Christian Solorzano [00:05]

Hello, you're listening to Underscore, a podcast by the Chicago Graphic Design Club dedicated to bringing you conversations with Chicago's creative leaders. On this podcast, we'll explore the craft, theory, and practice of graphic design, plus discuss bold ideas that push the boundaries of what's possible and ways in which we can create a more thoughtful and inclusive community. To learn more about us, visit our website at www.chicagographicdesign.club or find us on social media. Special thanks to the Chicago band Eighties Slang for our theme music.

So hello, my name is Christian I'm Christian Solorzano, today's host, and I'm excited because we have a special guest, longtime supporter and collaborator of the Chicago Graphic Design Club, Ashley Lukasik, founder and CEO of Murmuring, a consulting agency that focuses on developing immersive experiences through storytelling and design. She has a master's in anthropology from the University of Chicago and spent years at IIT Institute of Design as director of corporate relations, communications, and marketing.

In addition, she was also the co-producer of the 2019 documentary the New Bauhaus, a film about the legacy of the designer and artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. So welcome, Ashley. Very happy to have you here.

Ashley Lukasik [01:41]

Thanks for having me.

Christian Solorzano [01:42]

So I heard that in the, in the '90s you had quite a fondness for music and you considered it to be a pretty big part of your identity. And growing up in Minnesota, you spent quite some time curating playlists, visiting record stores, and just being immersed by the visceral nature of the listening experience. So just right off the bat, I want to learn a little bit about what that relationship to music is today.

I know that around 2004, when sort of streaming and the iPod and all that digital music started to come out, you sort of lost that connection to music. So— Yeah, I want to start off with that.

Ashley Lukasik [02:24]

Well, I'm kind of not surprised that you started there because I feel like this is where you and I have had like some— I don't know if I would call it a debate, but like just a little bit of like this kind of discourse on like the pros and cons of digital technology. And so, yeah, I guess what I would say is just to the first part, to answer the first part of your question, Music was what we did.

That's how we connected with one another as friends when I was growing up. It was all about going to shows and collecting, really, CDs and tapes at the time, and sharing music with each other in ways that was often very personal and very curated and very thoughtful in the form of making mixtapes and stuff like you said.

What I recall about a period of time from, as I was kind of becoming Coming of age from middle school-ish through to college was just that we were investing a lot of our time and energy in this passion of music discovery. And yeah, I would just remember it really fondly. I just would go to record stores and have to get a ride there.

And I would be sifting through records and different things and scrounging up some kind of quarters that I could find around the house to buy something for myself. I would get addicted to some record or some artist, and then I'd want to learn everything about that artist, sending away for their influencers. And I feel like over time, I almost developed an encyclopedia of information about certain genres of music.

And yeah, so it became a really important part of my identity. That's definitely true. I also think with my group of friends that we suffered for it a little bit, and that probably solidified it even more. It was the freaks and— we were the freaks and geeks and rockers and whatever of the school. And at that era, the '90s was not necessarily like an easy place to be socially, but we also felt, I think, pretty strongly knitted together because of that too.

Christian Solorzano [04:42]

Yeah, I remember when I was a teenager, my friends and I, we would go to Tower Records in Chicago. There used to be one, and we used to like race to like our favorite artist section so we could like fight for the CD that we wanted. And I, and I miss it so much.

And I remember once there used to be a Borders in my neighborhood, and you, and Borders started to use Amazon to, to— for— it allowed people to place orders for like special CDs and things like that. And I remember like once that like little kiosk at the Borders became available, the magic of hunting for a CD sort of disappeared because now all you had to do was go to the Borders and like type in your artist, click order, and that would be it.

Like there was no more, hunting like various stores for like a very specific thing. And I would say for the past well, for the past 2 years now since I've known you, I always find it a little bit difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is that you do because you do a lot. And I know that a lot of the work that you do deals with physical, in-person immersive experiences.

So could you describe a little bit about what it is that you do, a little bit about what Murmuring does?

Ashley Lukasik [06:02]

Yeah, so let's see. I mean, so I developed my career in design, in human-centered design. And like you said in your nice intro, it was at the Institute of Design where I spent 8 years. And it was a really exciting time for design. So I got into the field coming from anthropology, which was my field of study at the University of Chicago. In about 2008 is when I entered into design.

And that was a time when big companies, but also other kinds of organizations of all kinds, were really starting to think about, what they were calling design thinking as a way to open up new markets, mainly by understanding customers or users better. That was the kind of core of it at that time. And so, you had all these major Fortune 100s just flocking to design institutions like ours to try to adopt some of that methodology and incorporate it into what they did.

And it was really powerful as a way of thinking and just opening up totally new frameworks for how you could perceive your industry or your business or how you work with your colleagues or how you relate to the people that buy your products or how you can anticipate emerging needs that people might not be able to articulate. But what was also happening at that time was that design was really catching up in so many ways with business. It would become validated by business.

