I first learnt of Oded Ezer's work during my final year at the LCC.  In A Typographer's Guide to the Galaxy, Cinzia Ferrara writes about Oded's working proccess. Her writing made my heart beat oddly with excitement. I was immediately fascinated and contacted him to ask if he would be willing to have me for a few months at his studio in Tel Aviv. He said yes. Between September and November 2009, I documented my time spent with Oded. The many lessons he taught me are invaluable and will stay with me for the rest of my career. 

Day 4 Wednesday 9/09/09

Today was highly odd. I felt a desperate need to be inspired or influenced by something; a reaction to wanting to please Oded and come up with something wonderful. How wrong I was. I wanted to go to Jaffa and failed to find a bus. I ended up on the tourist city tour. Despite knowing that such a bus is always a bad idea, I thought an odd experience, headphones and all, might jerk me out of this strange uninspired mindset. I ended up on the 2 hour ‘panoramic’ tour - rather than the hop-on/hop-off, take your time, be inspired tour. When we arrived in Jaffa, desperate to explore, I couldn't get off the bus. Ha. Marvelous. By the time we got to the Dizengoff I had to jump – much to the bemusement of the American tourists who were having a wonderful time.

In relief of my freedom I went for some lunch around the corner from my flat. Having not spoken to anyone all day, I was surrounded by conversations that I couldn't understand and words I couldn't read. I realised that the only input I had had all day was visual. I longed to be engaged in conversation with someone or to overhear something that would inspire me. Returning home, I felt very sorry for my poor design-self. Later a friend said to me on Skype, “Situations will arise - like moving to a new country - that break all your rules, but if your gut says yes then don't fight it, go with it and you'll change for the better."

Despite having achieved ‘nothing’ for tomorrow, I go to bed.

Day 5 Tuesday 10/09/09

I arrived at Oded's for 9. I explained my previous day, he understood. We ate breakfast and laughed. I sit and scratch my head for 3 hours, drawing up abstract resolutions and trying desperately to be rational which in turn might lead me to the desired resolution. Wrong again.

Oded and I sit down at 12 and discuss my progress. I show him my drawings. He tilts his head to one side, engaged with my thinking. I’m not sure he understands me. He says, “Lucy, I've realised the problem since you've been here. You're trying to problem solve. Things don't get resolved this way, you need to imagine.” I question my drawings and say, “Here, is this not imaginative?” He says, “No, it's problem solving.”  I realise that all good work comes from that place. Not from the rational side of life, but from the imagination. Hussein Chalayan's work that so engaged me six months ago at the Design Museum came from the imagination. I had not seen the future before because it does not yet exist. He showed it to me. Somewhere along the line I was beginning to feel like I’d missed the train.

Oded explained to me that I currently think like a typical design graduate. At college you're always working to a deadline and always working to please your tutors and your institution. “You don't have to think like that anymore.” He tells me, “That's why you're here. Good luck.” I'm struck by the idea and sit staring at a blank piece of paper for 10 minutes. A friend of Oded's, Yasha Rozov, arrives for lunch and asks me why I'm here with Oded. I laugh and say, “good question” as Oded explains how he's just taken the ground from beneath my feet. Flicking through a book of influential designers, Oded says, “All of these people understand what I've just told you.” It makes complete sense.

Regarding the Typo Zurich project, Oded asks me to let go and imagine. How would type taste if you ate it, how would it smell if you could smell it? If our eyes are the only realistic input sense for typography - but in a non-concrete way we also experience type through our other senses - how do we communicate this visually? I feel like I've been slapped with the imagination fish. After 5 years at design school - this is new to me.

I look up the definition of imagination. "The faculty or action of forming new ideas or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses… The ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful." When I listened to Kenya Hara speak in India last year, and later on reading his book, I associated with his process and thought it was wonderful... but I didn't understand the depths of where it came from. Now I do. Oded says to me, “The way to solve a problem is not to try and solve a problem; it is to imagine a resolution.”

Degree shows would be vastly different if design students were taught this.

Read Lucy's first entry here, and stay tuned for the next installament of Lucy's Design Diary next week. In the meantime, check out Lucy Brown Studio on jotta and her personal website. 

See Oded Ezer's Typembrya