Mapping what lasts

Some things in design haven’t changed in a hundred years. Some will sound ridiculous in ten. This is a talk about mapping change, in the work, in the studio, and in the discipline. What’s worth charting right now. What still works in a hundred years.

On my desk, a Handbook for Travellers in Japan, fourth edition, 1894. The maps still work. What’s aged into curiosity is the page beside the map, an advertisement for a photo-engraving studio, the cutting edge of image reproduction at the time, now a footnote.

The map outlasts the technology that drew and surrounds it. I’ll traverse a few in the talk, through history, craft and culture, and through how a creative studio thinks about mapping and change for clients like the British Library, Bhutan, London Design Festival and ON Running. And a harder map too, which is the one every working designer is trying to draw right now, of a discipline that won’t sit still.