Christian Solorzano [01:05]

Hello, you're listening to Underscore, a show by the Chicago Graphic Design Club. I am your host, Christian Solorzano, and on today's episode, I'm delighted to share my conversation with Tony Bynum, Associate Professor of Practice and Director of the Institute of Design's Executive Academy. I first met Tony earlier this year in Oaxaca, Mexico. In this conversation, we speak a lot about the design that extends beyond the visual into the more tactile, tactical, and experiential forms of design.

Tony walks us through the importance of seeing design as a philosophy and as an agent for change, that can transform organizations, foster new ideas. He also speculates with us about the characteristics and qualities of the leaders of tomorrow and why attributes such as listening, collaboration lead to more wholesome outputs in which products, services, and overall experiences are more equitable and socially just.

It's a great conversation that invites us to think about design beyond our computer screen and more so into design as an experiential, participatory craft that as designers we shape. I hope that you enjoy the conversation. Thank you for tuning in, and we'll talk soon. Enjoy. Good morning, Tony. How's it going?

Tony Bynum [02:40]

It's great, Christian. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. This is fantastic.

Christian Solorzano [02:47]

And it's been a while since we last saw each other. We went to Mexico together earlier this year, and that was a blast. And then I also remember seeing you at Northwestern a few months ago, which was like such a small world moment because we happened to have like a mutual connection that brought us there together.

Tony Bynum [03:08]

Just quick reflection on those 2 points, the Oaxaca experience was incredible. I've gone twice now, and in that first visit to Oaxaca, one of the things I walked away with was a real reflection on design as a practice. In all of my years of being in the design space here in Chicago, one of the things that really hit home from the Oaxaca immersion was how important craft is, how important some of those backstage activities are that actually create value.

And it really reminded me that we live in such a sort of a mass market advertising consumer-based culture that when we were in Oaxaca, it dawned on me that I hadn't been sold anything. There wasn't, there wasn't a lot of, there weren't a lot of commercials, trying to convince me to be like this or look like that. But I definitely walked away with a sort of a new point of view about design and its role.

And when you smell like the oven that made the tortilla meal that you just ate, that's a real experience. Because you're there with the owner, the chef cooking it. And that to me is the value. And so anyways, Oaxaca was just a great experience and a great way to underscore what I think we're missing a little bit here, which is this craft.

Christian Solorzano [04:48]

And I want to also congratulate you on your new role at the Institute of Design. I want to hear more about it. What's your new role and what are you going to be doing? You, you've been with ID for quite some time. But now you're sort of going up another level. So what's going on?

Tony Bynum [05:05]

It, it's not lost on me that student loans are now being paid by the same institution that generated them. So it's quite interesting. But aside from, aside from that, it is really exciting to be back at ID as an alum. I graduated from the Institute of Design in 2007 with a degree in Master's of Design Methods. And since then, since graduating, I've been in a variety of different roles.

One common thread across all my roles was that I was always sort of in the middle between business strategy and design, sort of being almost like a translator in some respects. And to have those kinds of experiences in industry, we'll just say writ large, is really exciting to bring back into the classroom. So direct answer to your question, my— I have a couple of roles. So I'm the Associate Professor of Practice. And in that role, in that capacity, I'm teaching this semester a couple of classes.

I'm teaching Analysis and Synthesis. And I'm also teaching a Strategic Design Research class. And, just on the analysis and synthesis part, to me, that's a very— it's an honoring opportunity because it was one of the first classes that I took when I started at ID. But I also think it's one of the unique classes to ID in the way that we teach it and what it, what it means to be an ID grad. And we can talk about that a little bit later.

The other role that I have is I'm going— I'm the director of the Executive Academy here. And so I'm going to be leading the Executive Academy, which is one of the 3 pillars of the Institute of Design. And the Executive Academy is really tasked with bringing what we have learned over the last 85 years around human-centeredness and experimentation and systems thinking. Into organizations to help organizations build what I would call design-led capabilities. And we can talk in more depth about what that means.

