effect from its audiences. Another thing that you have mentioned that reminded me as you were talking about there is no true originality, well, what’s the meaning of true originality, made me think, well, maybe that true originality comes in only in this, what creativity scholars call big C form. And big C is creativity of people and creativity of products that are changing our culture. None of us here are physicists, but if you think of what physicists you can name, those are the big C physicists.

 

You can name Einstein, you can name Bohr, for instance, or Tesla. Those are the big C creators. They have completely changed how we view something, how we understand something, and even our culture. I think that the reason why I don’t like to talk about originality in that way is it can be discouraging. If you know, and I, for example know that I am not, you know, a Picasso, it could be discouraging, because if you cannot be that and if that is the only originality there is, what can you contribute?

 

Brenda; Part of what keeps going through my head, listening to this is one of the nuggets of inspiration I received when I was kickstarting a lot of my own research work. You know, I had a lot of self-doubt and self-judgment, and I thought, well, but, you know, am I really contributing anything? And is this new? And the advice was learn how to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways.

 

And that was really invigorating. You know, I actually also started as a painter, and it just, despite getting a degree in it and so on and so forth, it never really gelled. And I never thought of myself as a creative person until I started teaching. You know, there’s ambition, there’s intention, obstacles, you have to pivot all the time and needing to keep things going when they’re not working.

 

And you’ve got to try to make connections and then breakthroughs. And, you know, ultimately, one of the keys I find for myself is empathy comes into play quite a lot. The need to connect, to see others, to be open to, to see into relationships. Zorana, I know that you see a relationship between creativity and our capacity to engage with empathy. What does that look like for you?

 

Zorana: As psychologists have studied the creative process, they have identified one of the key aspects, if not the key aspect as something we call problem finding. And what problem finding is, is identifying and then constructing and developing, reframing and redeveloping what we are working on. In that process, empathy is a great starting point. You might start with a given problem, that, so you are not identifying the problem directly.

 

A client is, for instance, approaching you with a certain issue they need to address and to give us direction and imbue meaning in that process of narrowing and honing in to how to approach a certain task is the lens of empathy, is thinking of the end users of our products or of our designs? Thinking of what are their needs?

 

What are the obstacles they might be experiencing? Talk to them. Learn from them, truly listen, and be open to changing the ideas that you start with based on that feedback.

 

Abby: So, you said my big C-word, Zorana, clients. So, when we think about, when we think about emotional intelligence, we have to manage up when we’re designing spaces and we have to manage them and where they’re coming from and the pressures that they’re under. But I don’t really ever feel that they’re managing us at all, when we’re under stress and strain clients and maybe roles that people have, cause people to need to have higher emotional intelligence or not care or not need to have the same amount of emotional intelligence. So how is it when it comes to hierarchy, maybe on a project, and when I’m thinking about clients?

 

Zorana: Emotional intelligence skills help in all interactions, and you have to approach different interactions in different ways. So, you have interactions with colleagues on a project, interactions potentially with people who are leaders in places where you work and to whom you are responsible. In some ways, you have interactions with people outside of your organization who are coming up with problems for you to solve, and they are having relationships with people who they are responsible to.

 

How successful a project will be, and the nature of the design will be is dependent on the success of communication with all of those different relationships. That makes it much more complicated, obviously. There was research that shows that when clients are represented by middle managers, they approach this interaction with a designer in a very particular way. They approach it with almost a checklist of I want this, this, this, and this in an end design, when those pieces of the checklist may not be the ideal choices for the design to be truly successful, because what they are doing is they are not fully present in the interaction, not fully hearing the designers with their input. They are only reflecting the fears and concerns from those they are responsible to. When we are truly present in the interaction, we can then be hearing both sides and opening up a conversation. For that to happen, there needs to be certain prerequisites. There needs to be a level of trust on different sides of the relationship.

 

Brenda: I’m listening and I’m thinking, you know, again, back to creative process, how it can bring out a lot of frustration, a lot of fear. You talked about the need for trust, and especially in situations where there are vulnerabilities, trust is a really big ask. And I see with my students, for example, they have to embrace the unknown. All of us who are in, you know, the creative design world have to, to a certain extent, embrace the unknown in the work that you do.

