NYCxDESIGN's The Mic feat. MMS's Brian Scherman
Back in October 2020, we had the great honor of sending Made Music Studio‘s VP, Lead Music Producer and Director of Sonic Design, Brian Scherman for a thoughtful chat with NYCxDESIGN’s The Mic host Debbie Millman and co-guest Mark Addison Smith on designing sound for a more accessible, inclusive world.
You can listen to the full podcast episode here, and read the full transcript is below.
Debbie Millman:
From NYCxDESIGN, this is The Mic, the series that offers an inside look into New York City’s most creative minds. I’m your host Debbie Millman. For the last two months, you’ve been solicited pitches from designers from all five of New York City’s boroughs. We’ve listened to them all, and we’ve chosen two stories to share with you today. In the coming months, you can tune in to hear more engaging stories from creative New Yorkers as we explore projects, products, and inspirations that drive the most innovative design community in the world.
Debbie Millman:
Do you want to be featured on the next episode of The Mic? Visit nycxdesign.com to share your design story with us. During today’s show, I’ll be speaking with two talented New Yorkers to examine how both sonic and visual design can play a significant role in bringing people together, instill a true sense of community and shape the future of public space.
Debbie Millman:
I’d like to introduce you to our first guest. Brian Scherman is a conservatory-trained saxophone player, who has paired his love for music with his passion, for technology to become the director of Sonic Design for Made Music Studio, a New York-based sonic branding studio. Made Music Studio creates iconic and enduring sonic identity systems for brands and entertainment in spaces like retail, theme parks, and the future of transportation. Before we dive in to speak with him, let’s listen to his pitch that inspired us to invite him on the show today.
Brian Scherman:
An idea I’d like to submit for NYC Designs, The Mic, is how sonic can connect, inform, and move us in the future of public spaces. As you’re listening to this, I’m playing a subtle-long form piece of audio known as an ambiance. An ambience can obscure mechanical noises, increase the perception of privacy, and add a sense of emotion, all helping connect us to the experience. The best part about ambiances is that they’re very subliminal. You don’t even realize they’re there until they’re turned off.
Brian Scherman:
I’ve had the pleasure of creating systems of short-form sounds for apps, products, and platforms as well. These user interface sounds, or UI sounds, can help inform us. Think about the Apple mail sent sound, that swoosh of an airplane letting us intuitively know that our message has been sent into the digital ether. The same type of sounds can be so useful in public spaces, drawing our attention to an important announcement, or giving us confirmation that our action was completed.
Brian Scherman:
Finally, sound can help move us as a tool for way-finding. Subtle-attracting ambiances can draw us into a partially obscured stairwell or hallway. And in the future, we may hear little sonic indicators in our wireless earbuds to let us know when we’ve made it to our destination.
Debbie Millman:
Brian, thank you so much for sharing such an engaging pitch. And congratulations for being on the show today. I have some questions for you. You okay with that?
Brian Scherman:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Debbie Millman:
Brian, how can sonic connect, inform, and move us in the future of public spaces? I was so interested in what you said in your pitch, and I want to know how it can happen?
Brian Scherman:
Sure. I mentioned a bunch of different ideas in the pitch. And another one that I would like to throw in there is, in addition to sonic design, is acoustic design, which I think has so much influence in how we feel in a public space. So I started talking about ambiances, these long-form repeating at infinity pieces of audio that help us to set a tone, to create an emotion, but also do things like obscure sounds that we don’t want to hear.
Brian Scherman:
This can be a challenging issue. I’m tying this to acoustic design because we have public spaces that can be very cacophonous in their own right. And so sometimes adding in sound is not the important thing to do as much as pulling out sound, or using acoustic properties that we can to diminish the sound that’s happening in a space.
Brian Scherman:
And actually there’s some interesting spaces like Grand Central, which I think is so interesting that being a giant-enclosed bathtub-type space, one of the most amazing properties that it has is a lot of diffusion, so that if you’re in that space, even if there are tons of people in that space, it’s one of those amazing places that doesn’t ever really feel overwhelming cook-off as, at least not to me. And that if you’re close to someone, you could have that interaction and hear each other, but you also have this just amazing low-level din that’s just kind of a moving around.
Debbie Millman:
Ever been to that part of Grand Central, where I believe it’s an almost dome-shaped hallway, where you can speak into this little cubby hole and somebody all the way on the other side of the hallway can hear you? How does that happen?