But the headline is, it's kind of like in-air refueling. No organization has the time to send 15, 20, 30, or more folks away for training or send them back to school. What we want to do is we want to use the organization itself as the context for learning so that the principles, methods, tools of design are actually adopted and integrated within the culture and workflow of the organization. It makes the learning, if you will, relevant and immediately applicable.

But it also gives the organization a way to actually measure outcomes based on new behaviors and activities. So there's a, there's a, there's a whole sort of point of view about this that really stems from Institute of Design's Bauhaus roots, where craftspeople work together, in many ways live together, and learned within the context of work from each other. And so we're bringing that back to life in the form of work-integrated learning for organizations.

Christian Solorzano [08:46]

And your background is in business administration, and that's what you originally went to school for. At what point did you make the decision to start exploring and leaning into design? And was there like an aha moment that triggered that?

Tony Bynum [09:01]

It's a really good question. I've told the story a few times in a few different ways, but for, several years, I've always been in what I would call the new product development space here in Chicago, working at consultancies, working in-house around, working on manufacturing technologies, a variety of different ways in which organizations were coming up with new products, services, and experiences. And it was around 2005.

Now, I had already received my MBA, and what I really appreciated about being in design and new product development with an MBA was I had a real appreciation for how the work that we were doing, the work that I was doing, was impacting the organization strategically. It, to me, it was not just about jobs and projects, but it was about creating value in a portfolio of value using new product development as, is really the way of doing it.

And so when I came across the Institute of Design, it was because I was really looking for a way to understand how these people, these designers that, as I called them at the time, were solving these really heady problems using this process that I knew nothing about. But I've worked with researchers and designers. And so I was always on the outside of it.

And when I did find the program at the time as the MDM, it was— and I don't remember exactly what it was on the website, but it was something about, for mid-career professionals to immerse in the world of design, learn the tools and methods of designers to, amplify what you're already doing, your existing career. And I thought, well, that sounds kind of interesting. So not only can you get a degree in it, but, there's a codified name for it.

So that's when I enrolled at the Institute of Design, and in— that was a semester of 2005, fall semester. And I realized that in order for me to really get something out of the program, I really needed to be there full time. So that was sort of the— this is what I mark as the first crazy thing that I did. I resigned my position at the time.

I was at a PLM consulting firm, and I Went back to school as a student full-time, and it was scary. The notable part about this part of the story is that first year, or I'm sorry, that first month that I was in the program as a full-time student, I actually thought I made a mistake.

And, that was— that has nothing to do with the school, but— or me, but what I wasn't what I was, what I was wrestling with was no one could tell me what I was gonna be when I got out of this place. And I started thinking about how design was really challenging everything that I learned in my business classes. And really, providing a much more generative and abstracted sort of point of view about business challenges. And it took about a month, and then it hit me.

It struck it struck me that these 2 worlds need each other.

And, working with my advisor, who was Patrick Whitney at the time, who was also the dean of the school, it was really a kind of an aha moment, the first aha moment that there is a role for folks to both, to live in 2 worlds, to really bridge the 2 worlds of what I would call business strategy and value creation with this generative approach to understanding users and their behavior to come up with new innovations and new solutions. So that was my first aha.

No regrets looking back whatsoever. And from there I worked at a variety of different companies, Gensler being one of them, RTC Industries, working around, working with large organizations around creating branded experiences. I then also started doing some teaching more on the executive ed side and worked, did teaching at SADIM in Mexico.

Done some teaching at Northwestern in their Triple M program here at ID, of course, and did quite a bit of teaching at Lake Forest College in innovation and entrepreneurship and Rutgers in their continuing ed program for design thinking. So that kind of brings me to where I'm at now at IDE, which is how do you blend the adoption and the learning of the mindset, the toolset, and the skillset of design with the practical application that organizations need.

And that really is what the Design Academy, Executive Academy, is really intended to do, is to bring those 2 worlds together.

Christian Solorzano [14:20]

And do you have any favorite experiences? When you think of, a good experience of engaging with a brand or a product or a service, I'd love to know, how do you define a good experience from your perspective, whether it's a trip or a product or something like— I'm curious about what kind of experiences you're drawn to.

