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Earlier this year, back when we could travel and be in rooms with other people I went to (and spoke at!) Service Design in Government Conference. I had an incredible time, and left feeling more determined and inspired than I’d felt in a long while.  There was something in the idea of taking a step back and consequence scanning what we do, to ensure the impacts of our work butterfly out positively. There was also something in hearing about the personal work, and provocations, people had felt compelled to undertake whether that was baking cake or creating environmental service standards.

I knew I wanted to commit to doing more meaningful personal work and reconnect with the manifesto I wrote for my work when I turned 26, because as much as I’d always believed in those values I hadn’t been actively living them.

Imagining Future Spaces is my first attempt at a first attempt at that.

Imagining Future Spaces was an idea I had in response to two moments. The first was a talk by the incredible Cassie Robinson where she asked “what has happened to our imaginations?” and advocated for social dreaming. The second was a series of conversations I had with friends and loved ones while we were on the brink of COVID-19 where despite seeing the effects take hold elsewhere, we couldn’t describe what impact a lockdown would have on our days let alone what a life post-pandemic might be like.

There are likely hundreds of complex and interwoven reasons why our imaginations appear to be weakening, or at least appear to be able to imagine themselves out of the status quo in anything other than a dystopian horror. 

But one thing I have always believed to be true is that you can get better at anything if you commit to practising. So I thought I’d put my skills as a researcher and illustrator (AKA I like questions and weird juxtapositions) to use and create a space to practise. 

That’s where the 52 questions that make up Imagining Future Space came from. There’s one for every day of the year or card in a deck. There are just enough to create sustained practise and or a space for play. 

Learning from the questions posed by Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone and Bator in The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness, better known as the 36 Questions that lead to love, these questions get more personal and more abstract as they go. They’re designed to be a challenge. They cover small tactile things like what’s in your pockets, to more social questions about our relationships as well as bigger questions about how we’ll stay fed and healthy. I tried to make sure I asked about a wide range of subject and kept the questions as open to a wide range of responses as I could. But they do only offer imaginary snapshots of what alternative worlds could look and feel like. In order to truly imagine and design sustainable new worlds, we need to think in systems, but that’s a challenge bigger than today.

Each question comes with a random set of three conditions (some realistic, some silly)  to challenge your imagination but also take away the fear of a blank page. The “in world where” offers some environmental, social and value based context that hopefully offers just enough of a push out of the everyday to lead people to think about alternative possibilities. 

There were moments where it felt self-indulgent to start a project like this. Who am I to create and curate a space like this? But after a while I reconciled myself with that feeling, imagining the future is work for everyone. Even if it is self-indulgent, I learned a lot making it and I think I’m going to continue to learn a lot through using it.

Whether it was writing the questions, creating 54 illustrations that were aimed to inspire fun and lateral thinking in responses, or building the site in wordpress, reviving my tiny bit of coding knowledge, putting the thing together reaffirmed to me that this is the kind of personal work I want to be making. The complexity of the project challenged me in a way I haven’t challenged myself in a while.

The first launch of the site is only a starting point though. I’ll be adding more creative thinking tools to try to make the process as supported as possible. I also want to draw on my anthropology studies at Goldsmiths and add some context to each question to show how different societies are currently creating their own alternative worlds whether that’s through how they organise themselves, their environments or their values.

Over the next year I will be trying to create my own responses to each of the questions. I’ll be challenging myself to think of what’s possible, not just what’s probable or plausible. 

I’m hoping other people join me and share their ideas for what alternative worlds might be. They might discuss, draw or describe whatever it is they’re imagining, because the more you make your ideas tangible, the easier it is to start to speculate about and imagine more complex alternatives like what new ways of life might be like. 

Imagining and creating the future needs us all to get involved.

I’d like to imagine a world where we can develop stronger imaginations together and through doing so gain confidence in our own potential and the potential for alternative worlds to exist.  

I’d like to imagine a world where perhaps we might even get to take that belief back into the present and push for positive changes to the world we’re in and shaping all of the time. 

I’d like to imagine a world where fingers crossed there will be ice cream too.

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Barbara Hepworth is one of my favourite artists of all time. I’ve visited her sculptures up and down the country and there’s always something so present and grounding about them, that they make me feel better no matter how discombobulated I might feel.