And because there was money now in it that was very significant, in some ways, the design consulting model started to look more and more kind of like corporatized. So you had a little bit less maybe of like the sort of like wonder or art of design that I think a lot of people who enter the field are attracted to.

As you need to scale a consulting practice and you need to produce things at volume and repeat a process. So you sort of get into this project kind of a model where it's like, here's the 3-month cycle, and you go and you do your discovery work, and then you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this. I had doubts even early on, even in, I would say, sort of the heyday of design thinking, that it was gonna, that enthusiasm was gonna last.

And that we'd still be healthy as an industry years later. I was concerned that it would start to look more like lean agile or any other business practice that companies use in order to increase their profits. So I got into how can we just rethink the ways that we use design? Design can be a mindset. People that are deeply steeped in it, tend to just see the world differently, no matter if you're at the dentist's office or getting your groceries or at work.

There's always that ability to go, how could I reframe this situation? Or what if we thought about the 5 E's of experience? What might this be like? Whatever. And so yeah, I had this design mindset, and I wanted to think about how design could be just used differently and how we could infuse the creativity back into design. So I first started doing these immersive experiences with that in mind.

Let's get out of that typical kind of conference and/or project model, and let's just use our design mindset to think about what else we could discover out there in the world. And so I started curating these experiences where I bring groups of 20 or 30 people around the world to places like Detroit, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, San Francisco. I did programs in São Paulo, in Mexico City, Bogotá, New Orleans, all over the place.

And the idea was that we could spend time with people in their own spaces, whether that be their farms or their studios or their corporate headquarters if they were doing something interesting, and really see things, touch things, feel things, and engage with one another in a really intimate way.

And have conversations facilitated by design, because design is such a great vehicle for synthesizing ideas and for helping people connect across disciplines. And we could push ourselves further by sharing this kind of totally whole and visceral contextual experience with one another.

And that might be a way for us to break through some of this inertia that I think a lot of people are experiencing when it comes to, oh my God, there's this like, At the global level, there's this ever-mounting list of problems that seem impossible to solve for. And then at the personal level, because of digital technology, we're really totally overwhelmed with this inability to ever shut off and have just the constant feeds and the constantly full inbox.

And it's not going to work and coming home and having that opportunity for downtime and reflection and connection with family as much anymore because we're— Always with our devices or in front of our screens and whatever. And so it's almost like I feel like we have to now— just like people started getting gym memberships when they started being more sedentary at their day-to-day jobs. You almost have to design for it and build it back in, these opportunities to connect in very physical, real ways again.

And for me, I think, when you do that and you put yourself somewhere, just like you do on your own when you travel or whatever, but that we can really even go much further with the model that we practice and offer to people. When you put yourself in a new environment, you, and really see things with your own eyes and really like experience them in context, you just, your eyes are opened to much more possibility.

And I think it's a way to give people a moment to reflect. It's a way to give people a moment to authentically connect to one another.

And it's a way for people to wrap their heads around what the hell is actually going on out there that is just not as readily absorbed when you're watching something, whether that be a presentation or, I believe in storytelling via film and photography as well, but, watching something that's— that is not right in front of you and that you're not experiencing firsthand.

Christian Solorzano [12:51]

Yeah. And I also, I heard you also mention that it also helps you develop empathy when you're actually in a room with other people and experiencing the world. And I think over the past 2 years, because of the pandemic, we've noticed a big rise in digital tools that are focused on closing the distance between ourselves, between one another. So tools that allow people to collaborate, to be able to work with other people in different parts of the world.

So, and although those tools and technologies serve a purpose, what I find really fascinating about you is that you really emphasize the in-person human connection, like meeting people in 3D, like in person. And I want to ask you a little bit about what your thoughts, or maybe like, what are your thoughts specifically as they relate to you and maybe the way that you look at the world? What do you think?

About the relationship between technology and humanity and sort of what's your assessment or critique or concerns or what are you optimistic about? Just, I want to hear.

Ashley Lukasik [13:58]

Yeah, I have so many thoughts about it. I mean, one, during COVID I think we all felt very grateful for modern digital technology allowing us to connect, with people around the world and that kind of thing and be able to see one another just like you and I can see each other right now.

So I think there are some things that have been really powerful in a positive way, but I think what we forget is that we actually are like, we're not really that far along on this path. It was not that long ago that we started moving in this direction, and we sort of have assumed, I think, that like you can just copy and paste, an experience that you have analog or in real life, right? That you can just copy and paste that in this like.

And that it's going to be the same. And in fact, it's not. And I don't think we spend enough time or understand well enough all these other aspects of being animals.

We see ourselves as people that need to perform and do things efficiently. And we sort of break things down really simplistically to the actions that we take. And then in reality, the way that the air feels and the energy that you feel coming off of another person and like our just quick, immediate, without even thinking, being able to verbalize it or even understand it for ourselves, that way of being able to connect or read things via body language.

