Culture Making in the Modern Day Studio

In the most reductive of descriptions, our studio primarily makes things.
We contextualize, and iterate, and prototype, and test. 

We design and create experiences through the making of these things.
The things themselves vary and cover a breadth of tangible products and experiences across technology, health & wellness, finance, commodity, and energy verticals. We design and build the things consumers use and interact with everyday - electronics, healthcare products, hardware, household goods, consumables - to name a few.
We deploy a host of design methodologies before, during, and following the making of these things - digging into our designer toolkits and aligning any number of way finding exercises throughout a project’s lifecycle to gain insights into users, create feedback loops, and work our way through design challenges we encounter as we create.

On any given project, a number of strategists, researchers, experience designers, visual designers, industrial designers, and production artists are likely to touch a program - either leading through their respective discipline phase or contributing to support an adjacent team. Working collaboratively across our multiple design disciplines, respective teams fill their input buckets, and then that thing we call “the process” takes over, and we arrive on the other side with thoughtful (and typically stunning) design solutions. 

As a Senior Project Manager at Enlisted, my seat plants firmly in the middle of any given project. I lead, co-lead, contribute, lean in, lean back, and manage projects from inception to completion. My main function is to create spaces in which designers and clients can thrive within - developing and maintaining said space through the ups, downs, starts, and stops of any given program. In a space where designers feel supported and clients feel heard, design stands its greatest chances at developing into truly meaningful, highly impactful outcomes. I’m privileged to get a front row seat into wayfinding, through each client’s unique problem solving objective. As a design studio, we are in a constant state of making. Like any solid maker studio, the floors are typically littered with early ideas that take their form in sketches on rolls of trace, foam core mockups, prototypes that didn't quite make the cut, samples and swatches of every possible shape and size. The mess is usually a pretty reliable indicator of where we find ourselves in the design workflow, as we work through early ideation and big picture thinking through more focused exploration and ultimately refinement.

At the end of the day, our studio creates.

“Yes, but what does your studio do? “

This was the question posed by Ali - a stranger to me up until 5 minutes previous during my first visit to a new coffee shop in the neighborhood. Ali later explained that he was encouraged to chat with me seeing how I was reading How to Talk to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. (Fantastic book by the way - but be forewarned that a stranger may in fact attempt to talk to you…)

“Well,. . .” I slowly responded as I collected my thoughts and searched for an answer that would satisfy this gentleman whom I sensed was looking for a richer answer than the one I previously provided to him. 

We create things - experiences, brands, products that help people. My pithy answer to a very simple question that threw me for a loop.

I think about it often. The exchange was quick - yet  memorable. It was a profound question - it could not have been more straightforward. However, arriving at the answer was more complex.  Ali was a wise old man. His question led me down a personal inquiry to come up with an answer that made sense during a time when what we do, or rather, how we do what we do seemed to be the inquiry that many of us would undertake as the pandemic unfolded/s around us. Like coming up for a breath of air after an assuming wave knocks you over, the hits can keep coming - social inequities, civil unrest, a divisive political climate - issues that challenge people’s ability to make it through the day - take your pick.

People grow weary.  A general sense of malaise can sets in - and yet life continues as we make sense of it all (individually and collectively) and find new ways of living in an ever-evolving and heightened state of flux. 

What is culture exactly? How is it made? We make things in the studio, we are making things - thing makers. Do these things make a culture? If so, how and what shall this culture be and aim to do? 

V1 | The Pub

Part I

Behind any compelling design is a good story.

And a good story is always about people.

Sometimes the source is obvious. The final design - regardless of medium or format lives in close proxy to the roots of its inspiration. At times, the relationship between the two is less obvious and it challenges the designer to undertake a deeper type of inquiry. The creative “distance” between inputs and output is by no means an indication or measure of value; however, there is something to be said for the latter path.

It asks us to confront the possibility that inspiration can be found in the most uninspiring of places - hidden, yet in plain sight. It encourages us to re-examine the periphery and everything we might have overlooked during our initial quick study. At the bus stops we frequent, our exchanges at the corner store, late-night conversations overheard during the staff’s smoke break behind our favorite  restaurants - in the un glamorous, mundane interactions that fill our days. Where everyday people interact with everyday things - that’s the special sauce. 

Despite our best efforts, it’s easy to overlook the ordinary. Places, routines - even people for that matter.

It’s perhaps why I delight in the idea of reading a book at home donning my fanciest clothes or pulling out the China for breakfast on Sunday. It helps me to challenge my assumptions of where I expect beauty (thereby, inspiration) to exist, and what things I associate living in its company. A lucid observation emerges when we hold two opposing truth simultaneously:

We realize there is room for both. 

Chalk it up to a good ‘ol dose of humble pie when your assumptions are proven wrong that is good for the spirit and the creative soul.  Places and people that hold this duality fascinate me. They contain multitudes that are worth exploring. 

And no better place was this point modeled for me than in my childhood home.

Part II

Like many who find themselves with a first-gen narrative as part of their origin story, it’s not uncommon to reiterate our parents' journey to the United States (in my case, a bit further North - Regina, Saskatchewan, to be exact) verbatim, as it was told to us - one too many times to count.

