The ninth post in our series, Brief Interviews with Assiduous Mules. Read past interviews with Jessie Char, Shawna Seth, David McCreath, Nila Salinas, Paula Chang, Stewart McCoy, Katie Gillum, and Mike Monteiro.

What did you study in school? How did that lead to or influence you in your current role?

I was one of those kids who couldn’t get enough of robots and planets and aliens and spaceships. I’m told that, on Christmas mornings, I would read every single word of my toys’ instruction manuals before playing with them. My guess is that my interests in science and technology stem a little from all that. I ended up as a geology major during my first semester of college. I studied volcanoes on Venus using NASA satellites for my first research project—that’s where the whole “volcanologist” stuff started. Design came out of a desire for the freedom to craft something entirely new, straight from my imagination. I switched gears into design a bit later in life, but the robots and planets and aliens and spaceships and instruction manuals still seem to apply.

What spurred you to make the jump from geology professor to designer?

Leaving behind one career to begin another was scary as crap, but it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. I found myself consistently trying to infuse more and more creativity into my research and writing than probably should’ve been in there—and that started me thinking. Being a scientist means being diligent in your approach to problem-solving and modeling reality. For me, that’s an awe-inspiring process. At the same time, it also means having to be extremely precise and deliberate in how to produce and disseminates those results. I was far too flowery and theatrical for a scientist in my approach to presenting analytic results.

I took a couple of months off and considered what I would do if I could go back in time and start over. Graphic design was it. It’s the perfect blend for me: it’s creative, but at its core design is the very same meticulous, deliberate investigation I’d been steeped in for years. Turns out design is science, but with the peculiar goal of producing something lovely. Science uncovers truths about reality and the world we live in. Design uncovers truths as well, and in the process it makes our world a slightly more beautiful place. For me, having both the freedom of art and the constraints of scientific processes gives me a huge sense of fulfillment.

How have you incorporated the tools of science into design?

Francis Bacon had this notion about how to find objective truth. Today, we call it the scientific method. Bacon dubbed it, “progressive stages of certainty”, which I think absolutely nails the point. He figured that each idea has to be solid before you can move forward, and each idea has to fit in place when it’s all said and done. Anything that doesn’t work gets tossed out the window, no matter how much you liked the thought and no matter how much you want to stomp your feet about it. That sounds as much about design as any scientific reasoning.

How do you approach visual design? Do you make notebook sketches, or is everything done on the computer?

I’m a firm believer in sketching out ideas on paper before they ever make it to another medium. Thumbnailing away all the crap ideas first gives space for truly good design to float to the surface. To make design vibrant and compelling—to make it work—you have to remove the obvious at the beginning. For me, there’s something about putting pencil to paper that feels right, and that frees me from the constraints of having to make pixel-perfect thoughts appear on a screen.

Notebook of choice: large, soft-cover Moleskines. Floppy. Plain pages. The little squares are for pussies.

What would be your dream client project?

I’d absolutely love to design the artifacts in a Terry Gilliam film or even one of Jeunet’s. Something science-y, authentically dystopian and retro-futuristic, with worn-out paper and wood and metal brackets and dirt. I’ve spent some time recreating the “Map of Time” from Gilliam’s Time Bandits and the art deco propaganda posters seen in Brazil, and it was pure joy.

What blogs or sites do you visit daily?

I go through phases. Sometimes it’s political sites, sometimes it’s satire, sometimes it’s coffee stuff, sometimes it’s all about spaceships or whatever. Though I really can’t think of a day that’s gone by in a couple of years when I wasn’t scrolling through Twitter.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Oh, definitely high-powered laser beams that shoot out of my eyes. Mostly for odd jobs and around-the-house kind of stuff, though, nothing deadly. Either lasers or the ability to stop time for as long as I feel like it. Same reasons apply.

Should you ever encounter a TARDIS, where and when would be your first stop? Why?

I’d probably head back and make Kurt Vonnegut have a few cups of coffee with me. Something something “unstuck in time”. Man, I bet that guy smelled like black coffee and cigarettes round the clock.

As a former volcanologist, what is your most favorite scientific law or principle?

I’m gonna have to go with evolution. It’s such an obvious thing now, but it was out of focus until a couple of people, back in the day, started putting things together. My favorite bit of Darwin’s personal notebooks, as he considered all of the crazy stuff he’d seen and collected over the years, is this diagram. He’s just ruminating, off-handedly, writing: “I think”. And then he draws the damned Tree of Life. Evolution, encapsulated. Beautiful.

What skill do you bring from your southern roots?

The ability to say anything bad about anyone, ever, as long as I bless their heart afterwards. Amazing what you can get away with when you add that. For example: “She couldn’t cook her way out of a wet paper bag. Bless her heart.” See? No harm done.

What’s with all the corduroy?

Texture. Also, the sound lets people know I’m stalking them.

For more on Jason and his work, visit his online portfolio. You should probably follow him on Twitter and Tumblr, too, just to be safe.

Tweet | Written by Tina Lee on June 21, 2011 |