These are all ancient ways of being as human beings. Just because we have tools that can take us in another direction doesn't mean that, as animal humans, that we're sort of like honoring enough of our innate physicality and our innate need to connect with one another.

And so for me, I feel like we need to understand that more deeply. And then the technology can start to follow. I also think that there's been another aspect of this, which is because we are moving into a great unknown with a lot of the digital technology that's emerged over the past couple of decades. We didn't know what problems we were actually creating. And so by not being able to anticipate them, we created a bunch of things that now have to be fixed.

We know that Facebook, for example, had a major role to play in the Trump election, and a lot of people have a big problem with that? And we weren't, we weren't, I don't think, prepared for like how the algorithms were going to dictate people's understanding of the world and their behaviors.

And now I think what you see is almost this level of alienation that a lot of people are experiencing, maybe at an individual level, but collectively it bubbles up to this almost crisis that we're experiencing, I think, as just humankind across the board.

And I think with that, I think it also makes us just really I don't know, I always just think it makes us really vulnerable to fascist ideology and dogma, because it's like, okay, well, we want— if we're feeling dissatisfied and the world's problems are mounting and we can't pinpoint the source of our unhappiness, but we know things aren't right, we're starting to look for the simplest answer as to how to fix things.

And sometimes that rhetoric becomes, well, let's make America great again, or whatever it might be. That just says, this is bad, these people are bad, this is good, follow me, and we'll be on this linear path that is a simple solution. And in fact, the solution to all of this is not going to be simple. It's going to be multilayered. It's certainly going to be nonlinear.

And it's going to really have to— I think we're just going to really have to embrace the fact that we're going to have to have really different experimental ways. Of approaching it in order to try to get there. We're gonna have to try things out and recognize that like you might be making progress that isn't going to look perfect all at once.

Christian Solorzano [18:22]

Yeah, that's interesting because I agree with you and I, and I often wonder about like, what are, what's the root cause behind a lot of this stuff? And I don't know if it's greed, if it's just corporations wanting to like capitalize on like efficiency or whatever. But is there anything that comes to mind, or any, just any thoughts around what you think is the cause behind just everything being like this with technology?

Something that comes to my mind and something that I've witnessed is that sometimes I think things just move way too fast, and we don't really afford ourselves the luxury to reflect. About the actions and like the consequences of the things that we're doing until it's too late. And I think design obviously plays a huge role in all of that. So I want to, I just want to open that up with you and to see what you think.

Ashley Lukasik [19:20]

Yeah. So my mentor, Patrick Whitney, who I'm making a short film about now, he likes to call it reflection deficit disorder. Okay.

Christian Solorzano [19:31]

I like that.

Ashley Lukasik [19:32]

I think is really apt. Yeah. And I think I want to say creatives, but I think this is true of everybody because I also believe everybody's creative in their own way. But we need downtime to reenergize and to be able to take in different inputs and process the things that we go through in the course of a day or whatever.

And that that's not easily afforded to us in the modern day, and particularly in the capitalist way that we've apparently decided that we want to work and be, where everything seems to be about consumption. Even the experiences that we have seem to be things that we're consuming rather than just experiencing.

So I think that that's— To me, that's a big part of the problem is that we've forced ourselves to operate in environments that don't actually suit some of our just really innate human needs. Now, that said, I also don't think that we're just going to go back to an old way of being and discard all of that. We have to kind of work with where we are and try to evolve it to something that makes more sense for us.

And there are tech optimists who say, over time we'll do a better job of like filtering out the aspects of this that don't work. And we're just figuring out what some of those are. So I'd like to believe that, and I'd like to see like, our relationship with technology be used for doing more good in the world instead of harm. Like I, rather than it just being used to sell us more things or distort our thinking when it comes to politics and those kinds of things.

It would be really wonderful if we could use technology to help us find truth more readily.

Or to be able to do things differently when it comes to a climate crisis or whatever. I mean, there are all kinds of ways that technology was and was not helpful when it came to COVID. But the potential is there. I think so much of it, though, is that we can't align on where we need to go. And how do you align with people? It is, there is this thing that you say about like the empathy piece where it's like we have to get uncomfortable sometimes.

And put ourselves in different circumstances to put ourselves in other people's shoes. Yeah. And understand things differently. And that does breed empathy.

But it's really hard to get there again when you're like separated by these, all of the stuff you have to get done and you're not even connecting with people. People become anonymous to you because, again, they're through a screen. A lot of these forums that people are engaging with, they don't even know who they're talking to. And so it's very anonymous, which I think is a problem.

When I think back to what it was like in younger years before all this when there were debates about politics that you would have with people, like an uncle that you disagree with or something like that, you would have to do that in person with someone. And I think for the most part, we do want to find ways that we're alike or ways that we align.