 

Right? Good design means not knowing exactly where things are going to end up. You have to have faith that your skills and abilities to work with others will result in unexpected or rich outcomes that really work for visitors. And I’m curious Zorana, how do we overcome this, what I think anyway, is natural anxiety that comes with being creative, and that could be, like we’re talking about, in the form of interactions with others, or even just amongst ourselves?

 

Zorana: I think that’s a beautiful question. And the real answer is we are not going to overcome the anxiety. And once people know that the creative process, not just for you, there is nothing unique about you experiencing this anxiety, experiencing this uncertainty, experiencing doubts. Everybody who is involved in creative work, in the creative process is going to experience these things.

 

They are integral to the process. I think that is freeing because then you realize that there’s nothing unique about you that is wrong. Sometimes when we feel something unpleasant, we feel something is wrong with us. No, nothing is wrong with you. This is completely natural part of the process. That does not mean that you cannot do anything about it, but you also, you have to start with the realization that this will happen.

 

I have recently come across, a quote from Georgia O’Keeffe. And let’s face it, we all love Georgia O’Keeffe. And she said that she was never comfortable with anything she did in her life, that she was terrified of all the decisions she made and all the things she tried, but that never stopped her in doing it.

 

Some of us are more prone to feeling vulnerable and feeling anxious. Well, I happen to be one of those people, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot do things. You can do things even if you don’t feel comfortable. It’s okay. You can still do it. You manage those feelings. You learn to live with them and manage them but accepting that they are going to be part of the process will liberate you in knowing that, well, you know, you are not special in the way of being specially broken. That is just part of it.

 

Abby: Well, I was going to jump in as well and just piggyback on that, because I think having fear is very much akin to excitement and adrenaline, at least for me. So, whenever we’re, you know, doing something that is making me have doubts, fears, it’s now synonymous with thrills and excitement because I’ve had practice, doing things that are not comfortable. And the more practice you have, I totally agree Zorana, it never goes away. I think it shouldn’t go away. It’s like an intrinsic human condition to be scared. It’s not bad. It just is. I mean, it protects us, right, from bad things happening. So having fear is something you live with. But for me, being happy in that moment of fear and knowing that it’s going to pass and using it and harnessing it. So, I sort of embrace fear. I like it.

 

Brenda: You’re a junkie.

 

Abby: I’m a junkie. You have to if you want to be creative, because like we talked about earlier, if you want to push any boundaries, then that usually involves doing something original, new, different, that is not going to be comfortable because there are no guarantees there. So, I feel like fear and creativity, it’s sort of synonymous.

 

Zorana: I very much agree. And in the emotion science, what we talk about is reframing. So, the same experience can be framed in different ways. You can say, I am experiencing this jitteriness right now because I am anxious. I am anxious because I am unsure whether I can do this, or you can reframe it and say, I am experiencing this because I deeply care about how I’m going to do on this task, and this reflects my level of commitment and the excitement for it, but also realization of how important it is.

 

Brenda: Okay, how about exhibitions? So not everybody is going to be moved by an artwork or let’s say sometimes exhibitions with fine art in them fail to engage folks who maybe don’t feel welcomed or who don’t feel knowledgeable enough in the first place. What can we who are in the design profession, what can we do to make art more accessible and open up more possibilities for people to experience deep emotional interaction with art?

 

Zorana: Currently, we are working on a big project where we are studying what makes art meaningful and the theoretical framework, we are using what is called the mirror model of art based in psychology of art and empirical aesthetics. And what it states is that the process of art appreciation is a mirror reverse image of a process of art creation.

 

So what happens in creating art, in that process, is that artists start with ideas, concepts, insights, or feelings they want to convey in their work and then finally they put those finishing touches on their piece and audiences start with those finishing touches” what is in the piece physically, what is jumping at them, and then if they continue engaging with it, they start making personal connections, and then they start wondering about what artist’s intentions and ideas might have been. So as museum designers and exhibition curators, our task would be to facilitate this process, facilitate engagement so that it doesn’t stop. It continues so that people can make this progression and truly engage in it.