Brian Scherman:
It’s so cool. I think it’s called the whispering dome or something like that. Yeah, the property, just, again, sort of like that acoustic property of transmitting your sound across the dome of your ceiling, over to someone else and really feeling like you’re playing telephone, is pretty incredible. There’s a museum in San Francisco called the Exploratorium, which does something similar, where outside, there are two very distant seating areas and they have a big such a like a satellite dome behind them. And similarly you can project your sound 30 feet away. And you feel like you’re next to the person that you’re talking to. And I think given the current climate we’re in, given pandemic times where we can’t be that close, I think it’s interesting to use these acoustic technologies to make us feel that closer together.
Debbie Millman:
How does something like that actually happen? How can you say something in a small, small space, and then have somebody able to hear it 10, 15, 20 feet away?
Brian Scherman:
Reflection, the amazing properties of sound moving through the air. So if we can focus that energy through something acoustic, like in this case, in Grand Central, the dome, or that dish at the Exploratorium, this is just a beautiful analog way that it just focuses that sound and sends it to you. But this is also a technique that we would use if you’re in a space and you want to be very directional with directional speakers, where, as opposed to a wide spread of sound, if we wanted to, we could really target that sound to an individual person.
Brian Scherman:
And there’s some pretty amazing technologies coming out now where… Essentially, imagine you’re in front of a wall of speakers, and that as you move subtly, even inches, you could be hearing a message in one language, as you move another inch, you could be hearing it another language. They’re getting so amazing with how they can target.
Debbie Millman:
So you think that the whispering dome in Grand Central was something that was designed that way? Or do you think it was just a serendipitous accident that we can all now enjoy?
Brian Scherman:
That’s a great question. I’m not sure if it was intended that way, but I love when people discover those types of things. Near my apartment in Sunnyside, similarly, below the 7 Train, there is… It’s elevated. So when you’re down in that parking area. I remember walking one day and I think I clapped my hands or something, and there was just this beautiful riverfront delay of sound. I went back there with a microphone and tried to capture it, which is challenging when you’re in Sunnyside. But yeah, these little surprise and delight moments of these acoustic spaces, designed or not, I think is a wonderful way that we can play with our environment.
Debbie Millman:
Brian, what do you consider to be a great example of sound design in public spaces?
Brian Scherman:
I think the first one that comes to mind, it was actually one of the first things that I experienced when I came to New York, is a sound installation. I think it’s in 34th Street called Reach. And I believe it’s right there above the BDF trains or something like that. And I think it’s been there since the mid-nineties or something like that. Very simple installation, I think it’s like a big green tube hanging above the station. And as you trigger light sensors on there, it plays little sound design pieces.
Brian Scherman:
It was very interesting to me because I didn’t recognize it at first, but walking by, you start triggering these things and you’re sort of like delighted. And then it also brings other people into the conversation as well. Because they’re hearing this and then they sort of wander up and start hitting it as well. Ironic, I think, in another way, or very core to New York experience where if the trains are coming in, very difficult to hear, but then as soon as they disappear, you have this opportunity to hear this really interesting engaging piece of sound design.
Debbie Millman:
How come a sound like that doesn’t linger in those tunnels?
Brian Scherman:
Tunnels are very interesting acoustic spaces in and of themselves. I lived in Boston for many years, and there was an Orange Line station across from where I worked. And I could bring my saxophone in there. And it was shaped essentially like a half dome. So you’d have almost that same type of experience, we’re talking about the whispering wall, where if I was playing against the dome, it would sort of envelop and come back into the space. That isn’t until like a train shows up and then kind of like ruins the whole thing.
Brian Scherman:
They’re very interesting, both that they’re buried below ground, so there’s a lot of absorption that happens there. But the materials themselves are pretty reflective, there’s there’s steel and there’s concrete. And I think just due to the nature of the different pieces, kind of create a diffusion. We do this a lot in the studio. In the back of a room in a studio, you’ll often see these diffusers and they’re essentially like little blocks that are all staggered. And the idea is to diffuse up the sound instead of having a strong wave that would directly come back to you, the idea is to break those things up and diffuse them so that they become a little bit more ambient. And I suspect something similar is happening in a subway.
Debbie Millman:
You mentioned the future of transportation in your audio pitch, how do you think Sonic elements will be used to potentially enhance public transportation in the future? What do you foresee?
Brian Scherman:
I think I foresee some of the things that I mentioned, which is ambiances to kind of set tone that you don’t even recognize. As far as the future of transportation, I had the opportunity to work on a project, which is a very forward-leaning way that we can travel at ridiculously high speed across the country. And while working on that project, it was less about having it be thought of as so future-forward and thinking more of something that was more relatable. Because this is a new technology. I would imagine there’s a lot of apprehension just as there was when people were flying in airplanes and they want to makes something very relatable.