Like when we're with each other in an authentic way, I think we're inclined to try to come to some happy conclusion. And to blend a little bit and find the gray area and kind of say, well, I know this is a good person, even if they have a viewpoint that I disagree with. But we don't, we're not giving ourselves as many opportunities to do that anymore. And so we're becoming much more polarized.

Christian Solorzano [23:26]

Yeah. And I think I heard you, I heard you in a talk that you did with Morningstar. You mentioned that there's you mentioned that you were speaking with a friend about a new feature in Uber that pretty much gives the user the option to tell the driver, do not talk to me. So, and I thought that was, I thought that was really interesting because I think that's another example of ways in which technology is sort of giving us that option to like disconnect from one another.

And I think you were—

Ashley Lukasik [24:06]

Disconnect and opt, just opt out of— We're not being accountable to one another. And yeah, I mean, wow, what to say about that? I mean, I think it's a, it goes back really like that. I mean, I think in with that anecdote, I think it goes back to this question of like, again, we're modeling ourselves and almost like we're trying to force ourselves to be in this technological world that's actually fighting what's instinctual to us.

And you don't need an app to tell your driver whether or not you want to communicate with them. Our body language makes it pretty clear most of the time.

So that's like, I mean, that if we, and if we dumb down like the way that we use those tools that we already have in us, well, then they're gonna start to— they're gonna start to go away. And they're— they're— and I, and I felt that definitely with COVID for sure. Yeah, like initially, there was— it was so crazy and everybody was like on high alert.

So it was like almost like, you can kind of like feel your hair standing up on, you know what I mean, at the surface of your skin. There was that feeling of like, what the fuck is happening in the world?

Christian Solorzano [25:20]

Yeah.

Ashley Lukasik [25:20]

And oh my God, and everybody's like glued to the TV and having conversations and like trying to be like, connecting in whatever way we could via like our computers and whatnot and having some like deeper dialogues. Because again, we have more time on our hands to do some of those things, right? So it was like there were like— you kind of have the space and time to like talk with people and you could do a lot of that with the technology.

But Over time, people got really numbed out and kind of like mush-brained. And I found that the conversations and the creative energy that was like flowing for some people, a lot of people that I know that, spend a lot of time thinking about and, analyzing things all the time and doing things creatively, were really, had really powerful creative moments at the beginning. And then there was this like rapid, just like dive or something.

After we reached a certain number of months of just being disengaged from the physical world and from one another where it was just I don't know, it was just like blasé, just low-level depression. And I think a lot of burnout. And I don't know if you know this, but burnout was declared a, what is it? Like an epidemic, like a health crisis, medical disorder that's like taking over the world, whatever, by the World Health Organization a couple of years ago.

And it was pre-COVID, but it was like, I think it definitely has to do with this like hamster wheel that we're on and the things that are just like the simple physical pleasures of life that we're not allowing ourselves to have as much of. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [27:05]

Yeah. So can you walk us through perhaps a, one of these immersive experiences that you, that you do with your clients? How do they, how are they typically structured? I'm sure they're all not the same, but walk us through like the thought process behind curating one of these and making sure that, the right people are involved, that the right atmosphere is in place. And a lot of work goes into these things.

Ashley Lukasik [27:33]

So, yeah, it's funny. It's like, again, I wanna, I wanna, it's like, I'm, I, it's like I wanna answer you. Like it says, this science and this thing and whatever. And it's like, really, I'm not even gonna pretend that that's what it is. I like to do things that are things that I wanna do and things that I'm interested in. Yeah.

And then I oftentimes assume that there's like other people that are also going to be interested in them and that via the relationships that I have, that I can find a way to make it happen. So that's how I approach these as well.

But yeah, oftentimes it's like visiting a place or hearing about a thing that's going on somewhere, hey I understand that there's like this really interesting new approach to equity and urban infrastructure that's happening in this place, and I wanna know more about that. And so then via this kind of like initially just like almost desktop discovery process of just conversations and reading things. And, I'll talk to someone that knows someone, and they're like— and we'll have these conversations.

They'll send me to go investigate this thing, I'll look at that. And pretty soon, over time, I've started to follow a thread to kind of creating something that can start to feel like a program that I'm ready to have people, join me in experiencing. But all throughout that discovery process, what I'm really looking for is like the nuances of like what makes a place or a context really unique.

But yeah, the experiences are like always usually about 20 to 30 people, and they're basically comprised of site visits to what for most people would be an unexpected pairing of different creatives and different kinds of creative spaces. So we'll be like in a farm on one day, we'll be like in— I'm just thinking about like being in Colombia, but, we were on an urban farm one day and staying overnight there.

It was like this really interesting model for basically thinking about how to preserve local family-owned farms in Colombia, which is a really important part of the economy. The next day we're like in a studio with a graffiti artist.

You know a day after that, or later that afternoon, we're like with the, it's like, fastest growing startup company in Latin America. So looking at things at both like, the, in the for-profit space and the like very much local community space, but from the perspectives of different people, it could be designers, entrepreneurs, artists, like food producers, whatever. Oftentimes the food experiences are really dynamic and the most memorable aspects of what we're doing.