 

Now, you have raised something very important in that there are barriers for people in engaging with art, some relatively physical and some that are more social and psychological, where people, many people feel either unwelcome in the art spaces or cannot see themselves in their own experiences represented.

 

And to truly reach that deep experiences of art, we have to see it. We have to, in some way be able to, to connect with it. And our challenge is to curate with that in mind.

 

Abby: Zorana during Covid, we were part of multiple different companies who worked with Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian online collection of 3 million, over 3 million exhibits, and they wanted to activate it beyond the walls of the museum and to visitors who didn’t feel like they belonged within the museum walls. We chose a group of objects, and it was all from the La Belle Époque in the 1912s.

 

It was all from a music room. So, we chose them to be from this specific space. And then on the phone, you use the QR code, download an app and you step through a portal and into this room and all the way that the conversation was, the text panels were not text panels, they were little pop ups that spoke in very conversational tone and reference. For example, like the Neapolitan ice cream was the favorite ice cream of this time period. What’s your favorite ice cream? So, it was really about democratizing, in a way, these institutions and making them more approachable and reaching and bringing in new audiences who could resonate with all these stories, these untold stories that these artifacts have. So, it’s interesting you bring all this up because it was exactly what we were trying to do with that project.

 

Zorana: Sounds like a wonderful idea where you are doing two important steps. One is bringing people in who might not be interacting with artworks to begin with, but then you are doing an extra step in helping them make that personal connection from which they can engage more deeply.

 

Abby: So, Zorana, thank you so much. This was thought provoking, insightful. I just absolutely loved it. And next time I’m, you know, boldly going where I’ve not gone before and got sweaty palms, I’ll think about you and getting through to the other side. So, thank you so much.

 

Brenda: Thank you, Zorana.

 

Zorana: Thank you very much.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, please subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure to leave a rating and a review. Share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

 

Brenda: Thank you everyone!

 

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Zorana studies the role of emotion, emotional intelligence, and self-regulation in creativity and well-being, as well as how to use the arts (and art-related institutions) to promote emotion and creativity skills.

Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, ArtNet, US News, Education Week, Science Daily, El Pais, and others, and she is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and Creativity Post. Zorana received the Award for Excellence in Research from the Mensa Education and Research Foundation, the Berlyne Award for Outstanding Early Career Achievement from the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, and has been elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Zorana is the author of the upcoming The Creativity Choice.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Ph.d.

Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI)

The Creativity Choice by Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle | Hachette Book Group

AR-Powered Interactive Artifacts

[Music] 


Abby:
Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: And I’m Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: This podcast is produced by Lorem Ipsum here in New York City and explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Hello to anybody listening for the first time, and a big welcome back to our regular listeners.

 

So today our podcast guest is Zorana Pringle, who is a senior research scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she primarily studies the role of emotional intelligence and self-regulation in creativity and well-being. She received the Award for Excellence in Research from the Mensa Education and Research Foundation, and the Berlin Award for Outstanding Early Career Achievement from the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. Zorana is also the author of an upcoming book called The Creativity Choice, where she explains how to make ideas into realities and dispels the myth that creativity is a trait that you’re born with. So, I think we can have some fun today with this, Zorana. Big welcome to the show.

 

Zorana: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

 

Brenda: We are so delighted to have you here and to talk about what I think is at the root of so much that makes us human: the relationship between creativity and emotions. Let’s begin with some broad strokes, though. You work at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. How do you define emotional intelligence, and why is this an important area of research?

 

Zorana: So, scientists define emotional intelligence as set of four related abilities: they are abilities to accurately perceive emotions in oneself and others, ability to use emotions to help thinking and problem solving, the ability to understand emotions, and the ability to regulate or manage emotions both in oneself and in others. And if you think of general intelligence that we have all heard about, it is about solving problems. Emotional intelligence is also about solving problems, but those problems are emotional in nature.

 

Abby: Obviously, we all feel we are all trapped in these, our own bodies and and our brains and we feel. But you’re not putting that aside when we’re thinking about how we perceive other people feeling. Because for me, I would say, don’t most people, I guess unless they’ve had some sort of trauma, feel their own emotions and thoughts. You can’t sort of escape those.

