Transcribed with Otter.ai
Guest Lisa Strausfeld
Unknown Speaker 0:02
Hey. Hey everyone, welcome to unique ways with Thomas Girard and audio podcast, got a really awesome guest on today. Um, she became a partner at the New York office of pentagram, the distinguished international design consultancy in 2002
Unknown Speaker 0:15
there, her team specialized in digital information projects, including the design of large scale media installations, software prototypes and user interfaces, signage and websites for a broad range of civic, cultural and corporate clients, please join me in welcoming. Lisa strausfeld, welcome.
Unknown Speaker 0:33
Thank you, Thomas. It’s great to be here. Ready for 20 questions?
Unknown Speaker 0:38
Ready as I’ll ever be great question one, tell me a little bit more about yourself. What do you do?
Unknown Speaker 0:45
I am a designer. I always struggle with the answer to this question. I
Unknown Speaker 0:53
and I usually sort of default to saying I’m a designer. I think it’s more accurate to say I’m a Digital Designer. I designed for digital displays. I designed with digital content, data information, and my focus for decades now has been on new forms of interactive information experiences.
Unknown Speaker 1:18
So your introduction mentioned pentagram. So I was there for 10 years as a partner, and then I,
Unknown Speaker 1:28
I had, I’ve had some other chapters, including building and leading a data visualization group at Bloomberg.
Unknown Speaker 1:39
A lot of work with Gallup and my own studio information art. Currently, I’ve been leading design at an AI startup called system.
Unknown Speaker 1:49
And
Unknown Speaker 1:51
system is building a kind of massive systems graph of how anything in the world relates to everything else. And I think of it as like a sort of Google Earth of scientific research, and I also still work out of my studio information art,
Unknown Speaker 2:09
great. And just know for the audience. If you guys want to check out one of our early big supporters, definitely check out the episode with John Maeda, one of my favorite ones. So question two, what’s a key piece of knowledge that makes you different?
Unknown Speaker 2:23
Well, I share this thing that makes me different with someone else. You’ve interviewed Ellen Lupton. I like Ellen, am an identical twin, and
Unknown Speaker 2:39
I
Unknown Speaker 2:41
it’s, it’s been interesting just looking at these questions how, I think you’ll hear some of the issues from these origins will come up later. Definitely, there’s been a lot of focus for me on identity. I am very anti dichotomy. I think with with identical twins, there’s a tendency to create these like
Unknown Speaker 3:10
binary labels that are mutually exclusive.
Unknown Speaker 3:14
Like my sister Laura was always known as kind of the the verbal one, and I was the visual twin. And these kind of labels of A and not A,
Unknown Speaker 3:26
these binary labels definitely are the kind of downside of being an identical twin,
Unknown Speaker 3:32
and but there are so many upsides. And of course, I very close to my sister, and we talk every day, and
Unknown Speaker 3:42
that is something that makes me different.
Unknown Speaker 3:45
Perfect Question three, why this? Of all things? Why do you do what you do?
Unknown Speaker 3:52
Well, this is a good segue to John Meda, actually,
Unknown Speaker 3:57
because we were both at the Media Lab at MIT. So I studied architecture undergrad. I my major was art history. I had a kind of minor in computer science, and I always planned to be an architect. My mother was an urban planner, and always wanted to be an architect, and I, from a young age, talked
Unknown Speaker 4:19
about being an architect, and I became an architect. I went to architecture school, and I am not an architect now. I took a bunch of left turns. I graduated from architecture school in the middle of the recession of the early 90s, so it was hard to get, paying work, fulfilling work, work that didn’t come with
Unknown Speaker 4:48
a lot of problems that I find in the field of architecture that existed then, I hope they don’t exist as much now. But
Unknown Speaker 4:57
sexism, various forms of arrest.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
And probably more significantly, like a kind of technologically regressive or backwards looking focus.