Tony Bynum [14:42]

It's interesting. I, over part of this is age. It's gonna be an age-related question or answer. But I'm really drawn to experiences that were intentionally designed to be somewhat emergent. And allows for novelty and spontaneity within some degree of structure. That could be a great meal. It can certainly be a trip.

But one of the, one of the things that I think is really difficult to do, but when done well, is allowing for white space for the users to themselves define some of the value of what it is they're doing within an experience. And as a result, it makes that experience something that's unique. In many ways, I think a really well-designed experience is really delivering a moment in time, something that's memorable, meaningful, and thoughtful. And when we tend to overscript things, you lose some of that.

And so I think a well-designed experience is one that is somewhat undesigned or, not designed, but provides the context and the setting for the value to emerge on its own through the user's interaction and engagement.

Christian Solorzano [16:16]

Yeah, it's almost like the, like what happens on the margins. It's like we want to make something that has enough margin space for some kind of spontaneity or like curiosity or adventure to unfold. Kind of like the immersion that we went on. There are so many side conversations that happen that just couldn't have been planned. And it's like, it's sometimes it's those in-between moments that mean more or have like a higher impact and value than the thing itself.

Tony Bynum [16:47]

I agree 100%, and it kind of, it really is a lead into where I think design is going. And that is, we're moving, I feel like we're moving into this space where, as designers, our role is not necessarily coming up with that thing or deliverable, but instead it's about designing the conditions, setting the conditions for design to take place.

Whether that's within an organization or through a branded experience, just as you pointed out in Oaxaca, the conditions were set for us 13 or 14 strangers, to come together in an unfamiliar place and get to, one, know each other, but then really glean insight about design, craft, and creativity through the experiences we were individually having. And I think that that's the, I think the most notable point is that when you create the right conditions, the individuals within those conditions contribute to the output.

It's almost like an ensemble, right? Every voice has a role to play in shaping the ultimate result.

Christian Solorzano [18:06]

As we were prepping for this conversation that you and I are having, you talked about Design as a philosophy. And I'm very curious to hear your definition of that because I know often design is thought of as this transactional thing that we create something and then once it's out there, it just seems to me at least sometimes it comes across as very binary, very transactional. I do this happens, et cetera. Design as a philosophy, I think it's so interesting and I agree.

And I agree with all forms of design, not just service design or product design, like even graphic design, what does that mean? Design as a philosophy, and then you also mention as change.

Tony Bynum [18:50]

I think I'm an example of what it is, and maybe that's self-serving. I'm not a trained designer. I wouldn't call myself a formally trained designer. Instead, I'm someone who seeks to solve organizational problems using this, and I'll use the term philosophy of design.

And when we think about design, and certainly when I was in school, and folks even that I've known that have been in the, in the field for many decades, we've gone from design being what I would call a verb, create this or design this thing, to really design being a way in which you see the future, a way in which you bring change into an organization, a way in which you adopt new behaviors, skills, and attitudes.

And for me, I kind of have always sort of lived on that side of the equation where I, again, not being a trained designer, I really don't design in a more traditional sense, but I use design as a way to think through a problem. And when you, when I think of it that way, it's really about asking 4 questions in relative order. And it's, it starts with understanding what is, what's factual, what's empirical, what's real, what's happening.

And then we move into this space of asking, well, what does all of that mean? So we're mean— we're seeking meaning. We're creating meaning at this stage. And from that meaning we get our, what we might call insights, those ahas, those things that are sort of non-obvious but important. And then we ask ourselves our question, okay, so based on what we've just learned and what we've gleaned as insightful and meaningful, what's possible?

And this is where we start to get into what we might consider to be more traditional generative thinking or ideation. And then, of course, the question becomes, well, now that we have something, how does it work? And if you use those 4 provocations, you've done design. Now, what I want to be really clear about and careful about is that I think over the years we've seen Many organizations and schools and companies push design as a process.