 

I’ve met a lot of people who can be very emotional, but completely, like, tick the first four things personally, but when it comes to thinking about somebody else, they’re tone deaf and totally emotionally do not understand other people and hit any of those four things, but you seem to pop them together.

 

Zorana: Yeah, it seems that they largely go together. It is possible to think of individuals who are able to solve problems and figure out what they are feeling themselves and understand what’s going on with themselves, but then not translate that to others. But that’s more of an exception than the rule. When we are trying to understand, perceive what’s going on emotionally, we are solving a problem.

 

It doesn’t seem like we are solving a problem because nobody kind of posed it formally, but essentially, we are solving a problem because we are collecting different pieces of information and making a judgment of what is the solution to those pieces. So, think of, okay, if somebody asks you this moment, how are you? What are you feeling? You are not in that moment thinking what you were feeling. You were just going about your business. And so, for a second you have to say, okay, let me figure that out. Let me solve that problem. Let me answer it. And then you are trying to gather information, and we gather information about emotions. And then we can use emotion as information for other things we do in life.

 

So, if you are trying to say, when you are asked that question, what are you feeling right now, you have to get together the clues. Okay. What am I doing? Are there some physical symptoms I have? Jitteriness, palms sweating, and when you start putting those things together, you can start piecing it and putting labels to it. Okay, if you are feeling very activated in your body and you are feeling unpleasant, well, maybe you are anxious or maybe you are angry. Which one fits the situation better? So, you are solving that problem.

 

But you are using similar kinds of information when you’re making judgments about what somebody else might be feeling. You are not going to have first person information about the internal experience of activation, but you can observe it in behavior to a certain extent, and you can perceive those behavioral signs of what might be going on with somebody else, from facial expressions, from body language, from tone of voice and things like that. So you are, in both cases, you are collecting information and putting information together.

 

Abby: When are you talking about emotional intelligence in the example you gave, like a physical thing, all picking up on audio cues, what about knowing a history of somebody? Are you talking about emotional intelligence of meeting a stranger, or emotional intelligence when you could know why they would be feeling a way they are?

 

Zorana: Sort of both. If we are meeting a stranger, we have fewer cues to make an informed judgment. Think of it as, how much certainty we can have in what somebody is experiencing. We are going to have more margin of error if you are meeting somebody from the first time, because you are going to be relying on more superficial things.

 

If you know already somebody and have a relationship and know how strongly they respond to things, for instance, you can calibrate for that and take it into account. I happen to have a friend who is very emotionally reserved from his cultural background, he is of Scandinavian origin. It is not very expressive for somebody who grew up in the Mediterranean like myself.

 

So, I have to take that into account when making a judgment. The fact that he doesn’t raise his voice very much, whereas people I grew up around do, does not mean that he’s not excited, it’s just you have to take that into account. And if I met him for the first time, there would be more chance of me misjudging it.

 

Brenda: You know, it’s making me think about one of the studies that I did with a museum in Stockholm, and it was an exhibition project that they were co-creating with folks from the Syrian community, both immigrants and also refugees. And I was fortunate to be able to work with like 35 different families across the country, Syrian families, and to talk with them about what their partnership was like with the institution.

 

And I heard over and over and over again about how very, very different emotion and expression was between the two cultures, and it seemed to be one of the biggest difficulties, actually, was, you know, miscommunication and folks just not really syncing with each other until the museum created an exhibition that enabled the Syrian community to tell their individual stories.

 

And all of the sudden there became this sort of this middle ground that the Syrian folks would refer to as their new home, where they could express themselves and actually feel like they were being understood and heard. And in the, you know, in the form of the museum. It was really remarkable.

 

Abby: Let’s talk about creativity. Let’s start with a tough question. What is creativity from your perspective?

 

Zorana: Creativity is something that is in the same time original and in some way meaningful, appropriate, useful or effective, depending on different contexts and depending on what area of work we are talking about. And I don’t want to get into a trap of saying anything specific that is going to limit how creativity can be expressed, because it can be expressed in any medium, in any area of life, from it being in an idea to being in a design to being in a piece of art. And so I want to leave that part open. The key is original and, in some way, meaningful, useful, or effective.

