Welcome to the House of Smoke and Mirrors

Design is a kind of magic. From dark patterns to fake news, designers have a few tricks up their sleeve to dupe and deceive. What if the design tools at our disposal were used to positive effect? What if, as in a magic act, designers used smoke and mirrors to amaze and intrigue—even inspire? We set out to reshape how people think about design with a mixer we hosted with AIGA/NY for New York-based design professionals.

This must be the place

“

Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images to achieve changes in consciousness.

 -Alan Moore

Creatives from across the metropolitan area met at The Wooly—a speakeasy masquerading as a café—where we entertained guests with a magician’s sleight of hand, messages encoded in invisible ink, and a motion-reactive installation that transmogrified movement into colorful whorls and splashes on a projector screen. For one night, we brought the design community together in conversation and showed the capacity of smoke and mirrors to reveal instead of deceive, unite instead of divide.