Bonnie Cook – Design Musings

*Forgive the spacing issues – otherwise the photos were all over the place!

Reflect on your experiences with disruptive wonder, as described by Kelli Anderson in the video “Kelli Anderson: Disruptive Wonder for a Change.” Are you open to creating disruptive wonder? Is the notion new to you? 

The phrase disruptive wonder resonates what I associate with the other phrase guerrilla artist, not just in the messages that are presented but in dismantling the process of creating a message. I am certainly open to creating disruptive wonders in my work and am deeply inspired by others who do the type of work that Anderson does as it reminds me to also be doing it! A book that I adore is Keri Smith’s How To Be An Explorer of The World. It is worth going out to buy for yourself, your child, your loved one, anyone who you think could benefit from a little disruptive wonder in their life. Go spend time on her website and prepare to be inspired. I attached what I sketched from her homepage prompt.

The entire concept of Keri Smith’s books are to discover the hidden talents in ordinary experiences and objects like Kelli Anderson speaks to in her TED talk. Every page is a slice of pure bliss and I have often left the house with it in my backpack to go do exactly what she inspires through the pages.

Self-initiated projects like this where you go exploring is often how I find the disruptive wonders in the world. It is seeing a pattern of feathers or leaves on the ground, hearing a phrase that a passing child uses that is truly brilliant. It’s all inspiration that goes beyond the confines of how we traditionally work through our process as graphic designers.

Sabrina Ward Harrison is an artist that I deeply admire for her spiritual, raw work that is filled with disruptive wonder. She reflects on not only the ordinary, but also the ugly and avoided. She reenvisions a lot of the ordinary in life through her lens of interpretation and they are beautiful because of that.

Work that is geared more directly to designers yet embodies the aspect of disruptive wonder are Ellen Lupton’s DIY books and IDEO’s method pack. They all inspire new ways of considering what we already know and may take for granted.

It all seems to circle around to becoming more passionate about whatever mediums we explore (even if we think we’ve seen them in every possible way). Poet Wallace Steven’s poem “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” resonates this sentiment. We can see things anew all the time if we begin to think in this manner.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird  by Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.