It’s February; the depth of winter here in the Northern hemisphere. A time of year which, ideally, we should spend resting and slowing down. Unfortunately, our world doesn’t necessarily take its cues from nature and her pace, and we tend to find ourselves all the more struggling at the start of the calendar year to plan and execute, do more and produce more. So much is being said about our fast-paced culture, a reality in which we’ve become so accustomed to speed we hardly even notice it anymore. The infinite scroll, the constant reinvention, the obsession with acceleration and productivity - all the signs of life in the fast lane. This constant push towards speed is closely linked to a culture of More: more work, added skills, gaining followers, accumulating achievements. What would happen if we allow ourselves to take the foot off the gas and slow things down for a bit? Not even in the form of taking a break or an actual vacation, but in the more subtle ways we operate in our daily lives. Why don’t we start with our creative practice, and consider applying a slower mindset to our design process?
The Origins of Slow
Most of us are aware of the Slow Food Movement, which was extremely influential in transforming the culinary field and bringing awareness to the beauty and depth of small scale, locality, slow pace and ultimately shining a light on the importance of connection. It famously emerged in Rome in 1986, when locals protested against the opening of a McDonalds restaurant in front of the Spanish Steps. In their fight against fast food and industrial food production, the Slow Food Movement advocated for favoring local foods and traditional gastronomy and food production. Since then, the movement spread out to many more industries and walks of life— fashion, education, travel, and more— as well as the design industry.
From architecture, to product design, graphic and web design, creatives in all these disciplines have been musing and ideating around the theme of Slow Design in recent decades, trying to understand what it might mean for them. In this 2015 essay, for example, designer and educator Kristian Bjornard explores slow vs. fast design, years before our digital space looked and felt as it does today; in 2016 Michael Beirut wrote In Praise of Slow Design, mainly discussing its effect in magazine design; and this 2012 Fast Company article looks into what Slow Design means in architecture.
Rage Against the Machine
It’s impossible to talk about slowing down these days without mentioning AI and the capabilities it has brought to our lives, mainly - speed of work. There’s no denying the benefits of using such tools to shorten certain processes and methods, and those should be adopted where appropriate. However, this new era forces us to consider our own strengths and advantages. Our main assets as creatives is what AI will never have - our humanity - and that is what we should be emphasizing in our work. How can we designers engage with the digital realm in ways that bring about more depth, human connection, and beauty? Part of bringing back humanity and thoughtfulness is through mindful practice, as a way to contradict mass-produced, artificially generated assets, and offering what we can against the domination of machines and AI content.
A Case for Taking Your Time
Journalist Carl Honoré famously said: “Some things cannot, should not, be sped up. They take time, they need slowness. When you accelerate things that should not be accelerated, when you forget how to slow down, there is a price to pay”. In taking in his wise words, here are four principles to remember if you’d like to introduce some slowing down into your daily design practice:
Consider what Slow means for you
Fast does not necessarily mean physical speed but more the hurrying along of a natural pace. Speed can be good and useful, for example a fast internet connection enables us to work smoothly. Slow does not necessarily relate to clock-time in the traditional sense – Slow could be seen as a more personal sense of time. The first step is to take a minute and think about what that means to you personally. Consider your practice and processes and how they might be simplified by slower principles. What can you do to allow yourself to focus on decisions and research that are the most vital and keep time spent proportional to the importance of the activity. Understanding how we use our time as designers is conceivably the first step to using it appropriately.
Invite curiosity and questioning
Exploration, meandering thoughts, and a lot of reflections: those are all key aspects of slowing down. If you notice yourself making hurried decisions, not questioning your own ideas, and generally rushing towards a finish line - it might be a sign it’s time to slow down. Don’t be afraid to pose questions and doubt things you might have taken for granted, all the way back to the beginning of a project and its inception stages. Make room for curiosity and let it lead the way.
Engage with the world around you
Design and creativity can feel very lonely, as if the majority of it happens in our own head and between our own four walls and our screen or sketchbook. But that doesn’t have to be this way, and in fact engaging with fellow creatives, our community or just the world around us, can have a great positive effect that is in line with Slow Design principles. When we work alone we are much more prone to speed. By consulting, asking and listening, and collaborating with others, we invite much more breadth into our concepts and output. By taking the time to engage with others and allow them into our creative process and iterating accordingly, we literally slow the pace of our work and make it much richer.
Prioritise Joy
The original Slow Food Movement manifesto includes ‘Enjoyment of Eating’ as one of the key principles of the movement: food is to be enjoyed when consumed, as well as when being prepared. In design this principle stands as well: we should be enjoying our creative practice, and we should aim for our final output to be consumed or processed with joy too. If you find yourself in a slump and things feel dull, bring yourself back to a place of fascination with the design process so that you can maintain at least a glimpse of joyfulness as you work. Your pleasure is inherently interlinked with the outcome of what you’re creating.