Unknown Speaker 5:11
Anyway, a bunch of those things inspired me to shift. I was told that Motorola was hiring architects to design layout, to do layout for memory chips. I was living in Austin, Texas, so I shifted there and started writing scripts, kind of leveraging my coding background, which had been dormant for a bunch of years, I started writing scripts to automate the layouts, and then I heard about the Media Lab at MIT and applied
Unknown Speaker 5:44
and joined the visible language workshop, which was under the direction of graphic designer Muriel Cooper. Again, my background was in architecture. I’d never done any work in graphic design, never had thought about working with information, and just pivoted there. We it kind of helped that the early work, well, actually, just as I joined the Media Lab in 1993
Unknown Speaker 6:13
there was a shipment of Silicon Graphics workstations.
Unknown Speaker 6:18
So the early work that I did was in 3d so that was a good transition from architecture into
Unknown Speaker 6:26
graphic design. Certainly was to design in three. And this is the question of what, how did I get here,
Unknown Speaker 6:35
and then, basically, I’ve been doing that form of design and designing for information for the last 30 years. It really has been 30 years. I can’t believe it
Unknown Speaker 6:49
great. Some people struggle with number four. But the question is, what does your future look like?
Unknown Speaker 6:57
For some reason, as I thought about this, I thought about the past. Maybe it was a segue from the previous conversation or the previous question.
Unknown Speaker 7:09
I This eclipse is coming up on April 8, which will be visible in the US. And I have a very vivid memory of an eclipse in 1994 in May, I was at the Media Lab. I remember what I was wearing, I remember who I was with. We were outside. I feel like there’s definitely some kind of
Unknown Speaker 7:34
full circle moment here, a pivot that was a big pivot in my life to kind of a new a new focus, a new form of work. 30 years ago, I feel like I’m at a similar juncture now. I don’t really know where it will lead me exactly, but I have this like feeling that change is coming, and I’m really open to it. So what my future looks like, I think it will be.
Unknown Speaker 8:05
There’s some desire to kind of like write
Unknown Speaker 8:11
and about what I have learned and what I know some teaching. I’ve been thinking a lot about Muriel Cooper, one of my mentors and red Burns, who was
Unknown Speaker 8:25
directed this amazing program at NYU, the ITP interactive telecommunications program at NYU, until she was in her late 80s. Both of them
Unknown Speaker 8:38
are really present for me and had a huge influence on me, and I’m channeling them right now. I also one last thing for my future. I really would like it to be a little bit
Unknown Speaker 8:51
more tactful.
Unknown Speaker 8:55
I i have this need to make things with my hands at this moment,
Unknown Speaker 9:02
great five we say, is unique to this show. The question is, let’s talk about location. How does the notion of place play into what you do
Unknown Speaker 9:13
location? Well, I’ve been bi coastal
Unknown Speaker 9:18
for a couple decades as well,
Unknown Speaker 9:24
and right now I’m living in Portland, Oregon. We moved here from Brooklyn, New York about a year and a half ago, but
Unknown Speaker 9:33
my family has been back and forth for about 20 years. My husband is from here, and I’m from the East Coast, and
Unknown Speaker 9:43
we’ve had homes on both coasts. I think for me, the West is important. For some reason. It’s for me, like a place of reflection and thought probably a little bit more silence. I I like looking west.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Just to think somehow. And the East Coast for me is more about action and networking and a kind of
Unknown Speaker 10:10
delightful frenzy. But I have needs, constant needs over the years to escape that. So right now, this is where I am, and it feels pretty good. I should say one last thing about Portland.
Unknown Speaker 10:29
For a long time, for me, it was just not New York, like kind of an escape from New York, but I
Unknown Speaker 10:36
Portland has definitely it’s not the best moment for Portland as a city, but for me, it’s definitely been growing on me, and I’m really enjoying living in Portland at the moment.
Unknown Speaker 10:50
Great. So if you had to start from the beginning, what advice would you give your former younger self?
Unknown Speaker 11:01
It’s this one was interesting. I
Unknown Speaker 11:06
it’s almost like I don’t think I could have done things differently. I sometimes I wish I could have, but I just, I don’t know how any advice would have
Unknown Speaker 11:18
changed the course of anything that happened in my life, somehow I do and this, this will come up again, I think. But
Unknown Speaker 11:30
my advice would be and this, this comes from
Unknown Speaker 11:35
Brad club, Phil, my favorite architect, who is also my partner, but
Unknown Speaker 11:41
my my advice would be be true to what you know and the operative word being know or knowing, rather than just thinking or believing.