If you follow these 5 steps, you're doing design, you're doing design thinking. And I think it's a good way to learn. But design is a practice, and the key word here is practice. That means that once you have done those 5 steps, several times in several different contexts, you start to realize that it's not about following the steps, but it's about asking yourself the right questions at the right time.

And many ways, that's a philosophical approach to applying design, and it allows you to move it beyond the world of things, if you will, and to start thinking about it in terms of, well, how might we use this to come up with a new strategy? Or, we're certainly familiar with service design applications. But to me, if you really want to pull it back and look at it from a leadership standpoint, it's how do I go from a to B?

William Bridges has a wonderful book called Managing Transitions. And in it, he really challenges us to think about not using the word change. We talk about change at, or at the organizational level, and that's the equivalent of going from a to B. But transition is really the idea of going from the end of a to the beginning of B. And I like to think of that as the space for design.

How do I go from current state to some future state in an intentional, collaborative way that brings people along and engages stakeholders and participants in the actual change itself? It allows us to create what I would call a change narrative. And without a change narrative, it's easy to fill in the gap between a and B with anxiety, or, rumor or myth. And so this is where we start to get into thinking about change at the organizational level not being communicated well.

And what it does is it actually can be rather anxiety-ridden. So I love thinking of it more as transition because there's an intentionality to it. And because it's intentional, it allows design to have a space to live.

Christian Solorzano [24:00]

And do you think change is possible at the organizational level? Or does it— like, what fosters and cultivates that perfect environment to allow for a lot of the things that you're speaking about? Because I've seen organizations go through a process or a philosophy, and then for whatever reason, it falls through. It just, it just falls through and there's no, momentum. So how does one hold themselves, accountable?

Or yeah, just curious about, maybe some examples of, some projects that you've worked on and, how you've seen failure in practice and then also, success. And is there anything that, any one small thing that defines either of those 2 things?

Tony Bynum [24:44]

Yeah, I think so. I don't wanna give specific examples with organizations and company names. However, when you think about what drives the modern corporation, in fact, it's interesting if you could fact-check this for me, but I think the root word of design, I'm sorry, of corporation is, lifeless entity or something like that.

And, but if you think about, the, what's at the core of, many organizations is this very operationalized approach to activity and behavior, one that could be measured quantitatively and in the pursuit of some objective. And I, and I feel like that's gotten us through, the better part of the century.

But I feel like where we're at now is it's about establishing a point of view about the future as an organization, and then moving your products, services, and experiences, as well as your customers and stakeholders toward that point of view in a way that's authentic and real. And the only way to really do that is to be in touch with the changes and the needs of the folks that you're serving.

If you continue to do the same thing that you've always done, you're really not, you're really not changing. But in fact, you're trying to push what you've, what currently is, if you will.

And design provides a way for an organization to think critically about its place in the world and what it's doing and the products and services that it's providing. But to think critically in a way that allows them to be nimble, allows an organization to have some level of agility around how it meets the emerging and changing needs of whether it's customers or clients or markets.

I think one of the things that gets in the way is this, the siloed approach to many organizations. And this is where design as a philosophy has an opportunity to give those individual functions a common language and a common way of working where the change is addressed in a, in a, in a similar way. I was working with a surgical products company years ago, and we were delivering executive ed design thinking programs to brand, their brand group, their marketing group, and their R&D group.

And over the course of a year, we, I think we trained almost 75 folks in, all on the East Coast. And what we started to see happening was when teams and groups were doing shareouts on new products or initiatives that they were working on, they were using color coding to communicate we are in the concept stage, or color coding that would communicate we're doing research. And another color would maybe represent prototyping and testing.

And it was a, it was a great example of how groups that were working independently of one another could still communicate with one another about their process and what their objectives were. Not only that, the color coding also was supported by a common language. We worked with them to establish a definition for what an insight is versus facts and findings. We worked with them to establish prototyping language and testing language. Not telling them how to do it, but helping them own it in and of themselves.

And it's by owning it themselves that it started to become part of the fabric of how they operated. And I think, again, this is design as a philosophy. It's a philosophy of change.