So, I thought, I’d turn to her work to give me a bit of inspiration and to ground me in these strange times. I’ve not done many artist studies since I was at school. But there was always something liberating and perspective changing about trying to get under the skin of someone else’s work. Plus, my favourite blog posts are the ones that involve a bit of research. So, I’m going to try something a bit old school with this one.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Barbara Hepworth, she’s one of Britain’s most important twentieth-century artists. Born in Wakefield in 1903, she was a pioneer of organic abstract sculpture and is often discussed alongside her contemporary Henry Moore. She’s best known for her  pierced Modernist forms which were made from alabaster, marble, bronze, wood, and aluminum and grew in scale throughout the years. Those sculptures were deeply connected to the human form but also the form of the landscapes they were made in whether that was West Yorkshire, Italy or St Ives.

There’s no one who can speak more eloquently about Barbara Hepworth’s work than the lady herself, so I’ve taken five quotes from her writings to see what I can learn about art, life and how to get the most out of them both.

Making is being

Above all, there was the sensation of moving physically over the contours of fulnesses and concavities, through hollows and over peaks – feeling, touching, seeing, through mind and hand and eye. This sensation has never left me. I, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour.

Extracts from Barbara Hepworth,  A Pictorial Autobiography, Bath, 1971

Hepworth was a leading figure in the the method of direct carving, meaning she made her pieces herself from her chosen material rather than making models for craftsmen to then turn into the final piece, as had been the norm. She spent years in Italy learning her craft and how to work with the materials. This connection between her work and her physicality, comes across as almost giddily empowering in her description. I’m always striving for that sense of being so truly in my body while making, and it’s a wonderful cry for craft and getting in touch with the power of connecting your “mind and hand and eye.”

Everything is contextual

I think sculpture grows in the open light and with the movement of the sun its aspect is always changing; and with space and the sky above, it can expand and breathe. Wood sculptures, of course, are not happy out of doors; but they have other properties more tactile and intimate which relate to an indoor life.

Extracts from Michael Shepherd, Barbara Hepworth, London, 1963

First of all, I love that Hepworth made her sculptures to be touched and I am always fighting the urge to put my hands on the wooden pieces I see in museums. Second the idea that “there’s no fixed point for a sculpture, there’s no fixed point at which you can see it, there’s no fixed point of light in which you can experience it, because it’s ever-changing,” (First retrospective in 1968) is something that changed how I interact with both sculptures and the world more generally. The conditions that align around every experience we have with an artwork are different, meaning every viewing is unique. That’s the same whether the sculpture is a Hepworth or the lamp post outside your house. The more we make our experiences vulnerable to these changes in context and environment, the more life they have and the more variation we’re able to see. 

Work with what’s around you

there are all the beauties of several hundreds of different stones and woods, and the idea must be in harmony with the qualities of each one carved; that harmony comes with the discovery of the most direct way of carving each material according to its nature.

Extracts from ‘Barbara Hepworth – “the Sculptor carves because he must”‘, The Studio, London, vol. 104, December 1932, p. 332

One of the reasons Hepworth took up direct carving was so that she could work with the unique qualities of materials she was using. Their designs had to be harmonious with their substance and the making was a conversation between her desire and the material’s nature. Taking the time to understand what you’re working with, whether that’s “stones and woods”, people, or a space, should always be the first step in a craft. If you don’t know its strengths and its needs, how can you make the most of them? I think that’s also true in life more generally, you have to work with what’s around you and understand that the best “most direct way through” is dealing with a situation “according to its nature” rather than always what you thought would be best at first.

Our lives and our work aren’t separate

A woman artist, is not deprived by cooking and having children, nor by nursing children with measles (even in triplicate) – one is in fact nourished by this rich life, provided one always does some work each day; even a single half hour, so that the images grow in one’s mind.

Extracts from Barbara Hepworth,  A Pictorial Autobiography, Bath, 1971

While Hepworth “asked simply to be treated as a sculptor (never a sculptress), irrespective of sex” (Alan Bowness), it feels wrong to consider her work without the context that she was living through. Hepworth was a wife and a mother at a time when those things came with implicit and explicit expectations of domestic work. She took long breaks from making when she had to care for her children, and was only able to focus on her creative pursuits when supported by nannies or her children being old enough to care for themselves. But she saw these shifts in focus to and from her caring responsibilities just as part of a “rich life”. She was a woman getting the most out of her days. But in order to do that she had to find time, even in an unbalanced weighting, to have a little focus on each part.

Leaving space can make work fuller

The carving and piercing of such a form seems to open up an infinite variety of continuous curves in the third dimension, changing in accordance with the contours of the original ovoid and with the degree of penetration of the material. Here is sufficient field for exploration to last a lifetime.