Although it's interesting, I've never actually like put on an experience that focused on food explicitly until I started planning this program that I'm doing in Oaxaca City in February, which is about food and identity. And in this case, food and identity is like the umbrella of the program, but what we're really looking at is how local ecosystems get disrupted in the global marketplace, essentially.

So there's like tourism, of course, in a place like Oaxaca, which attracts so many people who are interested in like art and design and food. So that's one aspect, but then you also have lots and lots of companies going in and, sourcing and extracting resources. And probably the mentality is like, we're bringing progress to this region because we're bringing an influx of funds.

What's actually happening is you've got ancient practices that no longer have room to exist within this growth that's going in one particular direction. So one of the things I found really fascinating in doing the research and getting to know people in Oaxaca is that things like corn are a staple of the diet, but actually the good corn gets— well, it gets harvested, but it gets exported and then While Hawkins are importing crappy corn from other areas to eat.

So we might be getting this excellent corn from the region, and the people themselves that are producing it don't have access to their own food.

There's really kind of screwy dynamics like that happen. And so I'm really interested in, okay, let's understand that. Let's look at it with a critical eye. And then let's also look at some of the different models, whether they're at a large scale or just a very local scale, that are doing things differently and suggest a more positive way to preserve and sustain.

So that's what we'll be looking at. And then my hope is that the people that participate in this will be able to go, wow, okay, these were the components of this model that seems to be working in this context.

What if I could extrapolate from that, what those components are and do something that makes sense in the context that I'm working with for my industry or my organization or my city or whatever it might be. So, and Oaxaca is going to be really cool. We're going to be there for like 4 days. My friend Rami, who is an incredible entrepreneur and artist and hotelier, has these beautiful boutique hotels. They're very like Barragan-style hotels, which I know you've been there to the Barragan House.

I think we talked about it once. So people will be in these small boutique hotels, and we'll be traveling around in a bus together and visiting all these different sites and having meals with chefs and shopping with culinary artists from Mexico in the markets. Visiting mezcal farms and just like mezcal in particular is super interesting. It's an almost religious— well, I would say not even almost, but like a religious-like cultural practice.

For Oaxaca. And yet, what has happened in recent years is you have like all these people who are like, oh, mezcal, and it's like on trend. And so you've got like Kardashians and stuff that are starting mezcal brands and there is like no way to sustain yeah. The extraction of mezcal from this region. Yeah, it has the potential to kill it forever unless there is some intervention that is done.

And so I want to open people's eyes to that through this experience, both to the negative but also to maybe what might be some potential solutions.

Christian Solorzano [34:18]

Yeah, that's amazing. And yeah, I just love that. And I love that you're, that you're looking at all this stuff through a very critical lens and also just from the point of view of design. So I wanna— I'm sure I've seen you recently, you've been talking so much about the Bauhaus and the New Bauhaus and like the documentary. But I do wanna touch a little bit about that and just hear a little bit about like how that came to be.

And specifically, I wanna know about, as you were working on the documentary, as you were involved in that process, what were some moments throughout that really stuck with you that almost just took you back and that, yeah, you just, you find yourself continuing to think about?

Ashley Lukasik [35:04]

You mean what you're saying while working on the film?

Christian Solorzano [35:09]

Yeah.

Ashley Lukasik [35:11]

I mean, I'll say this, when we started the project, it wasn't a film yet. So that's always interesting to me to think about. It's like what we were thinking about was that we have this history of the Bauhaus having, well, the Bauhaus basically disseminated around the world during the Nazi regime. And so various scholars went everywhere, but we ended up with Mies van der Rohe and László Moholy-Nagy in Chicago.

And we had the New Bauhaus School, which was only called that for a short amount of time. But people really don't know that even in Chicago.

So it was in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus that we started thinking about how we could bring that history to light and also build on it in the context of design today. And so there were ideas around books or symposiums or different ways to connect around that topic. And we knew that part of what we wanted to do was tell the story in an interesting and visual way.

But even though, we had an idea that there could be a film-like component to this, it certainly wasn't like, oh, we're definitely going to make this feature film, at all. It wasn't until I met the production company, Open Docs, and shared with them what we were working on with the project, and they kind of were like, wow, this is like, this is really big, and this could be a feature film.

So it was in that process of working with them and bringing them onto the project that it started to go in that direction. And now I find myself a film producer doing more projects and stuff. And it's totally accidental. It's not really what I intended to do. But it follows, I guess, the immersive experience model too, or just my own instincts in the sense of, let's find ways to connect.

With one another around sometimes abstract or complicated material. Let's find ways to connect at very visceral levels. How do we change hearts and minds? How do we stimulate new thinking? How do we give people a moment to reflect? And film has the potential to do that, just like experiences do.

