Darjan Hil ‘The Art of Visualising Complexity'

Bringing Design Closer with Gerry Scullion

A number of months ago, I was researching for my keynote in Scotland in June this year, and I stumbled across the work of Superdot studio in Switzerland. I was blown away by all the amazing work that they had done and was thrilled to see that they were in the process of publishing their book, Visualising Complexity - A Modular Information Handbook. I purchased it and from the moment it arrived on my desk, it has not been too far away. I show it to people on Zoom calls and any of the trainings that I have been doing. I have recommended it to many of my peers. I feel so lucky to have this podcast, as it allows me to reach out to people I truly respect and connect with them over a conversation, and I did just that with this book.

I connected with Darjan, and we had an amazing conversation. We explored the process that both he and his partner, Nicole follow when visualising complexity. One of the things that struck me the most from this conversation, was just how analogue the process of brilliance is. A lot of what I took away from this conversation was just how much space and air that Darjan and leave in their work, to let things sit, and include elements of structured exploration before arriving on a visual language and approach to their work. Too often, I find we (and I include myself in this) have tools in place and in mind when we are researching. As in, many of us know and fall into that category of “well, we will be creating a journey map, or a blueprint, as we know this worked for X project”. This isn’t what you hear in this conversation.

We talk about the process deeply. How they move from chaos to simplicity.

Episode links

• Buy the book:
• Visualizing Complexity: Modular Information Design Handbook

• Superdot Studio
• Connect with Darjan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darjanhil/?originalSubdomain=ch

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