Q&A Erik Adigard Print
on Monday, 26 September 2011 02:55
Erik Adigard is a communication designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work ranges from branding, interaction design, immersive installations and video to consulting and design strategy. Better known projects include many visual essays for Wired magazine, websites for WiredDigital, the branding of IBM software, and large exhibits for La Villette, Paris, the Lisbon Biennale and the Venice Architecture Biennale. He also teaches, and serve on juries and advisory boards.  www.adigard.com and www.madxs.com

Absolutely Adigard
Erik Adigard. Absolut Adigard. 1996. Courtesy of Absolut Vodka.

Was there an urgency to organize your archives?
Archiving is a necessity because we are very often asked to refer to older works for exhibits or publications, but also because we often refer to previous research in our current projects.

Regardless, it is in the nature of designers to archive as much as they can: their research, communications, sketches and final designs. Archiving is crucial for designers because our work depends on managing vast amounts of information, therefore the cataloguing of our work is a natural extension of our approach to design processes.

What is the structure behind its organization?
It is 99%+ digital. Folders are named and structured in a way that allows us to keep an overview of the various phases and components (mails, contracts, sketches, purchased art, rejects, etc) and because all archiving is digital it can be filtered by dates, alphanumerical information, document sizes, etc.

When archived, project folders are filed by category: Print, Web, Art, Branding, Writings, etc

How do you keep track or how do you catalog the archives (print, computer)?
It is all digital at this point, but because my studio has remained fairly small for most of my career, I have been able to maintain a basic approach, evolving from floppy disks to cartridges and now hard drives and web servers. Even if we may own cataloguing software such as FileMaker we have not felt the need to use it.

When did you start using the computer?
1989

Booners spread Wired
Boomers spread for Wired magazine 2.12, 1994


From that moment on, did you change storing your work files differently? If so, why?
Yes, archiving methods must keep the pace with all other changes in media (types, sizes, networks, collaboration, etc) hence the shift from floppy disk to internet & intranet solutions. We use Time Machine but I also try to do selective back up and storing myself.

Do you regularly make back-ups?
Yes but we still lose files to back-up failures and to software obsolescence.

Microsoft campagain
Microsoft advertising campaign concept, 1996

Do you use a strategy of saving your work files. If so could you briefly describe it?
Within active projects, design and research files are generally archived as soon as they are no longer "active".
Project folders are routinely backed up, so that's a form of archiving there.
The project folders are color coded and go through three phases:
1. Active (in our computers and in an active back up drive)
2. On Hold (waiting for client approvals, etc)
3. Archived (or "To Be Archived")

Do you have specific questions about sustainable storage of your digital work files?
I assume it is all going off line? Including our desktops?

How long would it take you to locate a five year old digital work file? And how long would it take you to locate a physical document?
Using Search, it may take as little as 5 seconds. Perhaps 1mn when items are too buried.

Would you be able to use the digital file still?
From a 5 year old, 98% yes

What is of more importance to you, your physical, analog archive or your digital archive and why?
digital because I am primarily a digital designer. If I had to archive the analog way, I'd need a warehouse—which we have for our books and print samples but we are planning to give, sell or recycle 90% of it (more than a ton) to save on rent.


AIGA Icons
AIGA. Icontrol poster, 1998



Last Updated on Monday, 26 September 2011 03:34