 

Abby: Okay, I’m going to pick up on the original because my background is painting, as our listeners who listen in know, and then filmmaking. And when I researched and studied the history of art, you see that everything evolves, right? You learn from the past, previous artists, you build, technology evolves. And so this idea of originality, from my perspective, seldom happens. When you say original, can you help me understand better what you mean? If I think that everything is a derivative of something, it could be a new version of or a different spin on, but from at least in my experience, there’s nothing that’s truly original.

 

Zorana: And I do not disagree with you. If we take the definition of original as something that is in no way related to what has been done before, but if we go into that territory, I think we are almost getting in territory of religion and starting from nothing. And in creativity studies we don’t do that. We see that there are different ways of being original and different levels of being original.

 

So, it can be an original version of something that is in some ways different from what has been done before. It can be original that is a different kind of reaction to what has been done before. As I think of history of art, I am not an artist myself, but I love art and art history, and I think of it as a series of reactions.

 

So, there is a movement in art and then another movement emerges, oftentimes in reaction to it. It still makes it original, and it’s meaningful because it is interacting with the existing world and getting an effect from its audiences. Another thing that you have mentioned that reminded me as you were talking about there is no true originality, well, what’s the meaning of true originality, made me think, well, maybe that true originality comes in only in this, what creativity scholars call big C form. And big C is creativity of people and creativity of products that are changing our culture. None of us here are physicists, but if you think of what physicists you can name, those are the big C physicists.

 

You can name Einstein, you can name Bohr, for instance, or Tesla. Those are the big C creators. They have completely changed how we view something, how we understand something, and even our culture. I think that the reason why I don’t like to talk about originality in that way is it can be discouraging. If you know, and I, for example know that I am not, you know, a Picasso, it could be discouraging, because if you cannot be that and if that is the only originality there is, what can you contribute?

 

Brenda; Part of what keeps going through my head, listening to this is one of the nuggets of inspiration I received when I was kickstarting a lot of my own research work. You know, I had a lot of self-doubt and self-judgment, and I thought, well, but, you know, am I really contributing anything? And is this new? And the advice was learn how to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways.

 

And that was really invigorating. You know, I actually also started as a painter, and it just, despite getting a degree in it and so on and so forth, it never really gelled. And I never thought of myself as a creative person until I started teaching. You know, there’s ambition, there’s intention, obstacles, you have to pivot all the time and needing to keep things going when they’re not working.

 

And you’ve got to try to make connections and then breakthroughs. And, you know, ultimately, one of the keys I find for myself is empathy comes into play quite a lot. The need to connect, to see others, to be open to, to see into relationships. Zorana, I know that you see a relationship between creativity and our capacity to engage with empathy. What does that look like for you?

 

Zorana: As psychologists have studied the creative process, they have identified one of the key aspects, if not the key aspect as something we call problem finding. And what problem finding is, is identifying and then constructing and developing, reframing and redeveloping what we are working on. In that process, empathy is a great starting point. You might start with a given problem, that, so you are not identifying the problem directly.

 

A client is, for instance, approaching you with a certain issue they need to address and to give us direction and imbue meaning in that process of narrowing and honing in to how to approach a certain task is the lens of empathy, is thinking of the end users of our products or of our designs? Thinking of what are their needs?

 

What are the obstacles they might be experiencing? Talk to them. Learn from them, truly listen, and be open to changing the ideas that you start with based on that feedback.

 

Abby: So, you said my big C-word, Zorana, clients. So, when we think about, when we think about emotional intelligence, we have to manage up when we’re designing spaces and we have to manage them and where they’re coming from and the pressures that they’re under. But I don’t really ever feel that they’re managing us at all, when we’re under stress and strain clients and maybe roles that people have, cause people to need to have higher emotional intelligence or not care or not need to have the same amount of emotional intelligence. So how is it when it comes to hierarchy, maybe on a project, and when I’m thinking about clients?

 

Zorana: Emotional intelligence skills help in all interactions, and you have to approach different interactions in different ways. So, you have interactions with colleagues on a project, interactions potentially with people who are leaders in places where you work and to whom you are responsible. In some ways, you have interactions with people outside of your organization who are coming up with problems for you to solve, and they are having relationships with people who they are responsible to.

