Publication: Super-fun book makes Conditional Design movement manifest

You may remember a couple of years ago that brilliant illustrator (brillustrator? Anyone?) Marion Deuchars tickled us every shade of pink with her Let’s Make Great Art book which revelled in the sheer ruddy fun of the creative process. That’s what sprung to mind on receiving a copy of the Conditional Design Workbook from the team at Studio Moniker. Designers Luna Maurer, Jonathan Puckey and Roel Wouters worked with artist Edo Paulus to produce this super-fun hands on guide to some of the ideas that underpin the Conditional Design manifesto.

The idea behind the movement is to harness the creative power of play to produce design solutions that and the manifesto states: “Instead of operating under the terms of graphic design, interaction design, media art or sound design, we want to introduce Conditional Design as a term that refers to our approach rather than our chosen media. We conduct our activities using the methods of philosophers, engineers, inventors and mystics.”

All of which sounds kind of theoretical (which it could be) but the joy of this publication is that it makes these ideas manifest in a way that is engaging, participatory and utterly joyful through its ten team games. A couple of essays at the back anchor the exercises into a wider conceptual framework giving readers the choice how much depth they what to go into.