We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eden Lew a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Eden, thanks for joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?
When we’re children, we believe that the adult world has no time for fun and games; but as I grow into the age when my parents had me and my sister, I’m realizing that for them, play never stopped. My parents actively made their interests our interests, and it all has culminated into my career in designing unique experiences and installations.
Looking back now, it seems almost idyllic that in a small window of time before the internet, my sister and I were never bored. My dad the architect turned vacations into field trips for famous buildings and structural landmarks on his bucket lists to see. Most weekends we would hit up the Houston art scene and roam furniture and design stores just admiring shapes and forms. We were always on the lookout for unique trinkets and objects to add to my parent’s collection of miniature figurines, toy cars, designer chairs and illustrations. My mom the teacher would indulge any of our curious hobbies, and we practically lived in craft stores. We spent summer breaks figuring out how to make soap, sculpt miniature foods, sew pillows and building model doll houses. Even the most mundane moments were filled with excitement. Weekly trips to the grocery store were like exhibits of packaging design in the snack aisle. Rainy days at home were spent making up games and pretending we were rockstars producing a concert tour. And whenever we finished watching movies, we’d spent the following hours investigating behind-the-scenes learning how they made such a feat.
However, the downside of having so many interests is that school felt like a wall between me and my free time. As a slow learner, I was never great at standardized testing or writing. But my parents always pushed me to imagine open-ended projects to learn the topic through a different method. I used to illustrate when I couldn’t write and diagram when I couldn’t do math. I would try to apply any skills I learned from my hobbies to rearrange information in a way I could digest. Through this practice, I became a kid who got excited about lengthy school projects. And to this day, I continue to find creative ways to understand complex concepts not just to understand it but to also teach others.
Design school was the only place that was a big enough playground to connect all my interests while continuing to learn new skills. In college and graduate school, I stubbornly bounced from woodshop to computer lab to dabble in different areas of design: graphic design, animation, architecture, industrial design, web design, strategy and more. My school portfolio was a beautiful mess that I have zero regrets about: ranging from architectural builds, small animations, to branded objects and a researched masters thesis on criminal mastery and design. While I didn’t commit to one path in design, I ended up crafting an even more important design methodology to apply to any kind of project. Upon graduating I professionally jumped from roles in environmental graphic design, to packaging design to brand strategy all with the same point of view and outlook.
Today, my continued curiosity mixes with a range of collected skills into a playful career as an experiential designer for exhibits, pop up shops and retail stores. In 2018, I started Double Take Labs with creative technologist Josh Corn to make installations, robots, events and exhibitions with a touch of absurdity. Together we’ve built interactive exhibits for museums and brands. We hung giant ghosts in Brookfield Place to teach kids about flight sciences; wrote and programmed a robot circus for the New York Hall of Science to talk about humans and technology; and designed machine dispensers for a slime museum experience. With the CAMP store we made Facefetti, a Photo Booth that prints your face onto confetti, and the Upcycler, a motorized bicycle racing competition made from upcycled clothing. This year I worked with David Stark Design to imagine Bullseye’s Diner by Target at the 2022 D23 convention and created a human-sized diamond kaleidoscope for Vacheron-Constantin’s winter store display. I thrive in these temporary builds that allow me to sketch and wonder, “what if that existed in real-life?”, and I’m grateful to have the partners and opportunities that support my visions and want to bring them to life too.
I remember the exact moment that made me realize what it meant to design an experience. In a museum exhibit, my mom pointed out how cool it was that a spiraling wall guided visitors through a series of facts. Then and there, it just clicked that designers can control how narratives are communicated to visitors no matter the medium. When we design a poster, we guide the eye around different hierarchies of information. When we scroll through websites, we can make seamless transitions for viewers. When someone walks through a space, it’s our job to navigate them with visual cues. When we understand that communication is the core of design work, we can begin to see how all of these branching skills in design culminate into a cohesive experience. I believe that my varied journey through the professional design world has taught me many methods in communicating information through physical and digital space; and by understanding these rules, I’ve made myself a playground to never stop challenging and breaking them through the rest of my career.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m Eden Lew, an experiential designer for exhibits, pop-up shops and retail displays. At my studio Double Take Labs, I work with creative technologist Josh Corn to blend design, technology and absurdity into immersive narratives. We work with brands, cultural institutions and agencies to enhance their narratives with interactive concepts. Through creative installations and tactile interactions, we shape experiences by manipulating the limits of technology. Whatever scale we’re working at, whether a large public space or within the pages of a book, we’re constantly experimenting with new ways to inspire others to take a second look.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
To me, the gift of being a designer, artist or creative is the ability to forge your own path in the world. Growing up as a quiet individual, my outward personality defined me as a wallflower, but my inner soul wanted to be a rockstar. So art and design was my way to express my feelings, to understand myself and gain confidence in my work and life. It would have been a much easier life to follow a guided, tried and true path, but my soul would have never forgiven me if I hadn’t taken a leap of faith to make the ideas in my head come true.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
I once had a discussion with a lawyer friend about our different outlooks in life. Her ambitions were about building a future foundation for her life and putting in the hard work now so that she could relax later. This is a stable and responsible trait I wish I had, but can’t because my creative soul drives me in the opposite direction. Instead of building towards a future, I impatiently live to create work that I love right now in order to have no regrets. I stubbornly want every second of my life to be filled with unique experiences, working with fun teams, and making every day a day where I can conjure up ideas and create new things. I always tell people that I only ever know what I’ll be doing two weeks out, and not a day more because I like to keep my schedule open for anything spontaneous that might drop in. For people who need stability, this is a terrifying way to live, but for me, I love every second of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.doubletake.design
- Instagram: @edenwooperlewper
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edenlew
Image Credits
Photo credit @Double Take Labs