 

How successful a project will be, and the nature of the design will be is dependent on the success of communication with all of those different relationships. That makes it much more complicated, obviously. There was research that shows that when clients are represented by middle managers, they approach this interaction with a designer in a very particular way. They approach it with almost a checklist of I want this, this, this, and this in an end design, when those pieces of the checklist may not be the ideal choices for the design to be truly successful, because what they are doing is they are not fully present in the interaction, not fully hearing the designers with their input. They are only reflecting the fears and concerns from those they are responsible to. When we are truly present in the interaction, we can then be hearing both sides and opening up a conversation. For that to happen, there needs to be certain prerequisites. There needs to be a level of trust on different sides of the relationship.

 

Brenda: I’m listening and I’m thinking, you know, again, back to creative process, how it can bring out a lot of frustration, a lot of fear. You talked about the need for trust, and especially in situations where there are vulnerabilities, trust is a really big ask. And I see with my students, for example, they have to embrace the unknown. All of us who are in, you know, the creative design world have to, to a certain extent, embrace the unknown in the work that you do.

 

Right? Good design means not knowing exactly where things are going to end up. You have to have faith that your skills and abilities to work with others will result in unexpected or rich outcomes that really work for visitors. And I’m curious Zorana, how do we overcome this, what I think anyway, is natural anxiety that comes with being creative, and that could be, like we’re talking about, in the form of interactions with others, or even just amongst ourselves?

 

Zorana: I think that’s a beautiful question. And the real answer is we are not going to overcome the anxiety. And once people know that the creative process, not just for you, there is nothing unique about you experiencing this anxiety, experiencing this uncertainty, experiencing doubts. Everybody who is involved in creative work, in the creative process is going to experience these things.

 

They are integral to the process. I think that is freeing because then you realize that there’s nothing unique about you that is wrong. Sometimes when we feel something unpleasant, we feel something is wrong with us. No, nothing is wrong with you. This is completely natural part of the process. That does not mean that you cannot do anything about it, but you also, you have to start with the realization that this will happen.

 

I have recently come across, a quote from Georgia O’Keeffe. And let’s face it, we all love Georgia O’Keeffe. And she said that she was never comfortable with anything she did in her life, that she was terrified of all the decisions she made and all the things she tried, but that never stopped her in doing it.

 

Some of us are more prone to feeling vulnerable and feeling anxious. Well, I happen to be one of those people, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot do things. You can do things even if you don’t feel comfortable. It’s okay. You can still do it. You manage those feelings. You learn to live with them and manage them but accepting that they are going to be part of the process will liberate you in knowing that, well, you know, you are not special in the way of being specially broken. That is just part of it.

 

Abby: Well, I was going to jump in as well and just piggyback on that, because I think having fear is very much akin to excitement and adrenaline, at least for me. So, whenever we’re, you know, doing something that is making me have doubts, fears, it’s now synonymous with thrills and excitement because I’ve had practice, doing things that are not comfortable. And the more practice you have, I totally agree Zorana, it never goes away. I think it shouldn’t go away. It’s like an intrinsic human condition to be scared. It’s not bad. It just is. I mean, it protects us, right, from bad things happening. So having fear is something you live with. But for me, being happy in that moment of fear and knowing that it’s going to pass and using it and harnessing it. So, I sort of embrace fear. I like it.

 

Brenda: You’re a junkie.

 

Abby: I’m a junkie. You have to if you want to be creative, because like we talked about earlier, if you want to push any boundaries, then that usually involves doing something original, new, different, that is not going to be comfortable because there are no guarantees there. So, I feel like fear and creativity, it’s sort of synonymous.

 

Zorana: I very much agree. And in the emotion science, what we talk about is reframing. So, the same experience can be framed in different ways. You can say, I am experiencing this jitteriness right now because I am anxious. I am anxious because I am unsure whether I can do this, or you can reframe it and say, I am experiencing this because I deeply care about how I’m going to do on this task, and this reflects my level of commitment and the excitement for it, but also realization of how important it is.