Unknown Speaker 11:55
Great seven, what’s a day in your life like
Unknown Speaker 12:00
I I
Unknown Speaker 12:04
have been working with system, which is based in New York. So I’m one of those. I’m sure a lot of us are like this sort of Pacific time people working on East Coast time.
Unknown Speaker 12:16
I
Unknown Speaker 12:19
There’s in the morning, there’s coffee and school lunch making, and then there’s school drop off, and then I’ve been working.
Unknown Speaker 12:31
There’s, I have another colleague from system who happens to be living in Portland, so there’s a daily stand up with the team at 9am Pacific Time and various meetings and slack huddles and
Unknown Speaker 12:50
lots of I feel like I live inside of figma and notion and
Unknown Speaker 13:01
lots of that remote working. I do get to do some school pickup, because it happens after meetings on the East Coast are finished,
Unknown Speaker 13:17
and most and then there’s a lot of like soccer shuttling, which is starting to change now that my daughter is driving. So I will fill that time with a bit more of my own needs, like swimming and other things that I haven’t had time to do. Oh, and then there’s, you know, family, dinner,
Unknown Speaker 13:42
homework, Netflix,
Unknown Speaker 13:44
that kind of thing.
Unknown Speaker 13:47
Nice aid is around lifelong learning. It’s a popular topic. How do you stay up to date?
Unknown Speaker 13:53
I think it’s just sort of built into what I do. I
Unknown Speaker 14:00
wrote this blog piece for system designing for the edge, which is really about,
Unknown Speaker 14:07
you know, literally, like a
Unknown Speaker 14:10
network or system graph. You know, nodes and edges. The edges are the kind of links between topics or variables in our case. But I would say that I also have always kind of designed at the edge. I like to be kind of
Unknown Speaker 14:28
at the front or the lead, or the sort of pioneering edge of tech.
Unknown Speaker 14:34
It’s funny, because I don’t think I’ve like sought it out. I just, sort
Unknown Speaker 14:38
of, I just find myself there so really, in my day to day work, I feel like I’m staying up to date just by constantly learning from my amazing colleagues who really are at the forefront of AI and machine learning and
Unknown Speaker 14:58
and I.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
So other than that, it’s just the usual,
Unknown Speaker 15:05
you know, surfing
Unknown Speaker 15:08
and
Unknown Speaker 15:11
just all of the media sources. I think that all of us are kind of engaged in every day.
Unknown Speaker 15:18
Great. Nine is tools. Do you use digital and analog tools?
Unknown Speaker 15:24
I do
Unknown Speaker 15:27
continue to use sketchbooks, but
Unknown Speaker 15:33
I
Unknown Speaker 15:35
mean, figma has been life changing for me to collaborate with designers and actually not just designers, but writers and clients. And
Unknown Speaker 15:49
I even have found that when I’m working one on one with the designer in person, we’re both looking at our own screens and working in figma. So figma notion, I think is a really amazing tool.
Unknown Speaker 16:05
I’m very into any kind of, like object oriented structures and thinking, and I feel like notion could become
Unknown Speaker 16:18
the only tool. It could become a sort of, I don’t know. I’m really fascinated by notion and what’s possible notion.
Unknown Speaker 16:28
Great number 10 is work life balance. Life work balance. How do you deal with it?
Unknown Speaker 16:34
That is another dichotomy that I again, this is coming from the sort of twin origins that I kind of
Unknown Speaker 16:43
wouldn’t say I reject, but I don’t really relate to.
Unknown Speaker 16:50
I
Unknown Speaker 16:53
don’t mind them sort of blurring together. I would say, in fact, my
Unknown Speaker 17:00
ideal situation would be that they
Unknown Speaker 17:04
they compliment, they are not compliment, they they form, they compliment, they
Unknown Speaker 17:11
they’re one in the same. I don’t know. They’re, they’re, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 17:16
they’re, they’re no boundaries, and that’s okay,
Unknown Speaker 17:22
okay? And number 11, if you weren’t doing what you do now, what might you be doing?