Brian Scherman:
So, ambiances can help set a mood without us recognizing and having something very calming. And then sound design elements can also create intuitive cues for us so we have something relatable. Like, any of us who have ridden the subway, we know when the doors are opening. So we design sounds that are reminiscent of that, but something that’s much more humanity forward-leaning feeling. So a relatable sound, but something that also feels like it’s from the future.
Brian Scherman:
And that’s true of other cues as well. If you’re thinking about… If you’re traveling and they were having the lights come down, having a cue that lets you know, that it’s sort of a relaxing state. Or the same thing of when you’ve reached your destination and there’s a cue that lets know if the lights are on, it’s time to arrival, and things like that. I think all of these pieces working together, just give us a subliminal cues that help us know where we are. And I think as humans, the more that we’re given those cues, the better we can interact.
Debbie Millman:
I’ve lived in New York, my whole life, I’m a native New Yorker. And back in the day, I remember there being some wonderful train conductors on the subway that would actually announced, with great fanfare, each stop. Not all of them did it, but it was always a real human that was delivering the information about where we were headed next, and when we got there, where we were. Do you think there’s a difference in the way people listen to the recorded voices now, that we hear alerting us where we’re going and when we’ve gotten there? Or do you think that we hear things the same way, whether they’re recorded or whether they’re live?
Brian Scherman:
I think there is a difference. I can certainly say that when you hear someone essentially doing a performance, when they’re conducting on the train, there’s a real sense of interaction. You feel like someone’s speaking to you. I think the challenge these days with voice interaction, this is true of our voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, is that our recorded voices talk back to us a lot. So if we ask for something, we get a whole paragraph diatribe back. And I think, where we’re likely to move to, where I think we could move to is to reduce some of those pre-recorded vocal cues with sound design or working in parallel with sound design.
Brian Scherman:
There’s a lot of times where it’s like set a timer and you hear a sentence coming back. I’ve set the timer for four and a half minutes where a simple sound would do that job, but there’s other times where you need to hear a voice. This is true in safety as well. I think from, my understanding, if you’re flying a plane, there’s lots of different sound cues that let you know what’s going on, but there’s one cue that for sure I think is spoken, which is pull up. And I think so. If it gets down to it, you’re hearing someone tell you pull up. And those are the times that we really need to have a human interaction.
Debbie Millman:
Brian, I understand you worked at Apple for four years. So I have two questions for you. What was the biggest thing you learned about sound design during your tenure there?
Brian Scherman:
when I was at Apple, I was part of the creative team, so I did a lot of teaching. And I think what was really interesting was both teaching music software. That’s how I got into music production, it was like learning GarageBand and then Logic. But also, at the time that I was at Apple, there was a sea change in design. So somewhere around iOS seven, which I think was the middle when I was there, was when the visual design language changed from a very skeuomorphic approach, like a edge, and very representative of real devices. Instead it moved towards more graphic-based sort of like a representative type design.
Brian Scherman:
And the same was true for the sounds. In the past Apple was using very huge, I think also sort of skeuomorphic, very representative of real sounds. Real world sounds, I guess I should say. And then it was a collaboration with an electronic producer who was very popular at the time, All-City. And they were creating a whole new suite of sounds that I thought were amazing. And it was in the same way that the visual language changed from something that was very relatable, to something real and physical, to something that was just more stylized and more representative.
Debbie Millman:
Perhaps you can help me understand something that is a bit of a pet peeve. I first noticed it back when Apple launched their white earbuds and now recognize that it’s pretty universal. And that is the leak, the leak in headphones. Why can’t that be solved? I don’t want to listen to somebody else’s music while I’m sitting on the train.
Brian Scherman:
It’s a good question. And I think different approaches, I think, have different levels of success. I personally have a really hard time with noise cancellation technology. Like Bose noise-canceling headphones and things like that. It’s using an acoustic technique of essentially inverting the signal that’s coming in. So it’s recording incoming signal, and by inverting it essentially as canceling it out. To me, that’s really uncomfortable feeling. Because if you’re working in a studio and you have that kind of cancellation, it means that something’s going wrong, essentially.
Brian Scherman:
So while it’s doing it digitally and… This is actually true also of noise sources themselves. People who use noise apps might find that they find them very fatiguing when they’re digital, but if you had an acoustic bass noise fan, like you find in a therapist office or something like that, it’s much less noticeable because essentially is something that is modulating over time, or feels a little bit more real as opposed to some it’s very static.