Christian Solorzano [29:09]

What are— something I've been thinking about lately, and I've been actually wanting to, publish something on this on my website. But what are some characteristics or traits that make up a leader that sort of, again, like just creates these spaces for design as a philosophy to manifest? Obviously, like leadership and stakeholders like hold so much power. And sometimes, from my experience, leadership is what gets in the way of change, which seems counterintuitive.

So what are, from your experiences and things you've seen, what makes a good leader?

Tony Bynum [29:45]

I'm very No, it's a great question because I think, I think leaders of the future, they're comfortable with ambiguity and complexity. They're comfortable with this idea of abstraction. And what I mean by that is looking at whatever their organization is doing and its offerings, not purely from a product standpoint, but from an outcomes standpoint. What is the organization's primary way of delivering value and outcomes.

And I also feel like leaders of the future are applying a sense of humility to the work that they do, because the problems that we're trying to solve, the problems that many organizations are facing, are not problems that you can Google an answer to. So, and we have to get rid of this idea that we all know the answer or that there is an answer.

In fact, there just may simply be a approach or a solution that works, but we have to continuously monitor the environments that we're in, the stakeholders and the folks that we're serving to come up with new ways of addressing issues. And so that level of humility is one in which you have to say to yourself, yeah, I don't know the answer, but we're going to dive into it and we're going to figure it out.

It also puts a lot of pressure on the environment and the culture, because if you want folks to be willing to do that, you have to create the psychological safety within the organization for folks to experiment, for folks to show up and have voice. And, we— there's this— it's very cliché, but, permission to fail. I really don't like that phrase because I think it's more like permission to learn.

So by creating an environment and a culture that incentivizes and rewards learning and applying knowledge, I think that is— those are some characteristics of good leaders in the future. They're willing to create the space in the environment for learning, experimentation, to take place.

Christian Solorzano [32:11]

And as far as— so a lot of our listeners, we have a wide range of different audiences, and amongst that audience are very young people that are just starting their careers in design, or sometimes people that are transitioning to something else into the world of design. For someone that is becoming a designer in 20— in almost 2025, what are some of the top skills or like what's some speculation in regards to things to look out for, things to learn, things to emphasize?

I feel like the beauty about design and also maybe the not so pleasant thing about it too is that it's just constantly changing and we're just constantly like, it's just in this constant state of like new technologies, for example. I feel like new technologies obviously create new demands and new ways of working and like just new expectations for both designers and clients.

But from your perspective, what do you see as the most like imperative skills or thinking that needs to— that someone needs to move into moving forward?

Tony Bynum [33:23]

It's a great question because I feel like unlike some other disciplines, design is a skill. And at the Institute of Design, we teach skills. And inherent in that means that the learner or students are going to be prepared to deal with certain situations, problem-solving situations of complexity that, and systems that don't have a defined answer. And so the first thing to think about as a new designer is to not get hung up on, is there an answer?

But instead to think about it from a standpoint of how do I make sense of the patterns and relationships that I might see in the problem and establish a point of view about how to move forward. So much of design is, I think, about communication and communicating what you're seeing, what you're learning, and what it means to the end user or the organization.

Seen a lot of projects that were, there was textbook work done in the research phase and in, and analysis, but things couldn't move forward because the group couldn't sell the future. They couldn't sell the end result. And this is to say, it's not enough to just understand the process, but you— we have to be willing and able to bring others into it who are not designers and actually have them take part in creating parts, some of the solutions.

And so it goes back to the condition setting that I was talking about earlier, but it's so much about communicating intention and intentionality As you go from, understanding your users to actually starting to test and experiment. I, when I think about designers of the future, they're really coming from multiple disciplines, and they're really good at being able to speak many languages, whether they're, whether it's the language of technology, the language of organizational psychology, operations.

There's the ability to move across different domains and link them together in a way in which some outcome is achieved. I mean, that's a— those are gonna be skills of designers of the future. And being able— and it goes back to the communication and collaboration as well, being able to bring folks together in a way that has an emergent outcome, not necessarily a crafted or designed outcome.