Unknown Speaker 17:28
Well,
Unknown Speaker 17:33
I really do like making things. I think that’s where I’m happiest in if we were living in, like, more primitive times, I probably would be doing
Unknown Speaker 17:45
those kind of stereotypical female crafts like basket making and ceramics, maybe a little later. You know, quilting, knitting,
Unknown Speaker 17:59
probably anything but hunting and gathering.
Unknown Speaker 18:03
I
Unknown Speaker 18:05
yeah, I really, I love any kind of craft work. I do a lot of sewing right now, I was doing a lot of crocheting during the pandemic, and it kind of keeps my mind and hands busy.
Unknown Speaker 18:25
Great and 12. What would you not like to do with your career?
Unknown Speaker 18:31
I
Unknown Speaker 18:34
I actually would like to not design within an Agile process. I definitely respect the process. I think it makes a lot of sense for large sort of software development projects. I have yet to find it really support
Unknown Speaker 18:58
a creative design process. I would love like to
Unknown Speaker 19:03
to find examples of success with Agile for design, but I have yet to find it. And it’s I find it to be a bit of a struggle, and then maybe related,
Unknown Speaker 19:18
someone I worked with years ago,
Unknown Speaker 19:22
said that I was very kind of big picture and detail oriented, but less sort of whatever the middle scale of that is. And I think that’s
Unknown Speaker 19:34
probably true. I do prefer big picture and detail and less of the everything that happens in between.
Unknown Speaker 19:44
How about a favorite word, quote or sentence?
Unknown Speaker 19:49
Again? I think
Unknown Speaker 19:52
I would probably go back to the one I mentioned before about just being this came from Brad COVID Be true to.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
What you know,
Unknown Speaker 20:02
I
Unknown Speaker 20:04
I also love the word grace
Unknown Speaker 20:09
and
Unknown Speaker 20:12
and actually, I had one more because I’ve been wanting to use this in an essay. So I’m glad that this is a good opportunity there
Unknown Speaker 20:20
in the book delirious New York, by Rem Koolhaas, he has a chapter on Raymond hood, who was the architect who designed Rockefeller Center.
Unknown Speaker 20:34
And he starts that chapter with following I’m actually looking at this
Unknown Speaker 20:40
says architecture is the business of manufacturing adequate shelter for human activities. And then my favorite form is the sphere. I assume these are quotes by Raymond hood. And then he follows it with this quote, the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposite ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. F Scott Fitzgerald,
Unknown Speaker 21:08
nice, how about a least favorite word, quote or sentence?
Unknown Speaker 21:15
I
Unknown Speaker 21:17
my first thought here was no
Unknown Speaker 21:21
maybe. And then I was thinking something like yes or no, or any of these kind of like
Unknown Speaker 21:28
binary either or labels.
Unknown Speaker 21:34
You’re choosing one word to describe yourself. What word do you choose?
Unknown Speaker 21:38
This one was hard to the best I could do here was gray, meaning like neither black nor white.
Unknown Speaker 21:48
I also was thinking of something like searching, but that’s not so great. I also
Unknown Speaker 21:56
really
Unknown Speaker 21:59
there’s something about ambiguity, that one of the phrases I’ve loved for a long time, since I was
Unknown Speaker 22:05
studying architecture, is clear ambiguity.
Unknown Speaker 22:11
What keeps you up at night?
Unknown Speaker 22:15
I think I I’ve listened to a bunch of these interviews, and I, you know, I share, I think, what everyone else has said, pretty much, you know, just our uncertain future, concerns about the planet, democracy.
Unknown Speaker 22:34
And then there’s always the like, should I forgot to send this email or,
Unknown Speaker 22:42
you know, respond to this, or, you know, those things keep me up at night. I also do, I think
Unknown Speaker 22:53
the night time has always been my favorite time since I’ve had a child. It’s, it’s,
Unknown Speaker 23:01
I don’t really get to enjoy it as much as I used to, but I think my best work has always happened at night, but it’ll be nice to get back to that at some point,
Unknown Speaker 23:15
17, a dream you’re chasing.
Unknown Speaker 23:19
I
Unknown Speaker 23:21
assume it was hard to I think for myself, it’s
Unknown Speaker 23:25
getting back to what I know.
Unknown Speaker 23:29
I think it’s really hard to stay there.