Brian Scherman:
As opposed to noise canceling, the only other option you have is to create a seal. And I have in-ear monitors that are essentially custom ear molds. And I use these for any of my critical listening. Because, as opposed to using any digital signal processing to cancel out sound, they’re just perfectly molded to your ears. So to your idea of you don’t want to hear somebody else’s stuff, it’s like having a really high quality earplug in your ears, but also having the ability to play back music at super high quality.
Debbie Millman:
Where can people find headphones like that?
Brian Scherman:
They’re a little more expensive because you essentially have to go to an audiologist to take a mold of your ear. There’s a couple of great ones actually in New York. Julie Glick I think was Bluck Glick. I’ll check that out. But she’s a great audiologist who helped me with these. But there’s a couple of companies who make these now. They’ve moved from where they began, which essentially was music performers on stage. They needed these in-ear monitors that they could seal out the band and be able to hear their backing tracks. I think they’re starting to make their way into popular culture as well.
Debbie Millman:
I read that you envision a future in which things like subliminal ambiances can obscure noise, increase, privacy and add a sense of emotion. How do you envision something like that happening?
Brian Scherman:
That question in particular is interesting because it’s, I don’t want to add more sound in the world. I don’t think this additive sound is necessarily the way to go, but in public spaces, I think there is opportunity for these ambiances to play in the environment. But, as you’re pointing out, many of us wear earbuds all the time, particularly if we’re out in the city, or if we’re traveling.
Brian Scherman:
So I think there’s both an opportunity to create sounds that are just in the environment, acoustically, that people can hear or experience, but there’s also an opportunity in the future to connect to our augmented hearing. We’ll start calling them that just like you would have augmented reality, you have augmented hearing devices. And those can provide you with a really curated experience. I think about my dad who just upgraded his hearing aids. And they connect to his phone. And if he’s in different environments, he can turn up the volume. He can equalize how it sounds out there so that he can cut some parts frequencies to just make it more audible.
Brian Scherman:
And I think in the future, that’s likely to be the scenario, is we’re going to be having these augmented hearing pieces and it’ll help us communicate. Especially if we’re talking, again, about where we find ourselves with masks wearing, where it’s really difficult sometimes to hear each other, you could imagine that these technologies are going to be really important to help project our sound, or be able to transmit sound to one another much more easily.
Debbie Millman:
I look forward to seeing those innovations. Thank you so much, Brian. Our next guest is Mark Addison Smith. Mark’s design specialty is typographic storytelling, allowing illustrative texts to convey a visual narrative through printed matter, artist books and site installations. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in visual communication design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and teaches graduate and undergraduate students as an associate professor within the Art Department at the City College of New York, in New York city.
Debbie Millman:
Mark has led interesting projects, including designing public service announcements and publications that support emerging writers, working within feminism and progressive politics, which we’ll dig into later. But let’s start by introducing you to his ongoing text-based archive: You Look Like the Right Type. He has been illustrating snippets of overheard conversations every single day since 2008. And exhibiting the words as a larger-scale conversations between strangers exchanging words on topics never spoken. Here’s a bit from Mark’s pitch on how he expanded his series during the pandemic.
Mark Addison Smith:
Over the years I’ve collected fascinating stories from thousands of speakers, I’ve never, ever missed a day. During the coronavirus shelter-in-place, I started reaching out to noteworthy strangers and bravely asked them to share a virtual call with me so that I could get my over her conversation fix. I suddenly found myself with more material than ever before. Each Zoom call resulted in 15 to 20 drawings per person. People were longing to talk, and I was really longing to draw.
Mark Addison Smith:
The shared voices inspired me, but they also spoke to a shared crisis. To date, the archive contains over 5,000 drawings, documenting the words of strangers, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, location, and affiliation. So it’s really all inclusive. When I exhibit the drawings, I curate larger conversations between people who have never met, but are now exchanging words about topics never spoken between them. So the collection becomes a larger design for the public sphere and a way for voices to literally and conceptually gather together.
Debbie Millman:
Mark, I think it’s probably best for me to disclose that you have drawn a conversation that we’ve had in the past. I had nothing to do with choosing you. I’m sad to say, even though I would have wanted to choose you, but good folks at NYCxDESIGN chose you, but it was an absolute delight to discover that somebody that I met through this very special project was going to be on the show today. So welcome.
