Research

Name: Span
Price range: $

A design studio should propose brighter futures. Span prioritizes self-initiated projects and research initiatives that cultivate new ideas, bridge different ways of thinking, and challenge expectations about the role of design.

Projects

Our studio regularly explores new dimensions through self-initiated projects including new technologies, visual play, and cultural contributions.

Countdown

Countdown is a short film and live performance created in collaboration with Manual Cinema. The story follows an un-named protagonist as she attempts to escape from numbers that frantically shift around her.

Terraria

Terraria proposes to turn ecosystems into collectibles to gather before they disappear. 3D terrariums emerge from custom letterforms, each containing one of nine different biomes — grasslands, wetlands, mountains, tundra, rainforest, stream, desert, ocean, and forest.

Sitting With Myself

Sitting With Myself is a digital time capsule featuring different explorations of personal and perceived identity. 21 volunteers from different points of view were interviewed and photographed in early August 2021.

Visibility Mask

Visibility Mask is a digital design research initiative created during the end of the COVID-19 pandemic as a reflection of our heightened awareness of the space around us. Using AR, the space we take up with our breath is made visible.

Type Cast

Type Cast is a short digital play performed as a constructed dialogue between two individuals, each wearing typographic clothing in conversation with each other.

Macbeth Ballet

Span, in collaboration with Chicago Repertory Ballet, designed three acts of immersive animation to amplify the dynamic and bold character of this original choreographed interpretation of the famous Scottish play.

Initiatives

Our research initiatives compromise larger, multi-project investigations around a topic or theme, all in the effort of gaining a deeper understanding of design’s potential towards expression and ideation.

Reaching Out of Reach

Reaching Out of Reach is a digital design research initiative conceived by Span during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to the new socially-distant way of life. As humans, we need to connect. How can we design new physical user interfaces that bring us together when we have to stay apart?

Touch

As we quarantine, we feeling disconnected with those who we care about most. Span imagined an interface that communicates touch through light, animation, and warmth, allowing loved ones to share an embrace even if they are miles apart. As people touch the sphere, the location, duration, and intensity of the gesture is transmitted to a matching sphere in real time.

Breathe

As time passes by in isolation, the need to reconnect our minds and bodies becomes more and more vital. Span imagines a virtual three-dimensional space you enter and exit with your mind, designed to practice the purification breath — or yoga’s nadi shodhana pranayama.

Play

In light of the social disconnection caused by the global pandemic, Span imagines a new visual platform that is a collaborative art experience. Digital canvases display simple compositions created by a group of virtual performers.