The Hive

Background

The topic for the 2014 Biennial GD Graduate Symposium at NC State was Improversion. This is a combination of improvisation and subversion. We were to explore design assumptions and norms when approaching design problems.

Description

At MICA, designers are trained to be generalists. We are authors and producers, researchers and developers, illustrators and copywriters; we work on projects from concept to completion. To subvert this process we have formed The Hive, a highly specialized agency. Like in a bee colony, each person has a distinct, siloed role. We stay within these roles and pass our finished materials down the chain, neither discussing nor interfering with others' work.

For the Symposium at NC State, we presented our agency's website. The site shared our philosophy and described our process, talking a bit about each of our specialists.

A collaboration between: Kirby Matherne, Jackie Littman, Emma Sherwood-Forbes, Ben Chemelski, myself, Lolo Zhang, David Lam and Nour Tabet

We created a shared Dropbox folder with a strict schedule to follow. This is how the work was passed along each other, without looking to any folder that is before ours in the chain.

2014 Biennial GD Graduate Symposium at NC State

2014 Biennial GD Graduate Symposium at NC State