Christian Solorzano [36:25]

I love the term designers from the future.

Tony Bynum [36:28]

Designers from the future. Well, maybe it's designers in the future, but we have to talk about them now. So let's envision what they might be. And then, and we'll say, designers from the future. Yeah.

I do think if we could go, if we could, if I could go back in time, the thing that I would maybe tell either myself or, younger designers as I was coming, as I was coming through, would really be we're learning a way to think that not a lot of people really have experience with. Sometimes our language is really kind of odd and different and comes from, variety of different, social and psychological and human factors domains.

And our job is to make it clear and tangible and accessible. And so, in many ways, a designer's role is to step into the future and to make sense of it. And come back to the present and explain to others, what did you see and why is it important? We're storytellers. I think that's another, go back to your question about skills. Being able to step folks into the future in a really storied narrative way is a critical skill.

Christian Solorzano [37:54]

Do you think that in this, in this whole notion of a designer from the future or a designer in the future, Do you think that it's almost a requirement to let go of our expertise a little bit? Do you think we sort of need to unlearn and sort of go into things in a maybe naive way? Or like, what's your, what are your thoughts there? Because I know sometimes expertise or this attachment to knowledge can be, can put blind spots.

And I've seen, and I've been in situations in the past where I'll be working through a project and right from the get-go, like everything is like, we're almost trying to define everything like in the beginning. And it's sort of, I always feel like we were just have blinders on and we're missing everything else that are in the peripheries. So could you speak a little bit about that? Like unlearning, is that something that comes up through your programs or some of the stuff that you talk about?

Tony Bynum [38:49]

It's funny, we're a methods we're known for methods and frameworks. Institute of Design. And one of the things that we often say is, don't rely on frameworks and methods. You're— they are simply tools to help you get to where you're going. I'd like to— there's a quote that I've co-opted, design is the design of the design that helps you design. And in saying that, you need to start with something that helps you get to a place of increased understanding and knowledge.

And from that point, you may create yet another thing, another artifact that builds on your knowledge. And so it's not about letting go of expertise, but it's about, I think, shaping your expertise to the problem. And that means not being rigid and sort of dogmatic about how something must be done, but about asking the question that you're trying— it's about answering the question that you're asking. What is it we're trying to learn? What's new? How does it apply to what it is we're working on?

And, what gives it unique value? And as you— I think as you move through asking those provocative questions with an intention to have some end result or outcome produced, you're doing design.

Christian Solorzano [40:27]

Is there another— like, if it wasn't design, do you envision yourself like doing something else? What are some other Parallel activities or interests that just run parallel to your practice and what you do?

Tony Bynum [40:45]

I really, I love bringing people together. Is there such a thing as a professional party person? I don't know if that such a thing exists, but I love creating experiences. I really enjoy being able to create some sort of whether it's a dinner or an outing where you're bringing folks together for a reason, but you're using the moment as really the way in which you're bringing, as the, as sort of the mediator of the exchange.

So to me, if I'm not, if I wasn't doing this, it's a great question because I'm not, it would be transformational learning of some sort. And what I mean by that is creating experiences and conditions where folks are transformed as a result of the experience itself. They learn something new, either about themselves or problem or challenge that they're taking on, as gleaned through an experience or experiences, several of them.

That get them to think a little differently, that challenge maybe their ingrained orthodoxies or thoughts about what they're working on. But more importantly, they themselves are somehow transformed as a result of the experience. Yeah. Even as I say this, it's not for everyone, right?

Christian Solorzano [42:20]

Yeah.

Tony Bynum [42:21]

Yeah. It's definitely the individual who's more willing to explore themselves and the questions they might have better than others.

Christian Solorzano [42:31]

I'm curious about the type of questions that maybe you asked growing up, maybe as a kid. Just what were your interests as a kid? And was there, was there an affinity for experiences or just like processes or processes or just Little Tony, what was, what was little Tony like?