The ever-old adage of “When I was your age . . . “ is familiar enough, however, for a first gen kiddo, it's typically preceded by an anecdote so seemingly impossible (and typically of the trauma-inducing kind) that you raise an eyebrow as to how anyone could possibly managed to survive such an incident.

Over time however, the recounted journey’s details become a bit fuzzy and the lines between lived experience and remembrance blur. The whole truth is challenged to be remembered and recounted as it was lived. Memory recedes and the story loses gravitas - regardless of how unique and outrageous the story once appeared. The collective result of this dimming or diminishing is millions of individual narratives - once as unique and distinguished as a fingerprint itself begin to saturate. Imprint upon imprint, the immigrant experience takes on a collective identity - a broad brushstroke used to paint the same scenery in which its character’s formative years were shaped and formed. 

I was determined to rescue my parent’s own narrative from this fate. Albeit for selfish reasons at first. The story of how my folks  met was so wildly outlandish, it begged sharing.

18 year old girl is told by her older brothers she’s getting treated to the cinema. Girl dons her finest sari and jewelry, ready to enjoy a special evening on the town (girl grew up without much opportunity to experience public entertainment, hence the excitement of a picture show outing).
In a cruel, Shakespearean turn of events, girl is instead driven to her future husband-to-be's home for a meet & greet.
Girl marries the boy 3 days later.
Girl leaves her family and life as she knows it in Mumbai, India and boards a plane to what might as well have been the other side of the moon - or Regina, Saskatchewan as its officially referred to - in winter, I might add you.
Girl speaks not a lick of English and proceeds to accompany her new husband to work, a dishwasher at the  Lakeshore steakhouse and cocktail lounge (yep, still in business).

You couldn’t write this stuff if you tried.

Fast forward - Dad would work in the restaurant industry for most his life - moving up the ranks from dishwasher to general manager.

My sister and I grew up thumbing  through his restaurant and bartending books, garnishing our glasses of milk with anything we could skewer on the cute umbrellas he’d bring home for us. We’d hear countless stories of a bygone era  - a golden age of sorts in the restaurant/hospitality business when dad slung steaks out blue rare to diners like Andre the Giant ( a regular patron at the Lakeshore). Where Cesars and Baked Alaskas were dressed and flambed - tableside.

He also ran a number of establishments in Vancouver, B.C. - one being the Piccadilly Pub and hotel, complete with a piano lounge and a 40 room SRO on the upper three floors. The Pic, as it was affectionately referred to by local patrons was smack on the edge of the city’s Eastside - a neighborhood that wrestled with a long and complicated history filled with poverty, colonial remnants, substance abuse, and suffered from a  general malaise that plagued the area and anyone who stepped foot into the fray.

Dad loved it.

Not all of it, of course.
Not the rough nights (and there were plenty) when he had to throw out the folks that had one (or 10) too many. Not the slurs that were hurled his way after they’d been thrown out. Not the crime that took place in and around the East Side.

Despite this, he held a genuine fondness for the place itself, and towards the people who frequented it.

Amongst the rag-tag misfits that called the Picadilly home, friendships were forged. Stories of life in all its facets were shared: accomplishments and regrets - many regrets.
There was a lot of pain and suffering he bore witness to. Back in those days, pubs served as safe places where you spilled secrets.  If you missed the confessional at Sunday’s service, you still had the Pic. 

An unexpected benefit of having a bartender dad who is friends with everyone that we still laugh about today, 35 years later, is the amount of money we could rake in for our school donations and drives. My sister Taneem and I would proudly march into class a day after receiving our fundraising forms with hundreds of names scrawled onto our sheet and pledges totaling $1,000 or more - not bad for a 3rd grader. Mr. Tourand must’ve had his suspicions of what sort of money laundering scheme we were cooking up at home, but if he did, he never let on.

The patrons who frequented Dad’s pubs were a colorful bunch. A  milieu of neighborhood blue collar workers, many who lived well below the poverty line. Wednesdays  were particularly interesting.

They handed over their dollars without hesitation when dad told them his kiddos were selling x (x = chocolate bars, books, tchotchkes, you name it) for their school donation drive. We wrote thank you cards to each of our generous donors and a seed of gratitude in me was planted. I was thankful. I found beauty in their strange kindness towards me, enjoying the fruits of my father’s labor - the time he invested and the meaningful, very real relationships he forged in this unusual community. 

He saw them and in return, felt seen. Ironically, other than sharing close proximity each day for years, my father didn’t have a whole lot in common with his patrons. For one thing, he doesn’t drink and never has. He had no firsthand knowledge of the bar goers point of view - literally and figuratively, but he was damn good at empathy. I suspect his emigration to the US was filled with the same sorts of deep highs and lows - alcohol induced or not. 

I think about what it might have been like to experience such culture shock as a foreigner. Despite the challenges and the reasons to be suspicious or fearful of new people and things, mom and dad moved towards strangers instead of away from them. They cultivated a skill of searching for beauty in ugly places and became accustomed to finding it. Empathy cultivation is a skillset we talk about a lot at our studio, along with other core values that we aspire to embody, such as honoring each staff’s (as well as our clients) unique lived experience. 

Because everyone has a story to tell.