Reflecting on the agile thinking everyday life requires, FRAME's design director Barbara Iwanicka explains how our Autumn issue embodies the idea that flexibility births great design.
After three weeks of train travel across Europe, I feel like I’ve reached a new level of agility. Despite my usually well-organized self, I had to become super flexible, quick, and efficient in responding to constantly changing conditions. Trains can be delayed, crowded, or uncomfortably hot; kids can be tired, whiny, or overly hyped on sweets – no judgment, please. All in all, travel almost never goes exactly as planned, and we never know what’s waiting for us at the next stop. But, in a priceless way, that’s what makes it all worth it. What I enjoy most about travelling by train is its pace and the way it allows you to connect with the places you pass, watching the landscape slowly change before your eyes. A train journey feels like a time capsule, where you're both forced and privileged to spend extended time together with others.
Just before my holiday I saw Wim Wenders' film Perfect Days, which beautifully explores the concept of gradual change. The movie follows the life of Hirayama, a Tokyo toilet cleaner whose seemingly mundane daily routine reveals the slow but persistent nature of personal transformation. As the days unfold, small, almost imperceptible shifts in his behaviour, interactions and perceptions accumulate, painting a portrait of a man quietly evolving. Hirayama’s interactions with others are minimal, yet each connection, whether with a stranger or a familiar face, subtly alters his internal landscape. Hirayama undoubtedly has many experiences, memories, and perceptions, but we can only discover what they are by observing his daily life. Each day adds a new layer to his character, a new understanding or a new emotion.
FRAME’s autumn issue similarly explores designing in an age of uncertainty, highlighting how creatives and their projects can stay adaptable and resilient amidst constant change. The title, Enter the Unknown, led us to search for a fitting typeface, and when we discovered Sligoil, a monospace font designed by Ariel Martín Pérez, it resonated with us. The typeface isn’t particularly ‘flexible', but its small cuts and adjustments to the characters convey a sense of inevitable, though gradual, change. Sligoil was originally designed for the video game Unknown Number, where players use their voice to navigate the user interface and become integral creators of the storyline. We found this function both interesting and playful, so we decided to add an organic shape to words and sentences to illustrate the idea of spoken language, which is rarely polished and perfect.
This issue demonstrates how a multidimensional understanding of flexibility can lead to new design solutions, showing that sometimes the most significant transformations happen not through grand gestures but through the quiet, consistent rhythm of everyday encounters and experiences.
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