Tony Bynum [42:53]

A very curious kid. Still is a very curious kid. He loves taking things apart and just seeing how they work with, an acknowledgement that you might not be able to put them back together again. But, that's a whole nother story. I was always very and I still am very into sort of serendipity and novelty, looking for the thing that's maybe a little bit different than asking the question, well, why is that different?

I enjoy getting underneath the hood of things, but then, so zooming in, but then zooming back out with a different kind of understanding, because I've gone into it. So I used to take things apart all the time. Just my mom and dad just loved that, of course, when come home and see the lawnmowers in pieces. But now I know how it works, right? Things like that, I think I've always been very curious about.

And I think that curiosity is still very much a part of who I am and how I work. Not afraid to ask questions. And it kind of goes back to something you asked me earlier, about leadership and leading in the future, especially in design. You— we obtain a lot of knowledge through the work that we do. But as soon as we start to think that knowledge is all there is, I think we lose sight of what's possible.

And so, little Tony was always looking for, and trying to define, what's possible? What else can we do here? What else could this potentially be? After maybe taking it apart and seeing how it worked. So I think those are some traits that still are very much a part of, my motivation and what drives me.

Christian Solorzano [45:00]

I remember when I was younger, my dad would also give me things like he would give me old electronics. And a screwdriver, and he would just say, just to keep me entertained, he would just let me break these things and, open them apart. And it, and it's funny because I find myself still doing that, but obviously, in a metaphorical, non-literal way. But yeah, it's interesting how, those little things that are planted, early on. End up shaping who we become as a, as an older person?

Tony Bynum [45:35]

It's interesting. I think it's a really good question, and I don't feel like I'm really doing it justice with my answer, but I feel like it's about understanding patterns. There's a language in a, in a certain patternness to the way things work, the way things are created and designed. And when you start to just get curious about taking things apart and looking under the hood, you start to see similar patterns.

And when you start to see those patterns repeatedly, there is a certain— I don't know if confidence is really the right word, but you're less fearful of something new. Because again, those patterns of how things work become part of your— the way in which you see the world. I've often said, at the Institute of Design, we, you come out of this program with a wide-angle lens, viewing the world through a wide-angle lens.

And that's intentional, because when you're able to see more, you're able to see more relationships and more patterns, as I— When you're able to see those relationships and patterns, you're able to make sense of things and craft a point of view about how to make sense of things, I think, faster and maybe in a more authentic way rather than, copying or just repeating what someone else has said.

Christian Solorzano [47:12]

Like recognizing those patterns, there's some sense of like embodiment in yourself. You know where you stand.

Tony Bynum [47:20]

Yeah, we can get metaphysical here, but there is, there is a certain sense of selling, for sure. I think when, I think when you walk through the world with a designer's point of view, you're not afraid of being curious. You're not afraid of turning things over. You are curious how things work and why things maybe are the way they are. And again, it goes back to recognizing those patterns. And, to some extent they become your, to your point, your lens on the world.

And so, I think design, to the extent that it's something that can be adopted by anyone, it could actually be a way in which folks express themselves in a more authentic way. Find their voice, if you will, establish their place and presence in a, in a way that makes sense for them.

Christian Solorzano [48:31]

With your new role and the new work that you're doing, what's 2025 looking like for you? Are there any new projects or any new case studies or like any new engagements that you're involved in? And is there anything that the listener, myself, can be out on the lookout for? What are you excited about coming the new year?

Tony Bynum [48:53]

I think, I think there's a really— this is an exciting time, I think, to think about design as a practice and as a philosophy of change. And to that extent, I'm excited about bringing this way of thinking to organizations. At the capability level.

Not, it's very easy to us to think about design as a group or a department or a function. But when you think about using design as a way to see the future, as a way to change, as a way to enable growth, that's exciting to me because now it doesn't matter what your role is. It's really more about how are you making sense of the patterns, as we talked about earlier in your organization, and determining, how do you use them and what are they telling you?

Christian Solorzano [49:50]

Yeah.

