Nancy Wynn works collaboratively with partner, Robert Dennis, on projects for Palindrome Partners in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Palindrome Partners is an advertising and design business, servicing small to large organizations’ communication needs. These services include, but are not limited to, concept development, creative direction, copywriting, visual communication design, broadcast production, print and digital publication production, and digital image creation. The business was established in 2007. Please visit palindromepartners.com for samples of our work. Samples projects showcase Ms. Wynn’s talents as a creative director, designer, and collaborator.
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
The process of design includes play and research, understanding the influences of history and popular culture, providing the best design solution based on client need, and taking responsibility for the future effects of one’s design. This personal vision seeks to address the design process from its gestation period to its marriage with community. This community can be regional, national, and global.
In our culture today, time has become a commodity, making the “singular profitable solution” dependent on obsessive efficiency, accountability, and hegemonic ideology. Time for play is questioned; however, play is essential to problem solving in the design process. Allowing for multiple solutions without the fear of failure brings forth more successful brainstorming. Happy accidents can lead a designer in a new direction. The freedom of the unconscious often expands into the distracted conscious, producing a clearer vision of the design concept that is desired. Research can spawn play or support the results of play, giving the potential solution to the design problem a foundation to build upon.
History and popular culture will usually be part of the research process, but more importantly, they can provide inspiration for original thinking. Popular culture, especially in the form of technology and mass media, influences and informs decisions. Choices designers make on how to represent a concept visually will be based on socially constructed beliefs, reinforced by popular culture and history. Informed designers must be aware and acknowledge these constructed beliefs so they can provide an original solution to perhaps an overused cliche. Good design should not rely on current trends or imitation of the past, but draw on its connections to both, inspiring innovative solutions.
Providing the best design solution must always evolve from clients’ needs. Being a good listener, taking time to understand their needs, and creating a design solution that addresses their needs should be considered a primary part of “providing the best design solution.” After this primary need has been addressed, then the question of aesthetics enters in to the equation. Successful aesthetic choices depend on designers having a strong knowledge of the formal elements of design, as well as a strong foundation in conceptual thinking.
A good design resonates into the community. How far it reaches will be dependent on its application, but what is important to note is how its influence is perceived. Unlike fine art, design usually has a specific purpose and message within communication. This communication is in the form of signs that are accepted by society. Understanding the sign, the relationship between signifier and the signified, is just as important as understanding how to visually translate the message intended. When designers fully understand their intention, then they will be able to take responsibility for its effect on community; i.e. to defend their choices.
Because our world is ever changing, the process of design is not static; flexibility produces fluidity within the process. Good designers need to embrace change and transform it into balance and harmony in relation to our chaotic world.