research Assistantship
Exploring how nature can inspire designers with multispecies design cards
Project Specs
Title: Multispecies Design Cards
Length: 16 weeks (Active)
Type: Print
Software: Indesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flickr, Google Drive, Google Docs
My Responsibilities:
Bi weekly check-in meeting with my boss (Professor Nancy Smith)
Resizing cards that have already been designed
Conceptualizing additional designs
Aiding in design of cards
Goal of Product: Inspire designers through the properties and characteristics of nature
Link to project: Nancy Smith’s Multispecies Design Cards
Overview
In January 2023, professor, designer, and researcher, Nancy Smith, hired me to help out with one of her latest research projects: Multispecies Design Cards. The Multispecies Design cards are all inspired by nature, to help designers brainstorm ideas. I was interested in this research assistantship because of my interest in designing tarot cards, which I have presented to Nancy Smith in the past as class projects.
“My project was, broadly, about design justice and associated concepts.”
Below are examples of my tarot and oracles designs that I had created for projects in Nancy Smith’s classes.
our Roles
Nancy Smith
Head Designer, Head Researcher
Nancy’s Bio
Nancy’s research explores the relationship between digital technologies and climate change, including work in sustainable design, animal-computer interaction, and urban informatics. She has been a practicing designer for over a decade in both print and interaction design.
Education: B.A. in Philosophy from Seattle University; M.A. in Media Studies from The New School; M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco; Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction Design from Indiana University.
Abbey Hurst
Assistant Designer, Assistant Researcher
Methodology
The methodology I used once I started my job consisted of visual research, reading, keeping a list of concepts in google drive, and scrolling for multiple images and concepts at a time.
Our main Source
We used images and illustrations from open access resources, such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library on Flickr.
Process
First I started by scrolling through the Biodiversity Heritage Library and getting to know the content I would be working with. I analyzed the cards that already existed (about 30) and took notes in Google Drive of each concept so that I could keep track of what has already been designed. This was for my own knowledge and understanding of the existing content.
Then I resized all of the cards that Nancy designed, to her desired image size: 2.75 x 4.75 inches + .125 inch bleed.
After resizing, I moved on to adding my own concepts in the Google Drive word inventory and designing cards around them. At first this was a difficult process for me because I was afraid to take too much autonomy on this project, since it is Nancy’s and I am just the assistant, but I have realized that in order to get my tasks done, I can think of new concepts and design them, and ask Nancy for her opinions and critiques at our bi-weekly meetings (every other Wednesday at 10:30 A.M.). After working on a few concepts and wasting days designing one card each, I realized that it was a faster process if I made sure to search for images for more than one concept at a time rather than looking for an image for one concept at a time. First I was slow at the process, but I am gaining a flow in the project and am working faster.
Nancy has now added more words in the word inventory and our count is up to 111 possible concepts. The goal is about 50-80 cards in total, and currently we have 38. I will be posting more updates as they come for this project, and below are the designs I am working on or have completed currently.
These are the final edits and designs I contributed to the Multispecies Design Project.
I feel incredibly privileged to be part of Nancy Smith’s Multispecies Design Cards project, and am learning so much from her. This inspires me to finish my own Tarot deck in the near future.