POWER TO THE PRO.

PODER PARA EL PROFESIONAL

LE POUVOIR AU PRO

給專業人士的力量

프로 전원

Pros used to love iMac. So I created a PC just for you. It’s packed with the one the most powerful graphics and processors and cost half of what a base iMac Pro 2018 version would cost. For everyone from photographers to video editors to 3D animators to musicians to software developers to scientists, your personal computer is ready to turn your biggest ideas into your greatest work.
There is no doubt that designers most important tool of today is his computer. This thesis explores a personal dilemma that I was struck with while deciding on what is going to be my working tool as a contemporary designer of the future, that fits my needs and is sustainable in long term. I will present the benefits of assembling a computer yourself, the power of a brand and why iMac Pro is just not a rational decision anymore. We all love beautiful design, but to create one, we need the best tool for the job, not the sleekest.

IMITATION OF POWER

IMITACIÓN DE PODER

IMITATION DE POUVOIR

模仿權力

권력의 모방

May 2006, Apple releases a series of ads called “Get a Mac”. It is two men where one is potrayed as a PC and the other as a Mac. PC is dressed in a suit and a tie with glasses, while Mac could be defined as being dressed more casual. The ads run from 2006-2009 and depicts various situations how Mac is better. In the very first episode called Better is where Mac admits PC is good at business stuff like spreadsheets, while he’s better at lifestyle stuff like photos, music, and movies. Lifestyle being the keyword here.

On the Apple side you have cool, trendy and innovative Steve Jobs, the underdog. On the other side you have geeky, bad dressing Bill Gates, with his overwhelming huge business. One represents design, creativity and imagination, while the other speaks to functionality, usefulness and business. It doesn’t make a difference how good or cool looking the Microsoft computer is, the point at which they compete is in a very visual category where products have moved toward becoming accesories, not tools. A lifestyle computer user does not purchase the product for it’s usefulness, but more for its self-expressive advantages, it’s brand image, and status of creativity that comes with the Apple product.

December 14, 2017 Apple releases their flagship computer advertised as the most powerful Mac ever made, with all the other great marketing tools that have allowed them to create this tradition and legacy that people have forgotten to question for what it really is and do they even need it. Together with the new iMac Pro they also released visually appealing trailer for the new computer. The new iMacs were given to a few artists to define the power through the films they make and to showcase the fact that Mac indeed is a tool for creatives. The work showcased in the movies is amazing, but if we pay close attention we can see some sequences come with a gray disclaimer noting that there is additional equipment used for final renders of some sequences. The additional equipment is not defined, nor that it matters more than just the pure fact that the most powerful Mac together with rest of the Apple products, maybe is just not the right choice for a creative professionals anymore. I have been studying graphic design for almost four years now, and have been in some way or another connected to arts and creative field for more than 8 years, during these years I have been developing my view on the world as a critical designer and as human being. Learned to question things and not take anything for granted. Although with that in mind, only recently I have been paying close attention to the main tool in creative field today – computer and for multiple reasons have chosen to be in control of my working tool by building it myself and not just giving in to the convention of Apple.

Being a kid, in my family, we always had desktop PC’s, later one special Christmas evening my parents got me my first personal computer, which was meant for school, but was mostly used for games by me, at that time I had no doubts about windows OS or interest in Apple products. Later on I developed interest for art and design and I got admitted in a highschool with a specialization in fine arts and multimedia. In my art school there were iMac desktop computers available in the media room so that is the point where I understood that I need an apple computer, without even putting much more thought about specifications of the computer or why, but It just seemed to be the tool to use when becoming/being a graphic designer – which is total nonsense looking back at it now! Also at the time of writing this thesis from Royal Academy of Arts, which is exclusively equipped with Apple computers. So there definitely is, even if I just talk from my own experience, this additional pressure for young people getting into arts and design, seeing in movies, schools and where not, creative and cool things happen with an apple computer. If we just do a simple google image search of keywords like designer at work or graphic design studio we get images like this:

It might even feel as a bit of rebellious, nerdy move to not get an apple computer because of all this creative bubble around these devices.

