Dan Eames
Information & experience designer
The Bilocating Designer
Faced with the dilemma of belonging to two seemingly disparate design communities—a critical design school and the commercial UX design profession—Dan Eames embarked on a journey to uncover the commonalities and shared histories of these communities. As The Bilocating Designer, Eames existed simultaneously in both fields, moving across a spectrum of design practice and eventually discovering a common ground: diagrammatic design language.
Featuring nearly 250 design diagrams sourced from academic literature, commercial resources, blogs and social media, each specimen was analyzed and distilled down to its fundamental graphic elements to create a compilation that queries whether or not designerly ways of knowing and thinking can truly be encapsulated in a series of shapes and arrows, or if it all merely amounts to diagrammatic jargon.
The Bilocating Designer
Faced with the dilemma of belonging to two seemingly disparate design communities—a critical design school and the commercial UX design profession—Dan Eames embarked on a journey to uncover the commonalities and shared histories of these communities. As The Bilocating Designer, Eames existed simultaneously in both fields, moving across a spectrum of design practice and eventually discovering a common ground: diagrammatic design language.
Featuring nearly 250 design diagrams sourced from academic literature, commercial resources, blogs and social media, each specimen was analyzed and distilled down to its fundamental graphic elements to create a compilation that queries whether or not designerly ways of knowing and thinking can truly be encapsulated in a series of shapes and arrows, or if it all merely amounts to diagrammatic jargon.
Faced with the dilemma of belonging to two seemingly disparate design communities—a critical design school and the commercial UX design profession—Dan Eames embarked on a journey to uncover the commonalities and shared histories of these communities. As The Bilocating Designer, Eames existed simultaneously in both fields, moving across a spectrum of design practice and eventually discovering a common ground: diagrammatic design language.
Featuring nearly 250 design diagrams sourced from academic literature, commercial resources, blogs and social media, each specimen was analyzed and distilled down to its fundamental graphic elements to create a compilation that queries whether or not designerly ways of knowing and thinking can truly be encapsulated in a series of shapes and arrows, or if it all merely amounts to diagrammatic jargon.
Exhibiting at Dutch Design Week 2023. For more details or permissions, please get in touch. Images ©DanEames.