 

Brenda: Okay, how about exhibitions? So not everybody is going to be moved by an artwork or let’s say sometimes exhibitions with fine art in them fail to engage folks who maybe don’t feel welcomed or who don’t feel knowledgeable enough in the first place. What can we who are in the design profession, what can we do to make art more accessible and open up more possibilities for people to experience deep emotional interaction with art?

 

Zorana: Currently, we are working on a big project where we are studying what makes art meaningful and the theoretical framework, we are using what is called the mirror model of art based in psychology of art and empirical aesthetics. And what it states is that the process of art appreciation is a mirror reverse image of a process of art creation.

 

So what happens in creating art, in that process, is that artists start with ideas, concepts, insights, or feelings they want to convey in their work and then finally they put those finishing touches on their piece and audiences start with those finishing touches” what is in the piece physically, what is jumping at them, and then if they continue engaging with it, they start making personal connections, and then they start wondering about what artist’s intentions and ideas might have been. So as museum designers and exhibition curators, our task would be to facilitate this process, facilitate engagement so that it doesn’t stop. It continues so that people can make this progression and truly engage in it.

 

Now, you have raised something very important in that there are barriers for people in engaging with art, some relatively physical and some that are more social and psychological, where people, many people feel either unwelcome in the art spaces or cannot see themselves in their own experiences represented.

 

And to truly reach that deep experiences of art, we have to see it. We have to, in some way be able to, to connect with it. And our challenge is to curate with that in mind.

 

Abby: Zorana during Covid, we were part of multiple different companies who worked with Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian online collection of 3 million, over 3 million exhibits, and they wanted to activate it beyond the walls of the museum and to visitors who didn’t feel like they belonged within the museum walls. We chose a group of objects, and it was all from the La Belle Époque in the 1912s.

 

It was all from a music room. So, we chose them to be from this specific space. And then on the phone, you use the QR code, download an app and you step through a portal and into this room and all the way that the conversation was, the text panels were not text panels, they were little pop ups that spoke in very conversational tone and reference. For example, like the Neapolitan ice cream was the favorite ice cream of this time period. What’s your favorite ice cream? So, it was really about democratizing, in a way, these institutions and making them more approachable and reaching and bringing in new audiences who could resonate with all these stories, these untold stories that these artifacts have. So, it’s interesting you bring all this up because it was exactly what we were trying to do with that project.

 

Zorana: Sounds like a wonderful idea where you are doing two important steps. One is bringing people in who might not be interacting with artworks to begin with, but then you are doing an extra step in helping them make that personal connection from which they can engage more deeply.

 

Abby: So, Zorana, thank you so much. This was thought provoking, insightful. I just absolutely loved it. And next time I’m, you know, boldly going where I’ve not gone before and got sweaty palms, I’ll think about you and getting through to the other side. So, thank you so much.

 

Brenda: Thank you, Zorana.

 

Zorana: Thank you very much.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, please subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure to leave a rating and a review. Share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

 

Brenda: Thank you everyone!

 

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Emotional Intelligence and Problem-Solving in Design with Zorana Pringle

Emotional Intelligence and Problem-Solving in Design with Zorana Pringle

December 4, 2024
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Meet your hosts

Abigail Honor

Abigail Honor

Abby is a founding partner at Lorem Ipsum, an experiential design agency, and has over 23 years of experience in storytelling through physical and digital design. She has crafted dynamic and inspiring narratives for global brands, companies and institutions, using cutting-edge technology to communicate compelling and thoughtful messages. Abby has won multiple design, film and directing awards such as the SEGD Honor Award, HOW International Design Award, Muse Award, to name a few, and maintains affiliation with associations including SEGD, AIGA, and the American Advertising Federation.
Brenda Cowan

Brenda Cowan

Brenda Cowan is a professor and former Chairperson of Graduate Exhibition & Experience Design at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology. Brenda is a Fulbright Scholar in the disciplines of museums and mental health, and her theory of Psychotherapeutic Object Dynamics (2015) has been presented for the American Alliance of Museums; Museums of Hope; MidAtlantic Association of Museums; National Museums of World Culture, Sweden; and has been published with the National Association for Museum Exhibition; Society for Environmental Graphic Design; O Magazine; and Huffington Post Science. She is currently co-editing a volume on the subject of flourishing in museums.

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