After using my macbook pro for 4 years for my graphic design related task I found myself developing in-depth interest in using 3D software to broaden the posibilities of my creations. I found myself doing some simple models on my laptop and iMac at school but found it to be very inefficient, because the learning curve is very slow if every action you do is calculated for couple of seconds or minutes and after that you realize that is not how you wanted it to be at all, so working on iMac or my macbook pro at the time was even a bit off putting to say the least, as it was so slow, and i am not even talking about rendering image in proper resolution of any kind or animation longer than few seconds which would be basically impossible. I understood that I need a new stationary desktop computer that would be my main working tool as designer and content creator, and would last me for a while. So I was ready for an investment in my future and of course I had heard that Apple had released their new generation iMac Pro. I was very excited until I saw the price tag of the base model which at the moment of writing is 5,497.91 euros. I am not going to go into specifications in this chapter and leave it for comparisons in the chapter called Proffessional power, but for that price and specifications offered it is not a rational decision taking into account there is no customizability, so when the hardware gets outdated that is it, you need to buy a new iMac, and the hardware offered there very will could be outdated in the next 2 years, taking into account the computer hardware technology development speed, especially the graphic cards industry which is the most fast advancing technology of computer science in history due to high demand in game industry.

To put in perspective the speeds of these advancements we can take an example of Moores law proposed by Gordon Moore in 1965 which he showed that the number of components per intergrated circuit was doubling every year and has been doing that till this day for computer processors, then graphics cards have been evolving at a rate of thousand times every 10 years starting with worlds first graphics card GeForce 256 in 1999. In the Keynote presentation of Geforce RTX graphics card Jensen Huang states that at the current rate of development it would takes approximately ten more years to reach real-time ray-tracing technology, but thanks to machine learning denoising posibilities, the real time ray-tracing is already available.

Now that I have assembled my main tool as a graphic designer, I can take the advantages that the hardware of my computer together with latest software can offer. I can be efficient and quick in rendering and learning and/or experimenting without my tool getting into the way of my initial thoughts or possible outcomes. I have regained the control of the process. Since I have personalized the computer’s hardware to my needs, the thought process for creating work has changed for me. I no longer think through what the computer can do for me, of course reasonably I think through my knowledge, but what I mean is, I can start with what I want to make without worrying that, for example, that the polygon count will be too high to handle for my computer or the animation render will take way too long to finish the work on time. I feel I have that extra room with a higher ceiling that just lets your thoughts flow without limiting yourself by some external features limiting me as a creator. Marshall McLuhan states that the book is the extension of the eye, in my case the computer is the extension of mind. Nothing is limitless, and I am not writing science-fiction here and I have even caught myself getting too used to its smoothness and dreaming about it getting even more powerful, but then I remember it is actually possible.

Through assembling my computer I have not only regained control over my thoughts but also to the tool itself. I have connected with the tool in a way that no Apple computer would ever let me. It is sweet that the Apple computer knows my name, but by building the computer I know every part of it and I also can control every part of it. In many ways I am able to go over manufacturers set limits for short periods of time without any adverse side effects, in short, this is called overclocking.

Overclocking might seem like something too sophisticated or dangerous for the system, but actually, if the goal is not to reach extreme levels of overclocking it is possible to make these changes even in the manufactures provided software. As the image above shows, I am able to enter OC mode which stands for Overclocked mode for my graphics card. I enter this mode every time I need to render something, I do not have to, but I can, it gives a slight boost to the performance which means I lower my render times even more than original. This OC mode is preconfigured with necessary voltage so you would not run in any problems, with proper cooling and knowledge it is possible to overclock parts like processor and graphics card to even much higher frequencies than the preconfigured overclock setup. This just shows how much more control a customized PC can offer to a professional in comparison to Apple computers where due limited space and therefore limited thermal solutions overclocking would just cause overheating and damage your system.

Building my own computer and taking control of at least some parts of production and designing I am able to take critical distance from the closed ecosystem that is Apple corporation and not to support it any further in their unethical business practices such as anti-competitive behavior, delibarate slowing down of their older devices through software updates with the intent of selling more new models or its misleading warranties, to name a few.

Here I woud like to adress an issue with apple products, especially computers, that has not much to do with functionality(for given time), but more about servicing the product. Overall Apple is trying to get you to purchase a new device instead of repairing or upgrading it. They are forcefully trying to do their best for consumers to make it impossible for them to service or upgrade their products when there is no clear benefit for the user to be doing it. Diagnostic tools are not released anymore for third-party repair services, which makes impossible for small independent services to fix apple products for cheaper price. In most cases only option is to rely on Apple where the price for repairing can become as high as almost the device itself which leads the consumer to just go for a new product. Even if the diagnostic tools were available, there is another problem since around mid-2012 where the apple macbook pro introduced soldered RAM onto the motherboard, led screen fused onto glass and other manufacturing practices as a way for Apple to keep their consumers out of the hardware they own, as well completely eliminating any upgrade or self-repair possibilities.

The Apple created closed ecosystem could lead to a dead end one day for a professional user or even a regular user. Whether from the hardware of software point of view. As it turns out Apple itself was stuck in their own system – a while after releasing their latest iMac Pro, a youtube channel Linus Tech Tips released a video with a title “Apple REFUSED to Fix our iMac Pro”. As the title says the Apple refused to conduct a repair on the given iMac Pro because the released product did not have yet the necessary training or support structure to make this repair and that their only option was to contact third-party repair services which also run into a dead end because to receive these parts from the headquarters one needs a specific certificate that did not yet exist, so therefore for months this computer went untouched and broken.

Of course this is a very specific case, but still we can see that by choosing Apple as your main professional working tool you are limiting not only your creativity by losing the magic quality point of your own creation by building your own system, but also putting yourself in a uncomfortable situation that makes dependant on Apple expensive repairs if they choose to do so.

PROFESSIONAL POWER

PODER PROFESIONAL

PUISSANCE PROFESSIONNELLE

專業力量

전문성

The necessity of 3D graphics comes with the necessary hardware requirements for working with 3D software.  Efficient work in 3D requires a high-end system builds that can work under heavy load fast. By knowing exactly what are your expectations you can have a PC tailored exactly to your needs, so it is important to be aware of the goals you want to achieve with your system. When writing this thesis I contacted multiple people in the industry, and most of them were referring to their system specifications as their little sweet secrets as it is their main working tool and revealing some insight in some personal processes, as there is also necessary some degree of passion and patience to collect the part list of your working tool.

There are key components that every desktop computer has, each component is responsible for something particular, but overall it is a holistic system that creates your experience. There are loads of different manufacturers, and all of them are making variations to different parts, it is possible to have an incompatible part list that would just not work under any circumstances. It is easy to see if your parts are compatible with each other when you have found your parts at an online site www.pcpartpicker.com14 as it takes the information from the manufactures, compares it with other product information and gives you a product that allows you to simulate a PC build and what part works with another part, it also calculates an estimated amount of Wattages necessary for your system so you can accordingly choose a power supply sufficient enough.

One of the main reasons why Apple iMac Pro is not a professional tool is also one of the biggest advantage of building your own computer – the ability to choose every component yourself, thereby it is important to have insight to what exactly each part adds to the whole system as it helps to find the part you need. Every desktop computer consists of the following parts:

⬤Motherboard ⬤Random Access Memory (RAM) ⬤Video card (GPU) ⬤Processor (CPU) ⬤Processor cooler ⬤Hard drive ⬤Case

A workflow is a sequence of events and steps we take to reach the work we have in mind, very often it involves switching back to and from various applications. Designers using 3D softwares are not only using Photoshop and InDesign or other Creative Cloud applications in their workflow, but they also use texturing, modeling and other programs simultaneously. The component responsible for allowing us to multi-task like that without noticing slowing down of our system is RAM. It stores all the images, textures, open documents, even the operating system itself, everything that is currently active. At the moment of writing this thesis, I have open 10 applications and there are happening 117 system background processes. Currently, the most RAM is used by Google Chrome for me with 24 open tabs which results in 4GB only for the internet browser. I am writing this thesis in Adobe InDesign and have open also Adobe Illustrator, ZBrush, and Sublime Text Editor – overall my current usage of RAM in this ordinary situation is 15,45GB which is almost exactly half of what I have installed in my system. When working on big scenes in After Effects or ZBrush the RAM will fill up quickly, so for a professional system build it is generally advised to have at least 16GB of RAM, but in my opinion, 32GB.

Graphics card is the component responsible for outputting anything to be displayed on any kind of display device, in this case, a monitor. If you move an object in Blender the Video Card takes care of displaying that, edit an image, render final image, scroll through a pdf, this is all done by the graphics card. In the times of classic graphic design where still image was dominating there were not so many GPU intensive tasks like there is now when moving image, motion graphics and 3D animations, machine learning are part of graphic design. This need for GPU intensive tasks is also where Apple pre-built computers have always been lacking performance or not caught up with times. A while ago the most important part of a rendering/workstation computer would have been a CPU and getting the most powerful CPU that your budget would allow, would be the way to go. However nowadays CPU rendering is no longer the only way to go and there are many render engines that offer only GPU render like Octane Render or V-Ray, however in many cases CPU rendering is still possible, for example, in the free and open source 3D creation suite Blender or KeyShot where it is possible to only render using CPU. Blender offers people to render using your CPU and GPU at the same time. Between the most two developed kinds of graphics cards groups available now there is AMD OpenCL and NVIDIA CUDA cards. “CUDA stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture, and is an extension of the C programming language and was created by nVidia.” As research states currently it is advised to get a NVIDIA card15 due to the fact that OpenCL is compatible with any graphics card, but CUDA is only available with NVIDIA cards and when it comes to performance, CUDA performs better. Most 3D software takes advantage of the CUDA cores in GPU architecture to optimize rendering and scientific simulation. What is important to note here is that iMac Pro and Apple products, in general, are equipped with AMD graphic cards, in the case of iMac Pro it is Radeon Pro Vega 56 with 8gb memory on the base model for € 5,497.91

The graphics card of my choice is the Gigabyte RTX 2080 OC. So why do I buy Gigabyte graphics card instead of NVIDIA if it is so good? It is important to note that GIGABYTE hereis manufacturer of cards like ASUS or EVGA for example, but NVIDIA is a graphic card designer they create the GPU microarchitecture. At August 20th, 2018 Nvidia released the “holy grail of graphics” three new cards branded as RTX2080Ti, RTX2080 and RTX2070 where RTX stands for real-time ray-tacing. Ray tracing is the definitive solution for life like lighting, reflections, and shadows, offering a level of realism far beyond what’s possible usingtraditional rendering techniques. Nvidia’s RTX cards are the first GPU’s ever made to offerthat. With a keynote presentation these cards are presented as founders edition (read as reference card). A Performance Comparison of CUDA and OpenCL (https://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1005/1005.2581v1.pdf) which is then modified by their in-board partners, in my case Gigabyte who are responsible for cooling solution and clock speeds on the card.

Depending on your workflow CPU might not be anymore the core tech for rendering process itself in most cases, but you have to get somehow to the point of rendering something and using object modifiers like the one in the example of Forensic Architecture, or the melting glasses in the rendering image of Ada Sokol, or any other dynamic simulations or modifiers and you will need some powerful CPU to make those calculations for you. The most popular 3D softwares Blender, 3ds max and cinema 4d are doing a lot of numerical operations. Those types of workloads require a lot of cache (the cache is a small but fast “intermediate memory” between the random access memory (ram) and the processor)., a decent amount of ram with this means that the workload scales the more cores your processor has. My CPU of choice is AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950x. It features 16 physical cores and up to 32 threads. To make more sense what is a core and what is a thread, I have seen somewhere a metaphor online that cores are mouths and threads are hands, so the more mouths you have the more you can eat at the same time, thus also if you have more hands you can provide more food to your mouths. I’m not really sure how accurate this is, but it definitely paints a picture. In more grounded language you could say one block of a central processing unit(CPU), executing one instruction at a time is a core. While it is true to think the more cores I have the better, it is important to remember that it also depends how strong the cores are and there are applications that are not able to use multiple cores at once.

The image above is from benchmarking software Maxon Cinebench R15. Benchmarking is the action of assessing performance characteristics of computer hardware by running a pre-made scene for hardware performance detection purposes. These softwares are most commonly used to evaluate your system and detect any flaws, if any and compare hardware one to other like in this case.

 As explained on the Maxon website:” The test scenario uses all of your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene... This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts).” The higher the number, the faster your processor.” There are many different kinds of benchmarks out there, but not a lot of cross-platform ones. I chose Cinebench R15 because I am able to run it on iMac and on my Windows OS computer. An outcome is a CB number that is created after the test and is a value that can be compared to anyone else that has done the test, there is no maximum number here, there is just comparison of results from one CPU to another. In multiple test “runs” I can surely conclude that the AMD Ryzen Threadripper on average scores at least a thousand points more than an iMac from series of the model that are advertised as the most powerful ones. It is true that this is the base model of iMac Pro, and definitely, the 18 core Xeon processor would score higher, but that comes with a very, very steep price upgrade that with only the processor upgrade could cost more than 8 thousand euros. 

WHY DO I NEED ALL THIS POWER?

POR QUÉ NECESITO TODO ESTE PODER

POURQUOI AI-JE BESOIN DE TOUT CE POUVOIR

為什麼我需要所有這些力量

왜 나는이 힘이 필요한가요

Graphic design has always been a reflection of the technology of the current times. The computer revolutionized the design process 20 years ago, but it keeps going. The days that graphic designer is only focused on obvious graphic elements like logos, packaging and posters are gone. With the current overtake of technology and digital media, and the internet being a major tool of distribution, communication, and exposure for brands, digital content creation is a must. The world is making everything even more instantaneous. It won’t be long before people are using Virtual Reality to demo a product and then immediately wanting it 3D printed to their specifications. 3D Virtual prototyping allows brands like Nike, Adidas etc. to test their products before creating tedious factory metal molds that could take weeks for a product that maybe is a failure. The possibilities of prototyping allow the companies to test their assumptions with users and gather feedback while a design is evolving before it is even manufactured, which is a massive economic and also ecological advantage.

Sucuk und Bratwurst, a creative studio based in Mainz,Germany, recently has been gaining world wide recognition through their sharp 3D work, steadily growing and working for clients like Nike, Alexander Wang, Post Malone and when asked about if 3D graphics is here for a stay, or just a trend like processing was years ago, answers that“ 3D, in general, will stay with graphic design for a while now because it is simply such a versatile tool. Photography went hand in hand with graphic design since forever and now that 3D gives you photorealistic results that’s just the way to go.” During my internship at graphic design studio Parallel Practice we were working with 3D graphics in a way that it does not look like a 3D render, but is used as a tool of achieving certain vision. Although our working tool at the moment was Apple iMac computers, it occured to us many times we should switch to custom PC made for the purpose we need, especially when it comes to moving 3D image. Parallel Practice is certain that certain skill in 3D will become a necessity in near future for graphic designers.

Contemporary Graphic Design finds itself becoming a very interdisciplinary platform of creation, and within this platform people have learned to use 3D in their own unique ways. 3D designer, artist Ada Sokol, has defined clear borders for herself and her practice. For her, graphic design is everything that is “2d”, does not have a dimension or has only 3D effects on 2D layers. She is using 3D in a very pure way, every object on her scene is in three dimensions, has assigned particular material and if the camera would get rotated from the given scene, it could be captured as in real life. Although working mostly for clients, she does not associate herself as a graphic designer at all. When starting her practice, Ada also started on a Apple computer, but quickly switched to self-built windows computer due to lack of customization. Now Ada has two self-built computer that are created exactly for her needs, although no specifications details were given to me, as it is a secret.

Usage of 3D graphics is not limited only within fields of commercial purposes, for photorealistic product shots or unique looking aesthetics for music artists. In the past years, a new field has emerged from Goldsmiths, University of London called Forensic Architecture. On behalf of international prosecutors, international justice groups, humanrights organizations Forensic Architects take upon cases and investigate and recreate urban battlefields. War crimes and situations that might be in a blur is not anymore due to navigatable 3D models created of conflict situations. Using recreated 3D models of the conflict area,real-life footage and satellite footage Forensic Architecture is able to generate never seen before insights in extreme situations that reveal crucial information about the conflict.

As an example situation on how Forensic Architectures uses 3D software, that wascommissioned by New York Times11:“On 7 April 2018, the Syrian city of Douma was allegedlytargeted by two chemical weapons attacks. At that time, the city and its surrounding areashad been under siege by the Syrian military since 2013. At least 70 people died in the attacks,according to reports.” There were claims about this situation that it has been staged, so Forensic Architecture took it upon themselves to answer the question was it or not. Using dimensions established from satellite images the two blast sites were recreated in the open-source 3D software Blender. Using various techniques in Blender, like object deformation modifiers they areable to untangle objects to its original state, while still retaining original dimensions, projecting various images from found footage they projected imagery on to the 3D model to reconstructthe gas canister exterior surfaces to analyze that. Thanks to Blender they were able to take into account various important measurements, like various focal lengths of different cameras tomaintain the validity of the analysis. Due to this extensive research and insights gained from themodel, it was clear for Forensic Architects to confirm that the canisters were indeed dropped from the air, and the event was not staged as earlier claimed by the Syrian allies.

3D IN A FLAT WORLD

3D EN UN MUNDO PLANO

LA 3D DANS UN MONDE PLAT

LANGUAGE 3

LANGUAGE 4

3D graphics, in general, is a new field that is expanding by the day, the tech is getting better and so are the software and with that also the techniques and new uses are discovered every day. If we go back to graphic design which is actually seen as mostly 2d practice or you could say 3D graphics that are presented on a 2D surface, it is up to the designer himself to find new ways that 3D graphics could be integrated in(currently 2d) based practice and push his design practice to next level implementing new technologies and staying up to date with new possibilities. In my experience, one of the latest, most profound uses that I have taken part in myself was during my internship at Parallel Practice where we used 3D in type design.

Parallel Practice at the time was working on a new identity for an Academy of Fine Arts, Prague (AVU). The idea was to take Jiri Kovandas, who is an important Czech artistand alumni from AVU, the typewriter that heused to write the description with, forimages with his performances from the 70s and 80s.We started with the physical object, thetypewriter itself, and we proceeded to scanit with a dental 3D scanner, which gave us more than10 million polygon resolution. Dental fieldis also embracing the 3d technologiesnowadays, because of 3d scanners and printers designedspecifically for dental applications can nowhelp dentists offer a more personalizedservice to patients, for example, directmanufacturing of dental crown, implants orany other dental appliances by easilycapturing their patients denture in 3d with high accuracy. As amatter of fact, the typewriter lettersplacement from close up looks like a mouthwith teeth a bit.

With the 3d scan of the actual letters from the machine, we continued to work in 3D software. The first step was a formal separation of each glyph in a separate file for easier workflow. Next step, was to start modeling the letter from the original surface by underlying a plane under the glyph and then by moving point in the plane we could regulate the desired thickness of the letter shape.

This process was the ultimate 2D 3Dexperience, because when modeling theletters in blender and getting the shaperight, we were working with diffused materials, so you justsee white and black, which looks flat, butactually is not. Later on we screenshotedeach individual glyph from Blender and wherenecessary adjusted in illustrator. In thismethod 3D allowed us, first of all, workquick with getting the forms fast, but more importantlyit kept the link between the originalmachine and us. That is the additionalvalue that could goes missing just by tracing letters typedon a piece of paper. As Hilde Bouchez inher book A Wild Thing says:“There are wildthings and there are tame things” I would call thisapproach a wild practice to type design.

RESTART

REINICIAR

REDÉMARRER

重新開始

재시작

My initial reasoning for building my computer was formal, it was a simple financial matter; I wanted to save some money. After doing research and realizing the performance I expect from my working tool, I knew I could build a computer as good or even better than iMac Pro for half the price. But what I have gained through this process is much more than just saving me over 3 thousand euros.Through the experience of building my own computer, having had years of experience with Apple computers and writing this thesis from a graphic design point of view I can conclude multiple reasons why building your own computer today as a professional designer is beneficial to my practice.

⬤Customizability

The ability to upgrade your computer at any given time, from as small changes as adding additional RAM or changing power supply cables, to adding more video cards to your already existing system or changing the motherboard. Within this context, also the fact the complete part selection including the design of your workplace is purely up to you. This allows me to be more efficient by fitting the build more to my creative needs and due to the ability to upgrade, I can stretch out the basis of the initial system in long-term and not be forced to make full investments every two years.Customization and making tools specific to your needs as a creator is core building blocks of any professional artistic practice, even if it is just a custom interface within a 3D software, it is still yours. Artists search, experiment, create their own until the point their tool can become a work of art itself. In case of Daan Botlek for example, who has been creating various different tools for leaving marks on the wall, later on having a collection of these unique tools, they were presented as a final pieces themselves.

Or in a more technical manner, we can take a work in progress from designer Gilles de Brock who is currently experimenting with his self-built custom airbrush printer that essentially is just a printer, but customized to his needs, therefore producing immediate unique results. And again, the same idea of customizability can be applied to my already mentioned 3D practioneers like Ada Sokol or Sucuk Und Bratwurst or any individual or studio whose main working tool is a custom built personal tool, in this case, a modified computer.

⬤One man factory

From assembling the factory to the production of the final product, I can be self-sufficient. No third-party services necessary, swapping out a broken part is now dependent on the shipping delivery times not on busy repair services that make you overpay for simple tasks, that you are very well capable of doing yourself, either upgrading or troubleshooting your system to diagnose what is wrong, is part of my practice, I get to expand through my tool and learn, and create together. I am no longer dependant on expensive render farms, that very well be rendering a file for me that I have no supervision of, or using and free distributed render farms and waiting weeks for my file to go on top of the list of people waiting. Time is a fundamental part of any production.

By focussing on the consumption of a convention for several years, we have lost a link to our tools. A tool we do not understand or has an unknowable side, is a foreign object that we can not call our working tool.

We can not rely till the end of the time on Apple Geniuses as the mages of computer science. PC building has become very modular nowadays, the actual assembly is as hard or a bit harder than putting together a lego set when you get the hang of it. Currently, all the work I do in some way or another is connected with using my computer, thereby knowing the hardware ins and outs and the software that comes with them is directly linked in how well I can work with this tool. It has become a matter of exploring more and wanting to understand even in more depth the processes that are going on by my side all day long. It intertwines everything with each other, so by learning the tool – computer, in a pragmatic way, I am able to gain insight into all the related processes of my means of creating.

By choosing this path I can influence the nature of my tool and shift in the path that the world is going for, at the time of writing it is the 3D industry takeover. And it is definitely for here to stay and grow and ask for more power. It has again proven to me that creativity starts with exploration and defying conventions and getting out of your set of comfort. Being fluid and adapting constantly to events in the world and not being ignorant but honest to your profession as a graphic designer and maybe even take some pride in the fact that you have built your own workspace.