Extract from ‘Approach to Sculpture’, The Studio, London, vol. 132, no. 643, October 1946

Hepworth is best known for her pierced forms, sculptures you can look, reach and sometimes even climb through. Opening up her pieces also “open[ed] up an infinite variety of” other shapes. Whenever I look through one of her sculptures, I’m taken back to that quote and the idea that creating space within something can make it so much fuller, whether that’s leaving space for interpretation and imagination in what you create or giving yourself space in your day. I think there’s also something poetic about seeing what you create as a lens for the world. The work isn’t the thing, it’s where you get to when you’ve gone all the way through it to the other side.

Those are just five (well six) of my favourite quotes and lessons from Barbara Hepworth. The longer you spend with any piece, the more you can give it your full attention the more you can learn about and from it. I really enjoyed taking this time to focus and be led by Hepworth’s writings on her own work, it felt like a personal conversation rather than a passing glance or skipped through algorithmic recommendation of what to look at next, pausing with intention felt particularly important right now. I’d encourage anyone to do it if they can, whether you pause with your favourite artist, craft, nature or something else. 

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In past years I’ve created and collated illustrated quotes for International Women’s Day. But this year, for IWD 2020, I wanted to take the opportunity to really consider the history of the day, how it came about and what it has meant through the years. So, I’ve put together an illustrated timeline of how this day of protest, solidarity and celebration has developed from the early 1900s to today.

Illustrated timeline of international women's day
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I’m not going to be creating lots of festive content this year as I have in the past. I’ve made so much over the past few years that I’m not sure what I where I would add value or what I would personally find joy in making. But the one thing I am excited to talk about this year are my Christmas cards.

This is the first year I’ve made Christmas cards just for me, not to be sold as well, which meant I felt like I had more creative control than ever before. As I start to make more work that I’m really proud of, I want to get better at reflecting on and talking about the process behind the finished product. 

For my Christmas cards this year, I was torn in two directions at first. There were two styles of cards that had caught my eye in an initial Pinterest pinning spree, cards with a floral base and cards that featured minimal winter scenes. So the first decision I had to make was what direction I wanted to go in. I started brainstorming ideas and found I was finding the floral route easier to picture so I went with my gut, storing the idea of a winter scene away for next year.

With some ideas for imagery, layout and colours all gathered together my design process started in the same way it always does, thumbnails. I’ve really been enjoying paper thumbnails rather than jumping right into a digital medium, there’s something about it that feels a bit freer, plus it was nice to work all within one page.

From those thumbnails, I wasn’t sure I’d quite got the composition right but I knew I wanted a layered botanical illustration that left me some negative space. I think that was a reaction against last year’s highly patterned folk inspired cards.

So I took a leap and just started to draw the plants I knew I wanted to include: fir, winter rose, red berries, mistletoe. In procreate, I had more freedom to move those elements around and quickly settled on the simple central bunch composition.

With my elements in place, getting the colour balance right took me a fair while. I knew I wanted to feature red and white, but finding background greens and blues that worked took a bit of playing around. I don’t have a fixed method for finding a colour palette other than referring back to my colour theory then playing around with families of colours.

The final touches came far more quickly. I added a simple handwritten “Merry Christmas” and a red bow to literally tie everything together. 

Then I went from my portrait illustration into print layout, signing my name on the back.

I print all of my cards with printed.com because I find their service really reliable and good value for small batches of cards. I opted for 300gsm tintoretto gesso card that has a lightly hammered finish because I loved the luxury it added to my tarot cards last year and I thought it would add a bit of extra interest to an otherwise dark and simple card design.

I’m really happy with the finished product. I think they’re the right balance of homemade and professional and the gesso paper has a lovely texture. Now they’re printed, I do wish I’d made the stems of the flowers white and added the little stars that were in my initial thumbnails. Every time I do this there’s something to learn.

Those learnings don’t detract from the fact I’m excited to send them out to everyone I love!

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A couple of weeks ago a new version of my portfolio made its internet debut without a bang. 

 

I’m so proud of the work that went into that stage left entrance and the little static show it’s putting on. So I wanted to share something of its backstory, because it’s a backstory of reinvention, technical triumph and procrastination.

 

This change came about because more and more people from my “real life” were finding my website and I was embarrassed by it. I wasn’t embarrassed because it was objectively bad, but because it felt like I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I’d made an online presentation of myself that didn’t feel connected to the me that people met in real life. 