Tony Bynum [49:51]

So 2025, I wanted, I really, I, I'm excited about really seeing design brought to more of a public platform around a skill set and a capability. We've done a lot of work, over the years in terms of systems and human-centeredness. But I think we're at that place now where design is actually a way. I'm excited about bringing design as a way of change, as a way of seeing the future, as a way of enabling growth to more people and more organizations.

Christian Solorzano [50:32]

And you've talked about your way of going about teaching and then also consulting and practice and like that relationship between the two that I think you mentioned is unique to like your work at ID of like teaching and then consulting. So maybe shed a little bit of light on how those two inform each other and their relationship.

Tony Bynum [50:58]

Yeah, I feel like, there's Teaching is the new selling. And I don't necessarily mean, up in front of a class on a dry erase board teaching, but bringing the problem and bringing yourself and your client for that matter into the problem space and working with them as you make sense of it and as you move towards some kind of solution. That is teaching.

And what I'm trying to do at the Institute of Design, and what I think many of our students are interested in is how do you create those kinds of conditions to facilitate that kind of value creation through learning, through immersion in the problem itself. So I think that the 2, the 2 ideas of teaching and consulting are very blurred things. They, Might, you might consult as a, as a— hold on, let me back up, clap again.

You might use, you might use teaching as your way to actually consult. And I think what I like about that is it's, you're leaving your clients, if you will, in a position of ownership and agency because they were part of the process themselves. It wasn't created on the outside and brought in, but instead it was the, you, the tools and mindset, the skill sets of design were used within context to bring it to life.

So yeah, teaching and facilitating and creating the conditions, I think, are our objectives that we, as designers in the future, we're gonna need to adopt more of.

Christian Solorzano [52:51]

Because whether we're teaching in a, in a school, or a client, it's— I feel like we're— it's teaching, when we're, pitching something or presenting a presentation or something along those lines. Goes back to storytelling. I started teaching in 2022, and it's interesting to see, the overlap between what I'm teaching and what I'm practicing, in the real world. And I, and I always feel like students appreciate real-world examples as opposed to just very, theoretical, here's an example rather than here's, what happened.

Tony Bynum [53:35]

Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. So there's a couple of things there. One, when I, when I started teaching, not just at ID, but doing more executive ed teaching, that's when I really learned my practice. I think it's when you help others adopt new skills, or teach, which is just called that you're forced to ask yourself, well, how do I know that? Because there's so much that we take for granted, just through our own day-to-day practice.

But when you start to teach, you are both sharing and reflecting at the same time. And that back and forth sensemaking, I think, gives you the language, gives you that sense of self, as we said earlier, around what your skills and your abilities are. And so I would encourage anyone and everyone, going back to one of your points about, what would you tell new designers? You need practice and you need to get out there and, make mistakes and try things.

But at some point, start teaching others, because that's, I think, is an accelerant for developing your own, your own practice and skills. I think about design, if you, if you look at where the word comes from, it's really to designate. And in many ways, what we're doing as designers is we're designating meaning to something, through form or through graphic design, visual outputs and visual designs. And I feel like if you just take that idea a little bit further, you can start to ascribe meaning to change.

Why should we— why should we take this action? There's a designed approach to answering these questions. And I think that that's the opportunity, I think, to invite more folks into the process and into the, to the discipline of design. When we think about it from the standpoint of we're ascribing meaning to something that we're creating or something that we've identified.

Christian Solorzano [56:07]

And that, that's, I feel like that's at the root of what the Bauhaus was. It was about doing things in a new way and about finding new meaning and value and new opportunities and like experiments and like weird creative Explorations. So yeah, I love it.

Tony Bynum [56:29]

Yeah, don't be afraid to experiment for sure. That's right.

Christian Solorzano [56:31]

Awesome. Well, like I was mentioning, our door is always open and we hope that at some point we could again do some kind of collaboration. But yeah, love to continue the conversation.

Tony Bynum [56:42]

Absolutely. Love to, Christian. Thank you for the opportunity.

Christian Solorzano [56:45]

Thank you so much for tuning in and listening till the end. I appreciate it. And to learn more, visit www.chicagographicdesign.club. Talk to you soon. Goodbye.