As creative professionals, our conscious and subconscious decisions define a language of process. Feed Forward Feedback is a 171-page publication that connects the acts of gathering, researching and making. We studied the RISD 2009 MFA graduates the way an archeologist studies culture. The campus became our excavation site where we ransacked 175 studios. We captured the psychological spaces of work with architectural photography. We seized dog-eared researched books and charcoal-dusted Xeroxed library materials. We exposed the sedimentation process of their thoughts through the details that time and the hand of the artist leave behind. We scanned fetishized objects found sprinkled around their studios: a hot-pink roll of bubble wrap, a shriveled balloon with the inscription “tamales” and other vintage oddities. Graduates proactively submitted their “private muses” to the production team. For some it was a quote, personal mantra or image. The collaborative writing turned into six electrostatic conversations discussing the role of the studio, the act of collecting, the rigor of writing and the vernacular of making. Released on the opening of the RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition, the book gives the reader a way to penetrate the process of the intangible shifting into the tangible for emerging artists and designers.

Designers understanding content; editors understanding design.