Approaches
Julian is a Generalist. His approach to work entangles his multiple disciplines, skills, experiences, and overall curious character. His Generalist sensitivities combine engineering, design, prototyping, Design Fiction, futurist sensibilities, multivalent research and an appreciation of the beautifully mercurial character of the inhabited world, full of the vagaries of real user experiences.
“Interdisciplinary activity, valued today as an important aspect of research, cannot be accomplished by simple confrontations between various specialized branches of knowledge. Interdisciplinary work is not a peaceful operation: it begins effectively when the solidarity of the old disciplines breaks down—a process made more violent, perhaps, by the jolts of fashion—to the benefit of a new object and a new language, neither of which is in the domain of those branches of knowledge that one calmly sought to confront.”
— Roland Barthes, in “From Text to Work”
Getting outside of the brain and into the material-matter has been shown to be a valuable ingredient for creativity. Physical prototyping in hardware, firmware, and software is a key component of Julian’s approach to creative work. This is a prototype of his first effort at commercial hardware at his company OMATA.
Making to Think
Getting ideas out of the imagination and into the world — this is the beautiful challenge of the creative process. The translation of vision into material. This is where an open sense of creative, design-inspired possibility marries perfectly with Julian’s ability to implement and execute as an engineer.
‘Making to think’ means materializing the imagination. It means making the imagination tangible enough to evaluate, consider, ponder and evolve. The imagination should be allowed to effervesce materially, and not just with a PowerPoint deck.
This is a crucial component of Julian’s creative process.
Why? Because a materialized thing gives ideas effective recall. It can live in the world more completely and as a tangible reminder, less easily lost than a document somewhere in the Cloud. And significantly, the effort required to think beyond and outside of the brain, using the hands (whether banging plastic squares to code software, or machining a 3D object) and with the small physical efforts such requires all adds positively to the creative process in a way that thinking purely in the brain or with non-materials like PowerPoint slides simply cannot contribute as effectively, and with as much acuity.
Julian with his friend, mentor, and noted science-fiction author Bruce Sterling marveling over one of Thomas Edison’s original patent models while on a private tour at the Henry Ford Museum.
Futurist
It sounds haughty to call onself a Futurist. What does that even mean? Julian calls himself one, and he means it in a very precise way. He doesn’t pretend to be a prognosticator nor predictor of things. Rather he considers himself a Futurist who helpfully and productively questions assumptions and beliefs about what the future might possibly looks like, and what it could possibly mean to live in a changed world.
To be ‘Futuristic’ means looking at the world with a different set of assumptions about what could be, driven by a clear sense of purpose, values, and ethics that would encourage the creation of a more habitable world. This kind of ‘Futuristic’ requires someone like Julian who sees the world just a bit sideways, creating and anticipating the alternatives that surround and are orthogonal to the status quo.
Julian’s studio in Venice Beach, configured while producing creative content for taking over the Design Museum’s social media in support of their ‘Home Futures’ exhibition, 2018.
Range
Julian considers himself a Generalist, and routinely hops between being an electrical engineer, computer programmer, product designer, visual storyteller, builder of communities, researcher, photographer, futurist and strategist. Julian is, technically speaking, multi-disciplinary. He ends up as the one in the room who happens to have the technical skills to imagine how an idea or strategy might be implemented up and down the stack — from technical specifications to brand soul.
He has over a decade of experiences building brands strategically and technologically. He knows what it takes to design and manufacture everything from hardware to ‘brandware’ that runs it all.
https://walkerart.org/magazine/julian-bleecker-design-fiction-the-future-never-gets-old
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
— Robert Anson Heinlein, Science Fiction Author