Mark Addison Smith:
Thank you so much for having me. This is great. This is great if this is a great way to circle back and visit with you again, Debbie. I also think very highly on our conversation which… Those conversations were a high-point during such a dark time. It’s interesting, a lot of people that I spoke with had these degrees of conflict between almost feeling a guilt for having moments of exhilaration or satisfaction when such a gloom and doom was happening. Honestly it’s still going on, but those really… Our practice, once again, saves the day, those really saved me.So all that to say it was very sincere pleasure speaking with you and drawing your words for sure.
Debbie Millman:
Mark, tell me, do your sketches change your perceptions of the conversations you’ve had and the people you’ve interacted with? Do you feel like you hear differently once you’re drawing what somebody has said?
Mark Addison Smith:
Yeah. It’s interesting because I have a set of drawings that I consider pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. The pre-pandemic drawings are really heard in the wild, right? And I don’t go up and introduce myself, or meet the person, I just kind of capture the bit, I’ll write it down. I’m a very analog eavesdropper. So I write it down. I go to a space, my studio, my home, and I draw. And it gets posted on social media. But during the pandemic, I lost that ability to get out and about and listened closely to people in person. So I had to facilitate those conversations through invitations for Zoom talks. And those were with strangers, strangers that I admired from afar, but I had not met otherwise.
Mark Addison Smith:
During the pandemic, it was interesting because I felt like I was drawing for an audience of one, and that audience was everything to me. So it put a different spin of pressure on my delivery. Right? But also, because I was inviting conversations with strangers that I had admired from afar, that also put pressure on producing the work. Right? So one thing that’s interesting to me, and it’s one of my guests… Because it did kind of feel like a talk show that I was having from my dining room, right? During the pandemic. Because every day I would have another fascinating person on Zoom. But one time I was about to draw someone and they said to me, they were like, “Oh, I really love the way you scratch through things. If you draw something and you make a mistake, you just scribble through it, you just move on.”
Mark Addison Smith:
In context with your question, I think that relaxes me into the drawing, and it takes the pressure off the preciousness of that speaker’s words and my need to deliver something that’s perfect. Right? Because once I’ve made a mistake with the drawing and I don’t do another drawing, I just scratched through it, it just kind of deflates everything. And it’s like, “Okay, there’s a blemish on the drawing and we’re going to be fine.” Right? I will scratch through things, but everything I draw is drawn with a hundred percent accuracy of how I hear it. So if you see something that’s scratched through, I’m scratching through a mistake I made to correct the speaker.
Debbie Millman:
You said that pre-pandemic, you were overhearing conversations. So the conversations that you were visualizing were really more anonymous?
Mark Addison Smith:
They were pre-pandemic. Many of most of the people that I would draw, I didn’t know, and I might not encounter again. It’s kind of a fleeting exercise where I might be on the subway and somebody fabulous sits next to me and they’re talking up a storm and I jot something down. And then the train stops, we go our separate ways and then the drawing lives on. And it’s a way for me to think about this person that I’ve met in a strange way, in a fleeting way. And I can build an identity or a character about that person through the letter forms I use, the thickness of the line, if it’s scratchy and insecure, or if it’s confident and upright as how I draw the letters.
Mark Addison Smith:
So yes, there is an anonymity, but also a personal assertion, I guess, that happens when I draw the speaker’s words in a way that became quite different when I suddenly was face-to-face or Zoom to screen to screen, Zoom to Zoom with conversationalists during the pandemic, for sure.
Debbie Millman:
Did anybody that you were anonymously drawing ever recognize themselves and reach out to you, recognizing that this is something that they said that you overheard?
Mark Addison Smith:
It’s funny, When I lived in Chicago, I did a weekly drawing series for a blog called capers block. Each week it would be me drawing something I heard in the wild, and I I would list the location. One time I had someone leave a comment. T he drawing was at the Museum of Science and Industry, I think, and somebody said, “Oh, I heard that too.” Right? Which I thought was really… So that’s happened before.
Mark Addison Smith:
I have had students before… Because I’m an educator, I’m a professor at City College. I have had some of my students come up to me and say, “Oh, I was in the blog, right?” Or I was a on the dry call at the blog, but it’s an Instagram feed, it’s social media. At one when I taught at DePaul University, at the end of the semester, a student came up to me and said, “I was trying every class to get into a drawing.” Right? So I do have that kind of commentary that happens. Which I enjoy it. I think that’s fun. It’s kind of like a message in a bottle that I throw out, or a boomerang, I guess is maybe a better visual. As it comes back, you just don’t know how it’s going to come back to you.
Debbie Millman:
Has your design perspective shifted since… Well, first, since you started, You Look Like the Right Type, but then has it further changed by having more intimate conversations with people that you are face-to-face with, as opposed to just listening to?
Mark Addison Smith:
I started You Look Like the Right Type three months after I left grad school, and I was looking for a project. Because when you leave grad school on immersive program, you just feel a little bit like kick to the curb in terms of what am I going to do now? Because grad school can be so immersive and satisfying, and then you’re left to kind of fly, so to speak. I started it as I was also starting my design practice, really. Because in undergrad, I studied film and video. And after my undergrad, I worked for quite a while as a program director and a festival director at a film arts non-profit center in Atlanta.
Mark Addison Smith:
So really, You Look Like the Right Type has kind of parallel grown with my design practice. And it’s interesting when I think about maybe some influences behind You Look Like the Right Type, film has always been a central piece in that, because I think of them really, I think of each drawing. They’re analog drawings on paper that I will scan and I will manipulate digitally. But when I exhibit them, I show the works on paper, right? But I think of each one as a tiny cell or a frame of a film.
Mark Addison Smith:
So when I put together big conversations, when I edit these conversations between strangers, I really think of it as assembling a film narrative. Because that’s just the way I think cinematically. And really in grad school, I thought in terms of film design too, because I was making artists books that would be, you have words that were cut down the middle and you would have to rearrange the words for deeper meaning. When I was in undergrad, I was one of my last classes that actually physically cut 16 millimeter film, and we would splice it, tape it back together. So I think that I’m still processing that.
Mark Addison Smith:
I guess that’s a long way to answer your question. It has changed my design in that I always lead with storytelling, but the You Look Like the Right Type series has evolved too. When I started it, all of the characters had eyes and my drawings were more chit-chatty, but now I just do a round circle with a nose, and the line is much more minimal. Maybe that maps onto my design thinking. Also, more streamlined as you get more immersive in it, things kind of streamline, maybe
Debbie Millman:
I’d also love to hear about your most recent work with the ACLU and Drawing Out the Vote. How do these types of projects and others that you’ve worked on feature the importance of graphic design in public work and in education?
Mark Addison Smith:
Drawing Out the Vote was something I finished maybe two or three days ago. So that’s a hot off the press, so to speak. That was a collaboration with New York City artist and choreographer, Gabrielle Mertz and partners were ACLU, and Open Society Foundation, and Center for Artistic Activism. For that, it was interesting because I was asked to contribute hand-drawn elements for a two-minute PSA. The goal was to mobilize voting in Georgia, which is such a battleground state right now. And I am from Georgia. And the project team was built with people who have deep Georgia roots. We even got Louis Gossett Jr. with his magical voice to do the voiceover for it.
Mark Addison Smith:
So, the human element I think is present in handwriting. And so to me, I thought of the drawings as a way to bring in or invite the person, the individual, the voter, into a storytelling device to empower them to get out and vote. So the PSA is non-partisan, it’s not telling you who to vote for, but it’s telling you how you can vote and that you should vote. And so that’s everything. And so, I think that the kind of shaky hand that’s found within the drawings, I think really pull in the viewer, I hope that’s the case.
Debbie Millman:
Now I’d like to bring back our first guest Brian Scherman, and I’d like you to stay as well, Mark, and I’d love to have a conversation with you both. So I want to ask you both, how can design play a role in instilling a sense of community for somebody that might not be a professional designer, but wants to bring more of a sense of community into their own homes, or their own pods, or their own groups?
Brian Scherman:
I think it was interesting that you were talking about design in the political space. And I think music has played such a role there as well. Those anthems can bring people together or rally people together, or sometimes are used without the permission of the people who are creating it. So that’s another interesting area. But I think, from the music design perspective or the music perspective that these songs can inspire and bring us together, or hopefully give us hope, give us optimism and enthusiasm.
Mark Addison Smith:
I also think that, from the visual perspective, we’re such a visual culture. Always. For better or for worse, we’re always on our phones. We’re always looking at screens. We’re posting things on social media. So I think in large ways, this generation, more than ever, is using design to harness their own voices and as platforms to show, “Hey, look what I did.” Right? So that’s already happening quite a bit in homes, for sure, with social media.
Debbie Millman:
One thing that I thought was so interesting in how NYCxDESIGN chose you both, is how both of your deliverables, so to speak, has a visual element. And also a sound element. Because, Mark, you’re listening to something you’re communicating. And then Brian, you’re communicating something through listening. And I love that. How do sound and vision play off of one another? Do sounds enhanced visuals, do visuals enhance sound? Can you both talk a little bit about how you partner what we hear with what we see.