Other moments in working on that project that I'm trying to think about— I mean, one, of course, again, not to talk about the pandemic over and over again, but we were supposed to travel, to all these different screenings and things like that all around the world. And we did some of them in 2019 and the beginning of 2020, and then it was just like the world shut down. So everything ended up like going virtual, which was unfortunate.

But yeah, now I'm doing more things with the film again because people are starting to do screenings in person and things like that. So that's kind of exciting. The other thing I would just add is it was a really interesting group of people that were on the project. The director is Alyssa Namias, and she's actually a trained architect. And then we had basically designers. And so it's designers and architects making this film about an artist you're making this film about design.

So it's like all these people that had kind of come from those disciplines become— and had become filmmakers and were working with this content area that we were all passionate about. But I always thought the makeup of the team was interesting because kind of everyone was an accidental filmmaker like me.

Christian Solorzano [38:45]

Yeah. And what I've been— how was the film received? I remember I saw the screening of it. I think it was in 2019. Here in Chicago. And I believe you talked about— this was before I knew you. Maybe it was 2018 or it was 2019. But I remember the audience, their response was very positive.

And I remember I went to go see the film with my coworkers and I would say for a few weeks, it was just something that just kept coming up as we were working through problem solving and all that stuff. So what has it— yeah, just how has, even today, like in 2022, how are people responding to the film?

Ashley Lukasik [39:33]

People respond to it really favorably. And I think it deserves it. It's very— it's a very beautiful film. It's shot gorgeously. And I feel like I can say all these things because I'm not responsible for that side of it at all. Responsible for the money side and some other things, and what we could do with it, and for a lot of the initial, launch of the project and the thinking about the topics.

But the beauty of it, the incredible editing, Alyssa's phenomenal directing, Petter, who shot it, also did these like great animations with the graphics and things like this that were just like—

I thought, just really gorgeous. So yeah, I think we were lucky to have a really talented group of people working on it. I think what I was nervous about was that my design colleagues would feel like we didn't address or bring in enough of the current state of the Institute of Design, which is what this story is really about, that history and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's influence.

Like that we wouldn't address that enough or tie that in enough. Or make those connections explicit. I think where I was pleasantly surprised is that people seem to be able to make those connections themselves. Here's this history of experimentation, of making and doing together as a way of learning and connecting and as a way of becoming your own creative person. And that now still is true.

Even though the context is different and it looks a little bit different and we might be applying more of certain design methodologies to solving for certain problems, but the essence of it, people could make those connections. And I always love when something, a film or a project or whatever it might be, is effective at showing, not telling. And I think I think the film does that very well.

Christian Solorzano [41:42]

Yeah. And I certainly see much of the philosophy behind the Bauhaus applied to a lot of the work that you're doing because you seem to be all about multidisciplinary discourse.

Ashley Lukasik [41:59]

And I guess as someone that's been in design for quite some time, how have you seen the definition of design evolve I mean, it's such an interesting question because it's like when I first started my career in design, it was like a task constantly to try to explain to people like, no, we don't design chairs and we don't design spaces and we don't design logos. Like we have a design process that we use to try to help people understand, the underlying needs and wants of people.

Yeah. Of people, or to like you know understand the emerging context and what that might mean. You know for the future and what we need to be prepared for, whatever da right? Like so it's like this thing where people didn't get it was hard to explain the idea of a design process or design methodology as opposed to like when you just think about design as in the service of producing an object. Now I think that's really changed and.

Human-centered design even, or design strategy, or design thinking are more common terms that people are familiar with, even if they work in the corporate world. I think people have had a lot more exposure to that.

But at the same time, because of that, design has also become more corporatized as well. And so I'm more interested in almost the other side of it. How do we get back to Something that feels more creative and more aesthetic. And yeah, so I don't know if that answers your question, but I think I've become more interested in pushing design back in the direction toward art because design always toggles between business and art.

And so, I guess that's kind of where I've become interested. The other thing that I think is really huge and really important that's happened is there's been a major necessary and delayed push back on design, like in most industries, around just like the total lack of diversity that really like we have in the field.

There's also been this thing where, I think for a long time when I first got into design, it was like, there's a lot of like, design is this like thing that can save the world and whatever. Just bring the designers in and they'll have this genius approach and magical like, magic bullet or whatever. And of course that was cocky and not entire— not entirely justified or not justified at all. It's like basically people generally have the solutions to their own problems.

I met this young kid and for this project I'm doing with a client recently who's really impressive entrepreneur and he's trying to solve for like food scarcity in urban areas with the business that he's running. And he was making the comment that, the people that are closest to the problem are the ones that have the solution.

And I really agree with that. And so now I see the conversation in design really shifting much more toward how can we as designers, enable things that are happening that are more community-led and driven. Solutions, like how can we apply some of the tools or assets of design in the service of helping those things to get more traction or to scale or whatever. And I like that direction for this conversation. It removes the designer from, or even design from being in the center.

