On working without labelling

Exploring the Influence of Language on Behaviour

Otokoyama Sake Brand Identity, Designer Unknown

Recent conversations have led me to acknowledge that I have unconsciously been attempting to work without ‘labelling’ and to close myself off to the noise that is outside to retrieve what might be inside. Beyond suspending labelling myself, which often makes introductory conversation a little bit more challenging, I have extended this lack of labelling to how I see. If we attempt to unlearn what we have learned cognitively about certain objects, processes and experiences how will that influence how we move, behave and create — will we see possibilities that were not there before?

Perhaps if we suspend what we ‘think’ about and object we can experience it anew.

Perhaps if we suspend what we ‘think’ about and object we can experience it anew. I think back to something I read a some time ago from designer Kenya Hara, on the concept of ‘Re-Design’ — the idea of looking “at familiar things as if it were our very first encounter with them. Re-design is a means by which to renew our feelings about the essence of design, hidden within the fascinating environment of an object that is so overly familiar to us that we can no longer see it.” I would encourage us to look beyond the word design (for that has its own conventional meanings also) and to think about existence itself from policy making, to software development, healthy eating to organising urban environments. How can we benefit from a fresh eye each day on the activities and the environments we create and play in? 

Words by Natasha J. Hussein