Mark Addison Smith:
Sure. For me, grammatology is something that I think about, and it’s the science behind seeing what is spoken, or seeing sounds. Right? That’s kind of what I’ve been doing for the past 12 years. I am interested in all of the articulations of the speaker. I think it’s fascinating if a speaker says like, or um, like, a lot. People apologize for that, right? Especially if they know if it’s going to be recorded or visualized somehow. Right?
Mark Addison Smith:
But to me, I think that makes it really great. That builds a lot of the character development in the visualization of that vision of what’s spoken. Right? So those things are considered for me. But also letter forms, the weight of the letter, the weight of the line. All of that baggage you can put into the drawing that might allow you to see something and hear somebody saying it, I think is very valuable for me.
Brian Scherman:
I love that that’s… Coming from my world, sonic can play such an interesting role because it provides a lot of the emotion to any experience. So visual design can work and be very emotive, I think is cerebral since it’s coming through our eyes where sound just bypasses the neocortex and just goes straight to the heart and we really feel it that way. So an interesting place that we find ourselves is where sound can either align with a visual aesthetic, or it can actually be a juxtaposition.
Brian Scherman:
And that can actually be even more interesting of creating an experience. We’ve got a very minimalist sleek, visual interface, we could create very minimal sleek of simple sound design, and those would feel very aligned and would feel very complete in its own way. But we may do something totally different, juxtapose it with some very rich, very organic sound design. I’m glad you brought up… The human voice has such nuance to it. And I think in music now, whether you have a verse or like actual singer singing vocal chops that become part of our Lexicon speakers just because they’re so impactful. And they just draw us into the experience. Yeah, I think they all play off each other and we can either align and compliment or we can juxtapose and create something really unique.
Mark Addison Smith:
It’s funny. Just to add really quickly to that. Just this morning, I told my grad class we were doing a Zoom call, and my grad students are equally impressive vocally as they are with the zoom chat feature. So it’s a really interesting exercise of hearing and seeing, right? I was so in all of that, this morning that I asked them, I said, “You guys, we would be okay if somehow we can’t use Zoom and we have to text only for class, right?” So it’s interesting to see, in technology today, how that sound and that visual are playing together also.
Debbie Millman:
Since you brought it up, I’d love to get your perspective on why, as a culture, we seem to be using so many more filler words like like, you know, kinda, sort? This is something that I spend quite a lot of time thinking about, trying to break that habit in my undergraduate students and my grad students. I almost forced my producer to cut them all out from the people that are saying them in my interviews on design matters. When did this start? I can’t imagine that this is always been the way we communicate as a species.
Mark Addison Smith:
For me, I think it happens when we’re stalling for time, even if it’s a nanosecond, to gather our thoughts. Because I catch myself doing it all… If I say um before I start a sentence, it’s because I’m doing a little pause and just trying to get situated. Right? And maybe those things have been around since the beginning of time. There’s someone’s dissertation right there. Right? But I think, for me, that it’s a stalling device. I think we’re so saturated with our thinking, and sensory input, and ideas, that we are probably thinking more than ever, saying more things than ever. We also might not be able to harness all of our thoughts at once because we’re saturated. So, for me, it’s just a little bit of a stall or it’s asking permission for just a second.
Brian Scherman:
I totally agree. It’s it’s also just like a responsive to the influx of content, as you’re saying. Where content now is so multimedia. There’s a musician that I really love, a bass player. He just put out like a TikTok video. And it was interesting that he doesn’t say a thing, there’s text that shows up as he’s pointing to it to like tell his little story, plays an amazing bass solo, the text comes up with emojis and graphics and then you’re out. So you have this super condensed, but yet very interesting experience in like 15 seconds. So yeah, I think it’s both our opportunity to allow time to say something, but also just kind of responsive to, I think, this expectation that there’s just a constant influx of content all the time.
Debbie Millman:
I have one last question for you both. How do you envision the future of our species that really live at the intersection of sonic design and visual design? Do you envision new ways that they could play off each other, or how they might be living side by side?
Brian Scherman:
I think there’s an opportunity for more consideration of both in design. I can only speak from the sonic perspective where it feels like some of the immersive spaces we worked on where sound comes at the last minute. And that the things I mentioned earlier, like acoustic design. Someone may want to build an enormous glass and steel space, which, while visually very striking, would sound terrible to anybody that’s in there because it’s so reflective and cacophonous. So my hope and my optimism is that all designs are considered in addition to visual design, acoustic design, sonic design, and even scent, where these things can become more holistic. And I think just more ubiquitous and a little bit, to borrow a little bit from Star Trek, a little bit just kind of everywhere, an omnipresent, but not being intrusive
Mark Addison Smith:
For me, I would say I don’t really know what that will look like, specifically, but I know that the tools that we need to get there are, listening to one another for sure, paying attention, understanding other’s needs, listening also with a degree of empathy, for sure. And I think the power, as designers comes with storytelling, how can we tell each other stories, for sure, as a way to empower one another and lift each other up, and also open up doors that could get us closer to our goal. Maybe those are the tools. Wait and see how that manifests.
