Jason Mayden, author of A Kids Book About Design, talks about unlocking the design potential within every kid.
Jason Mayden, author of A Kids Book About Design, talks about unlocking the design potential within every kid.
A Kids Book About Design (view book)
Full Book Description:
This is a book about design and exists to unlock the design potential within every kid. Designers work in different ways, but all of them use creativity and compassion to solve problems and make things that in turn make the world a better place. Through the author's personal experience and multi-step process, empower the kid in your life to share their ideas, make, create, and be the best designer they can be.
About the Author:
Jason Mayden (he/him) is a designer, educator, and entrepreneur dedicated to the advancement of diverse creative youth. When he’s not designing, he enjoys spending time with his wife, two children, and their rambunctious French bulldog.
*If you want to be on a future episode of A Kids Book About: The Podcast or if you have a question you’d like us to consider, have a grownup email us at listen@akidsco.com and we’ll send you the details.
A Kids Book About: The Podcast
S3E06, Jason Talks About Design
[INTRODUCTION]
Matthew: What is design? Like, what do we mean when we talk about design?
Jonah: When I hear the word design, I think of a graphic, maybe a logo or something, that you make or you engineer to build something.
The word design can go many ways, so there are many different perspectives on what it is.
Jason: So, most people think design is providing solutions. The real job of design is to ask the biggest questions that helps to move humanity forward.
So my job is discovery, and in discovering ways that I can serve using my gifts and talents, I'm able to meet people from all around the world, and I'm able to find proper solutions that help the most amount of those people. So the job of a designer is to be paid to remain curious, so it's a pretty cool job.
Matthew: Welcome to A Kids Book About: The Podcast! I’m Matthew. I’m a teacher, a librarian, and I’m your host.
The voices you heard just a moment ago were from Jonah and Jason.
Each week we talk about the big things going on in your world with a different author from our A Kids Book About series.
Jason: My name is Jason Mayden. I am a designer, educator, entrepreneur, father, and husband. And I am the author of A Kids Book About Design.
[TOPIC FOUNDATION]
Matthew: What comes to mind when you think about something being designed? Or the work of a designer?
My brain always goes to Project Runway, this fashion competition where designers compete to make the most amazing garments for the runway. But that’s just one example of design in a world of literally hundreds of thousands of examples.
What about you, listeners? What other things in your world are designed?
Jonah: Some things that are designed can be art, can be video games, can be icons or anything that has to do with maybe making something or something that someone does.
Matthew: Absolutely! The purpose of design is far-reaching, affecting almost every single thing you wear or experience or visit or buy and on and on.
Jason: The purpose of design is pretty straightforward: to create efficiencies, to create solutions to, you know, problems in society. Things like how you transport people through a city. That's called a railway or a metropolitan, you know, city bus route. Those things are designed.
So we create efficiencies in the world. That's what we should do.
Sometimes we create things that are just meaningful and beautiful. That becomes art, that becomes sculpture.
So design in and of itself is either solving a problem or creating a moment of wonder and joy.
And for me, I've been able to do both.
Matthew: Design. Is. Everywhere.
Jason: If you know how to look at the world, you can see design embedded in every single thing you touch.
So the systems of education, finance, government, healthcare, all of those were designed by someone. They identified an absolutely large question: How do we help deploy, you know, clinics within the inner city? How do we help get resources to people in rural America? Then they figured out ways to design a supply chain, to design, you know, efficiencies, meaning “How do I get it to 'em in the quickest amount of time and the lowest amount of cost?”
So design doesn't always have to be a physical, actual product. Sometimes it's systems, sometimes it's philosophies. All of that is a form of design. So just like you can draw shoes and you can draw airplanes, you can also draw conclusions. You can say, “Wait, if I did this, then that helps that person.” So it's a really cool field because it's applicable to anything.
[PERSONAL CONNECTION TO TOPIC]
Matthew: Jason’s interest in design started at an early age and really took hold. And it all started with a comic you know and a character you might not yet know named Dr. Lucius Fox of Wayne Enterprises.
Jason: So Dr. Lucius Fox is, for lack of a better word, he's my hero. He actually is the gentleman that designs all the gadgets for Batman. He's the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. He was Bruce Wayne's father's best friend. He was the person that was entrusted to raise Bruce after he was orphaned.
And what was more important about his representation is that he looked like me. That was the first time I saw someone that was technical, analytical, suave, charismatic. Like, he was this enigma, this person that I didn't know existed.
I discovered him as a seven year old kid in a hospital fighting septicemia.
Matthew: Septicemia is an infection in your blood.
Jason: So I couldn't physically do a lot of things. I couldn't move around. I couldn't play. But I can read and in reading the comic book, Batman #307, that was the first time Lucius appeared in the story arc. It was the donated comic book to the hospital. It was beat up. It was a few years old. I kept it. And I kept going back and reading and wondering, “What is his story? How did he get this job to design for Batman? How did he get this ability? What's his discipline? Did he go to college for this? Who is he?”