Unknown Speaker 23:34
I’ve
Unknown Speaker 23:36
I think I really stayed in isolation after the pandemic ended, and maybe it was just a sort of phase that I needed for a while,
Unknown Speaker 23:49
but just getting back to really knowing for myself, I think
Unknown Speaker 23:55
for others, I’ve always been interested in, like understanding, enabling understanding I’ve my
Unknown Speaker 24:03
thesis at MIT was that was in the title about enabling understanding with the work.
Unknown Speaker 24:14
I also one other thought here. I have this memory of being at the Media Lab with Muriel Cooper at my side as I was flying through one of the projects I was working on, which was like a grid of numbers and and Muriel,
Unknown Speaker 24:36
Muriel just like wanted to be in that space. I think she just she wanted to fly and be in these sort of disembodied, abstract spaces of information. That’s still a dream that I’m chasing. I think it’s and I’ve done some work related to that in recent years. This thing that I called the Cooper engine, which was kind of.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
VR experienced, I still think it’s possible to create these experiences that enable our understanding of really abstract and complex information
Unknown Speaker 25:14
and with kind of new a new way of
Unknown Speaker 25:21
really understanding, seeing, embodying that content. So that is still a dream I’m chasing. And then the last thing I will say here is expression, some form of expression.
Unknown Speaker 25:35
Great, last few here, what inspires you?
Unknown Speaker 25:40
I had a couple sort of themes here. One is, I’m still inspired by great art and great design. There is a lot of design around us. A lot of it is really good,
Unknown Speaker 25:55
but more of it could be great. And
Unknown Speaker 26:00
I’m very interested in thinking about, like, what it is that makes work great. And one thought is that it’s like,
Unknown Speaker 26:09
it’s work that is supported inspired by an idea, like, usually a single idea.
Unknown Speaker 26:17
I think that’s really important, because
Unknown Speaker 26:22
I think design work that’s that has an idea. It sounds really simple, but it’s actually pretty hard to do. But if it has one idea, it kind of engages in a larger dialog, you know, with other work, with culture, with other designers, with work throughout time and again, I think that’s really important,
Unknown Speaker 26:43
because it,
Unknown Speaker 26:45
in turn, inspires
Unknown Speaker 26:48
all of us who you know are around this work and experience it.
Unknown Speaker 26:54
And then the other theme is, I’m definitely inspired by
Unknown Speaker 27:01
larger things. I’m inspired by this eclipse
Unknown Speaker 27:05
on Monday.
Unknown Speaker 27:08
And there was an eclipse here in 2017
Unknown Speaker 27:12
there was one I still remember in 1994
Unknown Speaker 27:15
still inspired by,
Unknown Speaker 27:18
yeah, the universe
Unknown Speaker 27:21
great. And 19, any advice you’d like to share?
Unknown Speaker 27:26
Again, I’m being really repetitive, but the main bit of advice is, be true to what you know. I think we all I think a lot of creative work is about sort of getting
Unknown Speaker 27:44
to the source. I think the borrowing, I love that word. I think Rick Rubin, in his amazing book the creative act, talks about the source as this kind of collective thing. But
Unknown Speaker 27:55
I also think
Unknown Speaker 28:01
of the creative act is as really about finding more than inventing, like discovering, finding, unearthing,
Unknown Speaker 28:11
again, being true to what you know. And then the other piece of this is just being open and kind to yourself first. And then, of course, to others,
Unknown Speaker 28:22
great. And finally, number 20, how do we keep tabs on you? What’s our call to action?
Unknown Speaker 28:28
I
Unknown Speaker 28:30
still to work out of my little studio, information art.com,
Unknown Speaker 28:35
and I, like I said, I intend to be writing more and expressing more in some forms that have yet to be really understood and determined. But I’m excited about that, and probably I would use LinkedIn for those first
Unknown Speaker 28:59
bits of news about what’s happening.
Unknown Speaker 29:03
Okay, great. Well, you know, thank you so much for coming on such a privilege. Thanks for this.
Unknown Speaker 29:10
Thank you so much, Thomas and thank you for putting up all of these amazing interviews that you’ve done so far. Great. Thanks.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai