Creative Studio of Tomorrow
Tomorrow approaches faster each day as technologies collide, ricochet, gravitate and dock to spawn new concepts, visions and manifestations. Consider the synthetic food and picture phone future of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ - today a classic motion picture made before Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon. The visions of scientists, engineers, writers and architects all combined to realize Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick‘s vision which began somewhere on Earth, perhaps in a simple English countryside room lined with leather-bound books, or perhaps in a writer’s studio on a busy movie production lot.
A design space, aka design studio, is a portal to the past, present and future as creatives reimagine reality. If we’re lucky, we may some day live in a future where elements work as well together as they do in our favorite movies.
Contemporary design specialists, whether sculptors, screen writers, packaging engineers, city planners, or rocket scientists navigate an ever-expanding creative universe, tasked to identify, comprehend and apply technologies benefiting a diverse roster of clientele. The average internet-surfing designer has a thousand technology tennis balls shot at them daily with blistering velocity while striving to be reasonably accurate in their assumptions of how their artful techno decisions affect a global audience.
The time-honored craft of design - inventing out of the ether - is evolving to become even more daunting as designers transform into ‘Technology Translators.’ These pioneers write code, craft CAD (computer-aided) drawings, devise specialty materials at the molecular level, and envision complex processes of organization, manufacturing, fabrication and implementation. However, they are merely setting the stage for generations of designers to come - humans with artificial intelligence partners able to accelerate ideas into real creations. These designers will be able to fail faster toward manifesting even more impressive results. They will have at their fingertips the ability to make things smaller than atoms, and larger than continents - such as space colonies.
Rocket Lab’s Rutherford propulsion engines are 3D printed, reducing the time and cost of design improvements. Photos: Rocket Lab
Consider Space Race 2.0 - now in progress. Companies such as Spire Global, AST & Science, Virgin Orbit, Momentus, Astra, Rocket Lab USA and Black Sky Holdings are crafting turnkey satellite delivery and deployment services akin to FedEx in space. Larger entities such as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, Boeing, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX have their sights set on human travel - anywhere from suborbital to the surface of planets within our solar system where humans may live and work for extended durations. Such endeavors require the utmost precision in every detail - literally 100% ‘up time’ since there is no margin for error. 100% reliability is a target industries of the past rarely had to meet.
The definition of tomorrow’s “designer” will consist of both creative and technological expertise, including problem solving to a degree humans have never before faced. These individuals will be detail masters and global collaborators all at once. To fulfill these requirements, education will have to change how information is taught and expertise acquired (a topic for another blog post). The design race is on as tomorrow is not three to five years away. Tomorrow is when the sun again rises.
Back on Earth, an article by Future Today Institute founder Amy Webb offers a fascinating tour through the creative studio of the future, suggesting unusual staff positions such as Tattoo, Injectable and Earable Designers (aka Wearable Specialists). A Senior position might develop, then integrate opto-aural nano implants, eliminating the need for 3D glasses, virtual reality goggles, earbuds and headphones to facilitate neuro virtual experiences. So let’s add one more item after detail masters and global collaborators: imagination wranglers.
Whether micro or macro, emerging new designers will need to effectively respond to myriad situations unimaginable several years - no, wait - several minutes ago. Scientists and engineers, writers and drafters, architects and builders all await with great anticipation to create what will soon emerge from the studio of the tomorrow.
Image: Kite & Lightning
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