And so I've modeled my life and my career after this notion that I want to grow up and become the real life Lucius Fox, so then I can create gadgets for superheroes. And in my world, Michael Jordan was Bruce Wayne. He was the superhero. So that led me to eventually become a person who created gadgets for Michael Jordan, aka, his shoes.
So you could see how, just because I had a childhood interest, I took that interest and I researched it, and I found out more about that topic, it became a vocation. It became a profession.
So when people think that I have a talent, I don't really have a talent. I have an interest applied in a specific direction for a prolonged period of time. That's called discipline.
So anybody can be disciplined, anybody can use interests. There’s no such thing as talent.
So as long as you're focused on what you find interesting, and over time you learn how you can create a life or value from your interest, then you can call yourself talented. So that's what I've done.
Matthew: Let’s take a quick break. And when we return, Jason talks self-expression as a fundamental right to humanity and the power of joy to unlock it all.
Jason: That, that's the gift, man. That's the goal for me, is to be in service of humanity because I don't believe in ownership, I believe in stewardship. You know, I've been entrusted to have a certain skillset. I didn't pick what I was good at at birth. And I know that that is intended to help people that I may never meet.
So, if I could be a person that a kid can look to and say, “Man, I could become like this guy,” that helps because for me, my philosophy is finding the tribe through shared common interests and shared characteristics.
I didn't fit in as a kid. I was a nerd. I was sick. I'm multiracial. I didn't look like most of my friends. And so I had to find ways to connect with people. And it was always over our interests, never over our characteristics. And that gave me joy. 'cause then I traveled the world and found all these unique people that wanted to be my friend because we liked shoes, we liked comic books. And that, I think, is a unifier.
So if you're a kid and you feel alone or you feel different, it's okay. I feel that way all the time. But there is a tribe. There is a group of people that want you to be part of that group. There are people that are waiting to meet you. As long as you express what your interests are, those people can know that, “Oh, I like that too.” And then they gravitate towards you.
So don't be afraid to share what you're into 'cause you never know who else might like it. And you never know the types of friendships you build. And those friendships turn into relationships and partnerships and just lifelong journeys together. And I’ve done that. And I feel grateful that I didn't try to fit in. I embraced my, my, my inner nerd and I kept it.
Matthew: We’ll be back in just a moment.
[BREAK]
Matthew: Welcome back to A Kids Book About: The Podcast. On today’s episode we’re talking about design with A Kids Book About author Jason Mayden.
If you’ve been listening to this show for a couple episodes, you know I have a habit of asking people how they feel about the topic that’s centered in their book. Is it something with which you’ve got a personal relationship? Something that challenges you? Something that’s made you grow?
But this is probably the first interview where I can say with confidence that you, listeners, already know exactly how Jason feels about design. You can feel it, right? Every time he speaks you can feel it.
Jason? Tell us! How does designing something or the design process itself make you feel?
Jason: Oh, that's such a great question.
Every single thing I work on, whether it's designing on behalf of athletes and entertainers, or sitting with the startup founder and helping 'em think through difficult problems of how to manage their team and build an organization, to meeting kids, you know, in elementary school, middle school, high school, and teaching them about the art and practice and business of design, it just gives me a sense of joy.
I understand that work, even work that isn't compensated, is still valuable work when you're operating within the boundaries of your gift. So if my gift is creativity and design and I ask myself, “How can I use my gifts and talents to serve this person, this organization, or this moment,” then I'll always have the law of reciprocity work in my favor, meaning that joy is how I'm compensated because I get a chance to see the light glove come on in someone's brain when I help them pull all the messiness of their imagination and put it into a single direction, into a form, into an image.
And that means the world to me because I feel everybody should have the feeling of being able to have the things they think in their head come to life in real life. I think that's a fundamental right of humanity is to express ourselves. And so I have a gift of helping the people express themselves and I feel joyful.
And I've never once did it because there's money involved. I did it because there's meaning involved. And meaningfulness, it gives your a life of purpose. It gives you a hard posture of gratitude. And it gives you this idea that I have an intentional purpose. Because sometimes we think our purpose is our skillset. It's not our skillset. Our skillsets are perishable. They're determined by how much someone wants to pay for that skillset. Your purpose is how you make people feel.
If your purpose is to make people laugh, then go outta your way to brighten people's humor. If your purpose is to, you know, bring into the world photography, then use that. Give someone a chance to see something gives them a sense of peace, because you have this gift.
So as long as you're operating within the boundaries that I give, you’ll always feel joy in the work. And it never feels like a job. It always feels like play. And that’s essentially how I’ve structured my life.
Matthew: Reading from A Kids Book About Design, “One thing I’ve learned in my journey as a designer is that… design has to be inclusive and reflect the whole world around us.”
Listeners, what do you think Jason means by design being inclusive? What does he mean when he says that design has to reflect the whole world around us?
Turn to a neighbor, a sibling, a friend, a grownup, and share. Make sure you also listen as they share with you. And if you don’t have anyone with whom to share, you can think your answer to yourself, or you can say it aloud to me. I may not be able to hear you, but I promise I am listening.
