Welcome to Nollie Design! A resource for designers who want to understand what it takes to become multidisciplinary.

Multidisciplinary Design is a holistic way to view your creative skills. It’s about collaborating and learning from different fields of design rather than focussing just one specialty.

Designers are often told to pick a field, and stick with it for their whole career. Never exploring the full scope of their design ability.

This wasn’t always the case. Many of the most celebrated designers were multidisciplinary, from the designers of the Bauhaus, to people like Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Massimo Vignelli, Eileen Gray, Marc Newson and many more.

We look at these designers and believe that their talent is unattainable, rather than focus on what gave them that talent in the first place, a holistic understanding of what makes good design.

Massimo Vignelli said it best, “If you can Design one thing, you can design everything.”

It’s up to Nollie Design to show you how…

Meet The Designer Behind Nollie Design

Nollie Design was created by me, Connor O’Neill, as a way to show you the different paths you can take to become multidisciplinary.

Throughout my career I’ve worked with international artists, and on Animation projects, Fashion Production, Graphic Design, Industrial Design and co-run a makerspace.

I started my career in 2012, after studying Graphic Design. My first role was as an animator, providing informational animations for eLearning software.

I went on to work for Scotland’s best contemporary art gallery and Studio, providing Digital Media to international artists and designers for exhibitions and commissions.

That studio opened a Makerspace in 2013, which is where I believe my multidisciplinary journey really started. As a Graphic Designer I was suddenly introduced to 3D Printing, Laser cutting, and CNC machinery.

That job was awesome, but I felt like the term “Graphic Design” didn’t apply to me anymore. What was I now? Imposter Syndrome set in.

That’s when I began retraining in Industrial Design and it’s around then that something become really apparent. The process for Industrial Design and Graphic Design were almost identical! I couldn’t believe it. Yes the output was different, but the tools and techniques were very much the same.

Not only that, but having a knowledge of Graphic Design was incredibly helpful in understanding Industrial Design.

Why wasn’t anyone talking about this!?

If someone had told me beforehand I wouldn’t have gave up everything to move to the other side of the country to study!

That’s when I discovered the term “Multi-disciplinary” and that’s when everything suddenly made sense. If nobody else was going to talk about how much design overlapped, then I would.

Since then I’ve embraced it in my career. I went on to work with Fashion projects, Industrial Design projects, and set up Nollie Design. Which leads us to now.

If I can become Multi-disciplined, then you definitely can too!

View the Design World Holistically

My goals with Nollie Design:

• Show you how to develop a Design Process that can be adapted for different projects.
• Demonstrate the techniques that overlap over multiple Design Specialties.
• Learn from the greatest interdisciplinary designers.
• Create projects you can do to build your skills and techniques.
• Teach you ways to get involved in your local design community
• Design in a way that is sustainable and good for the planet.
• Avoid the pretentious language you need a dictionary and a head injury to understand.

Do You Want to Become Multi-Disciplined?

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Contact Nollie

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