It puts these other things or people in the center that belong to be there. And design becomes a vehicle for helping them have more positive impact.

Christian Solorzano [45:54]

Yeah, I've certainly seen my role. So I, I'm a product designer, but for like before product design, I was an experience designer. And I would say within the last, 2, 3 years, I've seen a bigger emphasis on the designer being more of a facilitator rather than someone that's coming in and solving things, but having more, but they're more of like, someone that's guiding participation and that's, extracting information from people to come up with solutions. And I, and to me, that excites me.

But I do see just design becoming, yeah, just something that is getting— the word that comes to mind is it's being exploited for profit. And that's my biggest criticism is that it's become another buzzword. And I think in my industry, there's a lot of, there's been, there's been harsh criticism around just things like design thinking and like human-centered design because they've just become synonymous with profit, capitalism, and things like that. That the spirit of those things is almost has almost disappeared, which is interesting.

Ashley Lukasik [47:14]

Yeah. And I think, well, I think part of that is like, is the fault of design itself because it's been so much of the focus has been around like making things, use more usable or whatever. I mean, there's been these claims that design makes things better and that, we're designing to make the world a better place. Or something. But in reality, design has mostly been used to get people to buy more stuff.

And we're like at a— obviously at a critical point as humankind that we have to really stop. We have to, we have to stop, we have to slow down, and we have to think about like all the, all the waste that we're creating and all the problems that we're causing via our habits of consumption. And so, asking design to shift in a different direction that departs actually from capitalism. I'm seeing more of that and I'm embracing that.

Christian Solorzano [48:16]

Yeah. So what excites you today about just the world and culture and design? Or is there anything that comes to mind that you feel just very hopeful for? Or optimistic about? Yeah, where do you find that inspiration?

Ashley Lukasik [48:36]

Well, I think that there's always a positive and negative of everything. But I think that because people have become, out of necessity, there's no way to ignore it, I think a lot more cognizant of the problems that we have in front of us. And there's a lot of disillusionment. But I think that can be really productive. So I think that even when I was starting Murmuring, people would be like, oh, that sounds cool. That sounds cool.

You're trying to expose people to new models for solving complex problems through experiences and stories. That sounds cool. And I'd probably like to go on something like that. But then it would just be like, oh, whatever. But then as things have As things have progressed or evolved, it's like, people are like, oh my God, that's really, it's really necessary that we like really try to understand these emerging models for problem solving.

And start to think differently about how we can go about, living or working. I see a lot of people making changes in their lives and organizations also really trying to reinvent themselves. In light of the new information that we have about ourselves and about the world, and that's exciting to me. I think you know it's I've heard this quote before that like you know we should embrace people changing their minds.

Like it's good to change your mind because like we should all be changing our minds when we get new information. Like it's like we can't stay just like. Sort of like stagnant. And I think we've seen the negative repercussions of that kind of just compliance with so many of the toxic things that we've created in the world. And so now it's like, all right, people are kind of like, enough already. And that kind of fear and pain can actually motivate positive behavior change.

Christian Solorzano [50:42]

Yeah. And for anyone that's listening, and a lot of our listeners are our students or people that are entering the industry, what— and this might be a pretty big question, but what sort of advice or just words of wisdom would you have for someone that wants to do good in the world and that wants to have a positive impact and that wants to put themselves in various disciplines and just immerse themselves in the world?

Ashley Lukasik [51:16]

I think people generally, especially young people are afraid a lot of times, whether it's like you're coming out of school or you're just, whatever it might be, like about the direction that they're going in. There's a lot of self-doubt and it feels like you need to have it figured out, like make a decision, have it all figured out, and then go in that direction. And most of the time people really don't know what they're working with. They might not even really know what they're good at.

And so I think the best thing to do and again, this probably just to come full circle to your first question about music and stuff, it's like just, picking up an instrument with your friends and messing around, which was a lot of what, my friends were doing when I was growing up.

There's value in just starting and doing things as collaboratively as you possibly can with other people and building like what you like to do or what you know or what you're curious about, layering that on with what somebody else is good at or is curious about. You can learn from one another and you can learn a lot about yourself in the process of doing something.

And a lot of times, the things that you commit to and just like keep working, even if you have no idea what the outcome is going to be and you're not getting paid for it, a lot of times those things amount to bigger and bigger and bigger things that you could not have even really anticipated.

And in almost no case do you walk away from an investment of your time and energy like that in a creative pursuit or in the pursuit of something that is, say, oriented around having a positive impact in the world and say, oh, that was not a good use of my time. The intrinsic value is always going to be incredibly great in making that kind of a move.

Christian Solorzano [53:11]

Yeah. And I think sometimes despite its immediate outcome, I think sometimes when we're working through something, and I'm speaking from my experience, but there's been so many things that I've began to play around with and projects that I began to do. And it wasn't until like months, sometimes years later that something actually like comes to fruition. And it's because you sort of planted those seeds early on without that awareness that one day, that stuff that you were building would come in handy.