Debbie Millman:
Thank you, Mark Edison Smith. Thank you, Brian Scherman for joining us today to discuss Design in Gathering Together. And thank you to our audience for listening. We hope this conversation introduced a new set of perspectives on how we can use design to convene and interact. And if nothing more, you can visit Grand Central and go to the whispering dome, and have a very safe conversation talking into a wall. A huge, huge thank you as well to NYCxDESIGN for organizing this.
Debbie Millman:
Want to talk design with me on the next episode of The Mic? We can’t wait to hear your design story, shared in the form of a voice message at nycxdesign.com. Join me next month to talk Creativity at Work. Follow @NYCxDESIGN on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And subscribe to the newsletter to be first to find out about next month’s featured guests and the latest in New York Design.
Debbie Millman:
It’s time to share this month’s featured voice messages. Tune in at the end of each episode to hear additional compelling design stories from talented members of new York’s creative community that have shared their stories with us. Today, we’re hearing from Lisa Smith, Madelynn Ringo and Scott Henderson. Lisa Smith is an award-winning industrial designer who has designed office furniture for companies such as Steelcase, Haworth and HONBAY. Lisa is also the managing and creative director at Soul Street, a solar powered seating system designed to accommodate a variety of activities that can be performed while a person is sitting or resting and more particularly waiting. Let’s hear what Lisa has to say about sole Street’s innovative and sustainable seating concept.
Lisa Smith:
We had Soul Street can connect to our communities when and where it matters most. We can send urgent alerts, service updates, health guidelines, and essential support in real-time on our smart ink screens. So Soul Street benches can be easily installed and moved based on communication needs.
Debbie Millman:
Madelynn Ringo is an architectural designer based in Brooklyn, and also the founder of Dinner with Designers, a project that is fundamentally based on the idea and magic of gathering together. Madelynn grew up in Kentucky, where she attended the university’s college of design, studying architecture. After receiving her masters in architecture from Yale University, she arrived in New York. And while working found herself and her peers feeling overwhelmed with curiosity and questions about how to carve their own career paths. They had questions and ideas, and they needed a space that enabled them to personally connect with those that had successfully defined their own journeys. Let’s hear Madelynn tell us more about Dinner with Designers.
Madelynn Ringo:
Dinner with Designers is an event series that shares the stories of influential designers from around the world, through an intimate dinner conversation that takes place at the designer’s home. Through the magic of the classic dinner party format., a small group of guests gather around the table for an evening of food and drink. Throughout the dinner, the designer shares their creative stories and the milestones, successes, and failures that have shaped them along the way. By opening up the typically private domestic space, these dinners offer a unique platform for the design community, and a conversation space to share unparalleled insight and inspiration.
Madelynn Ringo:
I have learned so much from the designers that have hosted us and share their stories, as well as the guests that have attended these dinners. It has brought me so much joy to facilitate these gatherings, because they build community mentorship and even new friendships. While the effects of the pandemic have certainly presented us with an obstacle for gathering together, we are transitioning to a digital conversation platform, with the hopes that we can continue these in-person dinners in the new future.
Debbie Millman:
Scott Henderson is an American designer who runs the New York City-based design studio, Scott Henderson Inc, with projects focusing on industrial design, branding, and engineering for a global client base. Aside from his award-winning work in industrial design, Scott is a consistent generator of unique intellectual property, with over 50 patents in the U.S and Europe, for innovative housewares and home accessories, consumer medical products, wearables and electronics. In his voice message, Scott shares his perspective on design thinking and challenges, the typical approach to the word design
Scott Henderson:
Today, in the design discussion, we talk incessantly about our process, how we go about these things. So design thinking is literally a five-step almost-scientific process about how we go about doing what we do. And if you look at the counter-arguments to design thinking such as Natasha Jen’s Design Thinking is BS. She is also focusing on process, but just the processes that design thinking left out because it’s so abbreviated. What we should be doing is talking about why we do design. What is the bigger overarching concept that our designs fit into? Why have we done what we’d done? And if we did that, more people would understand the word design.
Debbie Millman:
Thank you again for joining us on NYCxDESIGN’s The Mic. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking design again next month.