What does it look like for design to be inclusive and to reflect the whole world around us?
Jason: Yeah, yeah. So think of this: There's this concept of intersections. When you're driving down the street, everybody has to pass through an intersection. There are people coming from different directions, going different speeds, going from somewhere to somewhere.
That's how I see design: intersections. In the middle is where you find beauty. Most people look at differences. Differences separate us. They make us feel like we're isolated within the categorical construct. “I am this. This is who I am. I'm from this city. This is my context. This is my reality.”
My job is to find the connective tissue between everything. What's the one thing we all agree on that we believe to be true? And then how can I provide that truth to the most amount of people?
So design, for me, I call it intersectional, meaning all these factors that make us feel alone and separate, there's at least one thing that we can figure out that we all love and agree to. And once we do figure out that one thing, the people like me can go and create it and then scale it.
So I search for similarities. I don't search for differences. And when you start to search for similarities, once again, it opens you up to being a student because you get to learn so much about people and their context.
Because remember, we open up our phone and the way we treat technology in the algorithm determines our version of reality. So there's no way for me to tell you your reality is wrong or my reality's wrong because we all have trained our phones and our news cycles to show us what we already can agree to. So when you find the things that we both agree to, that's where you get to have a conversation through product. You get to have a conversation through, you know, through art and through discourse and through, you know, food and music.
And that for me is all I care about: creating conversations that bring people search similar necessarily feel like a physical characteristic, but more like an interest. Like, I'm interested in shoes. Okay, cool. I know a million people that like shoes. That means I can have at least one thing to talk about with them. So I'll never be in a room and never feel like I don't have a chance to relate to people, because I know I can look at someone's shoes and say, “I like those,” and then you strike up a conversation.
So that's what design is for me, man. It's those intersections of where, no matter where you're coming from or where you're going, we all have to cross over at some point and meet in the middle somewhere. And I try to find that middle.
Matthew: Jason has talked about design from all different angles, but now it’s up to you, listeners. See yourself in his words. Believe that your ideas can challenge and change the world.
Jason: You have so many different things that you touch and interact with every single day. Ask yourself, “How can I make this better? What can I learn by taking this apart and figuring out how it works? What if I could create a version of this that, you know, is able to be given to kids all over the world?” Question everything.
As a child. I didn't just wanna buy shoes. I sat in the store and I drew shoes. And I wanted to understand how they were made, how they were assembled, where the materials came from.
Like, don't just play with your toys. Don't just watch a cartoon; figure out who created it. Where were the toys made? What types of materials? What types of jobs actually create toys?
So that to me is exciting because kids can look at everything in their environment and they have a sense of wonder and joy, and they're able to pick up a box and turn it into a spaceship with their imagination. That's design.
So just as you go through your day, take notice of the things that you're interested in and then ask yourself, “If I had the job to make that, what would I do? How would I make it better?” And that's simply where it starts. Just remain curious. Because when you have curiosity with your superpower, then creativity becomes your jump shot. It becomes a thing that creates opportunities for you. And that's all I've ever done.
I know it wasn't gonna go and be a professional athlete. I was good at sports, but I didn't love it enough to try to become pro. I was better at creativity. And so I took the same philosophy I had as an athlete, and I used it for design. And so I tell people all the time, “Creativity is my jump shot. That's what helps me to develop, you know, great relationships and create value for myself.”
Matthew: Closing thoughts from our guest. Words you’ll really want to hear. Words you can come back to when you need them most. Here’s Jason.
Jason: The thing that I wanna share with kids is that you don't have to let anybody or anyone tell you that you're capable of living your dreams. You have to tell yourself.
I'm a person that is neurodivergent. It means I have autism. And according to what people think of autistic people. I'm not supposed to be in my job. I'm not supposed to do the things that I do. I'm not supposed to have the life that I have. But I refuse to accept that anything that I'm going with is meant to harm me or hurt me. That it makes me different. And it makes me special. And it gives me a chance to create beautiful things for people who are just like me.
So don't let anyone ever tell you that who you are is wrong and who you are is not enough. Because we need every version of every type of person in order to make this world beautiful, because this world really is not a melting pot. It's a mosaic, which means that each little piece is independently beautiful. But when we all come together, we make a massive image of beauty and diversity and qualities and characteristics that are all equally valuable.
So just know you are enough. There isn't a pair of shoes or clothes or title or job that's gonna make you any more important than you are right now. You're enough. And just carry that with you for the rest of your life. I'm telling you, you'll have a life full of joy and a wonder and imagination, and you'll meet some really cool people.
[CLOSING]
Matthew: Thank you to Jason Mayden, author of A Kids Book About Design, for joining us today. And special thanks to Jonah for lending their voice to this episode.
Jonah: Hi, my name is Jonah. I'm 13 years old and I live in Maryland.
Matthew: A Kids Book About: The Podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Matthew Winner. Our executive producer is Jelani Memory.
And this show was brought to you by A Kids Co.
Follow the show wherever podcasts are found and check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsco.com.
Join us next time for a conversation about neurodiversity with A Kids Book About author Laura Petix.