And I think that's, to me, that's just something, I don't know, like there's just something so beautiful about that. And it just reminds me of what you were saying right now.

Ashley Lukasik [53:58]

I was just thinking about it when I was answering the question. I was thinking about you and I was thinking about the Chicago Graphic Design Club and the start of that?

Christian Solorzano [54:09]

Yeah.

Ashley Lukasik [54:10]

And just, yeah, like what that was, that little seed or nugget. Like you had an instinct about something.

And you were motivated enough and I guess like brave enough to just go ahead and start. And it's kind of amazing, even over the past couple of years to see where you've been able to take that, actually. That it's like a platform now for something that's not just a personal exercise, but something that lots and lots of people have had an opportunity to engage in and help contribute to.

Christian Solorzano [54:42]

Yeah. And the funny thing, I haven't told this to anyone, but I remember creating the Instagram account probably in 2015 for the club. And it was just there was nothing there, but I'm like, I'm just going to save this Instagram account just in case, I ever need it. And then the pandemic certainly helped because I was like, I could do it now because I don't have to worry about space or like any of that stuff. I don't need to find chairs for people to sit in.

So yeah, it's interesting.

Ashley Lukasik [55:13]

And following your gut though, right? We know, we know, we know, but we just, some reason we just we tend to want to fight that. Those instincts or those impulses. I'm really into— I guess that's another answer to your question, what am I excited about? I know this is going to sound really hedonistic, but I'm really into like trying to like just withhold judgment about anything.

What is it? If it's like, if it's like sort of like if you feel this impulse and this compulsion toward it, like Why? There's like a there. There's something that needs to—

That's not to say that, you know that just gives everybody full license to just, whatever, engage in whatever vices at all times and stuff like that. But I do think that, we do need to, just start to, just really pay attention to, really who we are and what we really are drawn to and stop fighting it. I think there's something I just think there's a lot to discover in that.

Christian Solorzano [56:24]

Yeah, I agree. So we're almost at time, but before we wrap up, I want to ask just what are you up to lately? What are some projects that people could look out for? Where could people find you? You're a very friendly person for anyone that's listening. Ashley's great, very responsive. So I'm sure if anyone has any questions, I guess I'm answering the question for you, but I'm sure if anyone has any questions or they're— if they reach out to you, you'll be pretty responsive.

But anyways, yeah, just what are you up to recently? What are some projects? I know you're traveling a lot. Your Instagram is great. Always having an adventure. So what are you up to?

Ashley Lukasik [57:11]

All right. What am I up to? What am I up to? Yes. And you're absolutely right. I tend to make myself available to people 'cause I feel like if somebody's interested, is that interested to talk to me, that there's probably a conversation that's worth having.

So, I mean, there's the program in Oaxaca, that's in February. Again, we'll have like 20, 30 max people with us there for 4 days having this really phenomenal experience. And it's like, incredible chefs, incredible food. Incredible art and just amazing conversations. So I'm really looking forward to that. And I've had that program baked for a long time, but I haven't been able to do it until now because of the circumstances of the lockdown and all that stuff. So that's very exciting.

I'm also producing a short film with Gary Hustwit, and then it has a it has a book that Rick Valicenti is designing, and then we're taking that on a Our plan is to take that out on a global speaking tour of sorts. But essentially, what we're looking at is pairing design with public health or design with climate change and use the film and the book as a platform to have some of these conversations and bring people together. So that is all in the works.

Part of the reason I've been traveling is that we've been filming.

A lot in India, British Columbia, and Boston for that project. And then, yeah, there's a really cool contemporary Mexican art gallery that's launching in Pilsen in November. It's called Mono. So I would also say folks should try to pay attention to Mono and check them out. We're helping them with the launch. That again came out of just working on this program in Oaxaca, and then I found out that they were— one of the partners is like launching this gallery, and we decided to help them.

So that's very exciting. So yeah, those would be the main things that are like top of mind right now.

Christian Solorzano [59:21]

But awesome.

Ashley Lukasik [59:23]

For sure, people, especially for the Oaxaca thing, there's like sponsorship opportunities. I'm also trying to get some support from some organizations to provide fellowships so that we can have, more like emerging artists and chefs from Chicago, around the world joining us. So yeah, there's lots of opportunities to either get involved in that or support it.

Christian Solorzano [59:47]

Great. Awesome. Well, I'll include all your links in the notes for this episode, but I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us and yeah, just for Everything that you've, that you've worked with us on. Yeah, I still remember our talk that we did with the Narrative in December of 2020 and introducing me to Steven White, and I just look forward to doing more of that in the future. So thank you so much.

Ashley Lukasik [60:17]

Me too. You've been, you've been a great partner, so the feeling is mutual.

Christian Solorzano [60:23]

Great. Awesome. Well, we'll talk soon, I'm sure.

Ashley Lukasik [60:28]

All right. Sounds good.