Dan Eames


I’m an Irish designer and design researcher currently based in Amsterdam.


I work in design and innovation consulting, tackling local and international challenges across various sectors, including public services, healthcare, and sustainability.

I’m a passionate (co-)creative facilitator with hands-on experience applying design thinking, systems thinking, and futures thinking to complex challenges at international organizations such as Accenture, ASML, and Aon.

I recently earned a master’s degree in Information Design↗ from Design Academy Eindhoven. 

I also have a personal graphic art practice exploring the visual semantics of systems, and I’m a qualified yoga instructor.


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Diagramming Design: a cross-disciplinary workshop and visual lexicon


Design Research   |   Information Design  |   Visual Design 









When I need to articulate a thought, I reach for paper and pencil. There’s something about the simplicity of a pencil line on white paper that takes me back to school—life drawing in art class or ellipses in technical drawing class. More recently, I've been exploring systems thinking and the value of hand-drawing in appreciating systemic complexity.



Course
MA Information Design
Design Academy Eindhoven


Tutors 
Marco Ferrari
Geert Staal
Simon Davies


Challenge
Fostering collaboration between designers of diverse disciplines can be challenging, especially when their methods and terminologies have come to differ significantly. This project aimed to bridge these gaps, creating renewed conversations around design methods and processes.

Objective
During thesis research, I identified diagram-making as a unique co-creative method to promote knowledge-sharing across design disciplines. My goal was to develop a workshop methodology as well as an accompanying compendium of diagrams that catalog some of the most popular and influential design methods and processes.





Process

The workshop concept was initially developed and documented in my thesis (see here). To bring this research into practice, I gathered resources from academic literature, industry tools, social media, and design libraries, building a compendium that spans some major academic and commercial design disciplines.

Each diagram was distilled into fundamental visual elements, categorized, and hand-drawn onto a 6x2 meter artwork. This piece serves as a visual guide and reminder of fundamental commonalities.

It also acts as a critical prompt, questioning whether design knowledge can truly be be encapsulated in a series of shapes and arrows or if if it all amounts to mere diagrammatic jargon.