Through, we look at design

The dictionary of free association

Bas Kools & Yohanna-My Nguyen use another kind of dictionary, a dictionary of free association. We do not see ourselves as graphic or product designer, we are users, observers, thinkers and story tellers, we provide tools for looking and thinking. These tools are not meant as critique but work to enhance our experience of the normal, the daily.

What is this dictionary of free association?
This is the question we are asking. It is a guide for discovering an object by finding a whole new vocabulary of relations and associations to other objects, uses, people, happenings, situations and systems. This project is the start of our journey in search of a tool that can help to associate freely.

How we want to do this
We want to look at design through presenting its “hidden” dimension. This might be pretty vague, therefore as a first action in our search to what we call “The dictionary of free association”, we use two objects. The mug and the book. Two simple and common objects to explain and convey our statement. In a set amount of time we studied these objects through three media:

– text (associations to how people use, think and associate with an object)
– image (thinking through shape and image)
– object (finding a three dimensional expression of our research)

This laid-out and presented together with a book of research forms the first physical form and chapter of our dictionary.
(These stories, images and objects are not based on reality but have close relations to reality and sometimes tell more truth than you might think)

The dictionary of free association, to be continued…
What can it be?

To continue our search to the dictionary of free association we want to ask you to contribute and give us your idea of how to build this dictionary. How would it would look, what does it contain and what is your interpretation of what it can be?