The Company You Keep

FÖDA Studio Intern Caspar Lam has had his The Red Envelope project published in Issue #18 of On Site magazine. Though we lack the space here to adequately show The Red Envelope (and thereby discourage you from buying the magazine) we happily include an excerpt from Caspar’s review of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson. We feel obligated to post Caspar’s article here not simply because we’re proud of his achievements, but also because of the clarity and foresight (perhaps even prescience) of his comments for one still performing his undergraduate work in the design program at the University of Texas.

“Even with the ever-growing call to engage larger society, graphic designers merely pay lip service to broader issues of culture because, in reality, their skills are far too removed from the nitty-gritty of human existence to make a true difference.
But graphic designers can make an impact in education and academia because their skills, including the parsing and simplification of information, is sorely needed. The role of an academician is to expand knowledge while the role of a designer is to coalesce ideas. There is no reason why they cannot work together to address the issues that arise as human knowledge rapidly burgeons. Admittedly, these thoughts of mine are not at all addressed in Wilson’s book. However, he does present a vision that all knowledge is fundamentally interconnected. That vision is something that graphic designers can appreciate and perhaps use as inspiration to engage in areas where they can make the most difference.”

“Inspiration is not found in trite design monologues but in depths of the human condition and intellect. Graphic designers should not at all be perturbed that they can’t change the world because they can change how to understand it.”

Well said.
Alas, we surrender Caspar to the graduate program at Yale this fall.