So, in this new site you won’t find any cards (or anything else) for sale right now. I’d made the decision to make cards 3 years ago when I thought that was what you had to do if you wanted to be an illustrator online. But I was never 100% happy with the cards I’d made and the way I’d tacked them on didn’t feel good. So , in Marie Kondo style, I’ve gotten rid of them because they didn’t spark joy.

 

In fact, I’ve dropped almost all references to just being an illustrator. I’m trying to make the work I do during the day (the more research based stuff) and the work I do on an evening (the more visual stuff) a more cohesive whole. That’s why there are fewer examples of my work up right now. I’m in the process of producing more of the type of thing I’d like to be making not just what I’ve been asked to do in the past.

 

Because the reason for my change was all about content, that’s where I start my design work. I spent time sketching out what I ultimately want to make more of and how I want to support myself making those things. I stuck with pen and paper drafting out how I wanted to talk about what I do. I think taking the time to really think about the story I wanted to tell, away from the web side of things, gave me much more focus and purpose than I’ve ever had when designing past portfolios, where I’ve just dived in.

I stayed on paper to sketch out how I wanted to organise that information across the site and on the pages themselves. I’m no UI designer, but I went though sites I loved and tried to find elements that I thought would structure and highlight my work in the way I wanted. Through that process of searching for inspiration and like a magpie picking up what was shiny for my own nest, I ended up with a clear sense in my mind of how I wanted the site to look, feel and behave.

 

For the last three years, my portfolio has been hosted on Squarespace. Squarespace is an absolutely brilliant tool for quickly making lovely websites, particularly if you have your own store. But I was worried it wouldn’t be flexible enough for me to build something that really felt like it was my own. That sense of ownership was so important to this process for me. I wanted an identity I had crafted rather than fit into. So, I decided to look into other options and ended up going with Semplice. Semplice is a designer’s portfolio builder and came highly recommended by UXers at work. Not one to just rely on a recommendation, I weighed up the pros and cons before I purchased.

I’m really glad I went with Semplice in the end. I feel like I’m in complete control and that what I’ve made is flexible enough to carry me into the future. For anyone else considering Semplice, I will say that it does take longer to build a site than with the out of the box solutions. That was a price worth paying for me. The only regret I have is that the blog element isn’t as customisable as I would have liked, but I’m looking into what I can do with the little coding knowledge I have and raiding github.

 

That said there are bits of the site I absolutely adore. I like the warmer colour palette that feels at once neutral and bright. I’m so glad I took the time to create a font based on my handwriting to use as the titles. I think it speaks to the hand drawn nature of so much of my work in a way that no google font ever could. I love the animations and the way they’re both examples of my illustration and my personality. I even like the photo of me (as taken by the wonderful Sian) on the about. I typically hate having my picture taken, but I think having my real self as part of the internet presentation of myself is such a good way to bridge the divide that had been pulling me apart before this project.

It’s not all been plain sailing though.

 

All in all, I think it took me 6 months or so to get something out of the door and onto the internet. 

 

I had a lovely to do list on my wall all summer. I knew what I wanted to make and I knew how to do it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to just sit down and do it. 

 

I’m not normally a procrastinator, in no small part because I don’t give myself the time. So what was different about this? That’s what I kept asking myself. 

 

I think it came down to two things. First, it was a project for myself, meaning it felt like it was the least important thing on my to do list at any given time. Second, I’d put all of this pressure on it being not just a representation of a tiny bit of myself that I could use when I needed it, but it actually being me.

 

I’m not sure if that makes sense. There’s a lot of discussion about how to be visible is to exist online, and in a way it is. But not to be visible, or not to be shown in my best light, doesn’t mean I, the physical I, cease to exist. In fact, the visible internet I isn’t even all that well seen. 

 

A portfolio is just a way to showcase my work to real people. It’s not me. It’s also not a big deal for anyone else and I have to own that. It’s not a negative. It’s not a comment on my personhood. It’s actually quite empowering to try to view it as a sticky tape and cardboard project in my bedroom rather than a grand presentation.

 

On Instagram I described it as a piece of string project, it could be as long and winding as I made it. But I needed to make the cut. So I did.

 

The version of www.natalieharney.com you see online today isn’t “done” but it’s never going to be “done”. There are more projects I want to share, page elements I want to refine, load issues I want to smooth out. But it’s a start and a start that I’m proud to share.