Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Age: Ageless.
Occupation: Design and strategic foresight studio.
Instagram: @prowl__
Hometown: Clearfield, PA (Baillie). Beekmantown, NY (Lauryn).
Studio location: Oakland, CA.
Describe what you make: PROWL is a full-service design futures consultancy focused on responsible design practices and regenerative outcomes. We create tangible design solutions and strategic roadmaps for clients looking to accelerate change. This could manifest into many avenues, from interior space, consumer goods, applications of new materials, and product strategy, to name a few. We also produce Progress Projections, which are our studio’s process for organizing and communicating strategic foresight for our clients.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: We feel the importance of each project as it moves across our desks in the studio. As industrial designers, the weight—both physical and figurative—of the products you design and create can actually weigh on your conscience. We both personally feel an importance to take each project as seriously as the next. But, with all that said, we don’t have any ‘most’s’ or ‘favorites’ at the moment.
Describe the problem your work solves: As a mission-based studio, our motivation is to work toward a more optimistic future for people and the planet than the future we are currently seeing for ourselves. We approach each and every project with a holistic point of view—taking a panoramic outlook of the end-to-end supply chain, a product’s life cycle, and the impact that these products and spaces will have on the people that use them. We feel that this should be the new standard for physical design in general.
Describe the project you are working on now: We are currently working with a startup to design the interiors for an electrically charged camping trailer of the future. This project has been very interesting from the perspective of user behaviors, materials, and even layout since this industry has not been iterated upon in a big way since its inception. The future of electric mobility propels us into a more positive future with the reduction of fossil fuel consumption, something our studio has been really excited to support.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: Our debut exhibition showcase at Alcova during Milan Design Week. We showcased a studio-led furniture collection made up of simple, maintainable, and recyclable components with an overarching narrative around the destructive, yet regenerative, cycle of annual California wildfires. With partners like ByBorre and Brendi Wedinger, we were able to bring the story to life with texture, pattern, and motion.
We designed and are currently developing a 3D printed lighting collection with Gantri, who is also based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Additive manufacturing like 3D printing is a sustainable manufacturing practice that removes overhead, reduces cost, and creates only what is needed; additionally, Gantri uses 100% plant-based filament to produce their work.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: Our dogs. We each have pups (border collie mixes to be exact) and they bring such a good energy to the space. Also, lots of coffee… .and natural light…. and plants.
What you do when you’re not working: It is important for us to balance work with life. We feel so lucky to live in the San Francisco Bay Area where natural spaces exist moments away for retreat. Our combined interests span various outdoor activities like hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, beach going, and sipping beer on mountain tops. We love living in cities just as much as we love escaping them, probably because we are both from super small towns.
Sources of creative envy: We really look up to other femme creatives who have paved / are paving the way for more women to follow.
The distraction you want to eliminate: Trends.
Concrete or marble? Neither, we prefer responsible alternatives.
High-rise or townhouse? Townhouse.
Remember or forget? Remember.
Aliens or ghosts? Don’t we all become one of these in different contexts?
Dark or light? Light!
