An Illustrative Introduction to a Curious Compendium of Incomplete Lists for Productive Practice offers readers a concise introduction to a three-part, word-list-themed, literature-review-style essay series that explores and extends late-20th- and early-21st-century calls to interrogate and elevate the importance and value of creativity, projects, and design. ¶ While each word list is preceded by a short introduction, this prelude frames a handful of ideas, insights, and inspirations that underpin the series as a whole. Together, the three lists provide taxonomy, or field guide among field guides¹ for exploring human intelligence and productive practice (HIaPP) in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). As such, these letter-themed word lists provide an introductory set of “big tent” practices, terms, methods, and principles commonly explored and used by architects, artists, designers, curators, writers, musicians, and more.

Links to all three word lists are provided below:

1. An Incomplete List of C-Words for the Creative Course
2. An Incomplete List of D-Words for Designerly Domains
3. An Incomplete List of P-Words for Project-Based Pursuits

Foreword by Julio Mario Ottino

There is something wonderfully appropriate about an “incomplete” list. A complete list closes a subject; an incomplete one opens it. It invites us to add, question, connect, wander, and discover what might be missing. I am particularly pleased to write a foreword to this project because I recognize its spirit.

One of its inspirations is Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, and Bruce has been my collaborator and friend for many years. Mau’s manifesto was never really a set of instructions. It was an invitation to see differently, to experiment, to grow, and to take responsibility for the possibilities that emerge along the way.

Dan Vlahos takes that spirit in an intriguing direction. His C-, D-, and P-word lists are not intended to provide definitive answers about creativity, design, or projects. They function more like a field guide: devices for entering a large and sometimes unfamiliar territory. The alphabetical structure gives the reader a starting point, but the real value lies in the connections it encourages – between disciplines, practices, ideas, and ways of thinking.

That openness matters. At a time when knowledge is increasingly abundant and readily accessible, the challenge is not simply to know more. It is to develop the curiosity and discernment to make connections, cross boundaries, and ask what might be possible.

Think of these lists, then, not as inventories but as invitations. They are deliberately incomplete because the most interesting part of any intellectual journey is what happens beyond the map.

And that, I suspect, is exactly the point.

Julio Mario Ottino
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
Author of The Nexus: The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science
August 2026

An Introduction to the Introduction by Dan Vlahos

This Curious Compendium of Incomplete Lists for Productive Practice was partly inspired by a manifesto written by Bruce Mau² in the late 1990s. Originally from Canada, Mau is a multidisciplinary designer, educator, and creative leader. Mau’s practice has served as a guiding light for this designer, and one can confidently assume the same for many of his generation. In 1998, while living in Toronto, Mau’s sister invited him to contribute an essay to a small magazine she had planned to produce. Mau seized the opportunity and penned a reflective manifesto as he pondered how he might “sustain a lifelong practice.”³ Mau intuitively titled this discursive treatise “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.” Looking back on it, Mau once stated^:

I reflected on my own patterns of living and working, and asked myself: What is really valuable here? How might these patterns be helpful to others? Can we learn from the unusual studio culture that we have created? I realized that many of my contemporaries were taking responsibility for the information they produced but not for its impact. They were committed to the form but not the content. I understood that the task of designers is less to inform people than to move them. Our role is to inspire.⁴

Mau then presented his manifesto at a design conference in Amsterdam, which led Chee Pearlman to invite him to publish it in I.D. magazine.⁵ Over the next 20 years, Mau and his countless collaborators went on to design a wide range of projects not limited to books, brands, exhibitions, environments, and more. Long before the present-day notion of “collabs,”⁶ Mau and his team members, clients, and collaborators seemed to exemplify this creative-collaborative spirit. As chronicled in a namesake 2021 documentary film,⁷ Mau has helped shape brands, institutions, museums, regional plans, and more. ¶ In a 2012 guest lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design—Mau reflected upon this multifaceted body of work—giving such varied work the informal label “context projects.”⁸ By using context as a frame, Mau and countless designers who similarly elevate contextual factors⁹ in the process of design situate their work not only by the “what” of design (the artifact, experience, communication, etc) but also the multivariate factors that shape, inform, and surround the what. This effectively centers design—not as a standalone area of concern—but as an integrative point of departure, reference, focus, and return that can be shared and shaped among various stakeholders and disciplines. Not surprisingly, both collaboration and context are but two of the c-words you will find in my Incomplete List of C-Words for the Creative Course. ¶ It is important to note that centering creativity, projects, and design is not the singular goal of these lists. For this list-maker, elevating, expanding, and increasing access to these ideas and their histories is a greater focus. But of course, any overview or history told from a single perspective is inherently incomplete. As Lesley Lokko wisely stated in her Introduction to the 2023 Venice Biennale, “The ‘story’ of architecture is therefore incomplete. Not wrong, but incomplete.”¹⁰

The Problem at Present

This list maker first introduced his Compendium at the 2026 AIGA Design Educators Community (DEC) Conference in Ohio. In his talk, this author identified three interconnected challenges that his lists seek to address: 1) the design-dependency dearth-discourse dilemma, 2) the steadfast siloization of studios and scholars, and 3) the resistance to rigorous reading renaissance. ¶ The first point [the “design-dependency dearth-discourse dilemma”] underscores and seeks to describe our present-day human-design relational condition, whereby in the 21st century all humans are literally surrounded by design, yet (outside of design and design education) most are unfamiliar with designerly methods, principles, processes, or impacts. Put another way, while our tools and skills are being radically democratized, the principles and discourses of design (as compared with our tools of production) seem to be suffering from unequal access and attention. From a critical and historical perspective, a slightly different iteration of the same design-oriented dilemma seems to apply. For instance, in a 2015 paper, Wayne A. Williams and Janice Rieger aptly refer to perspectives shared by Helen Charman as they make a similar claim, stating, “Helen Charman explored this when she wrote that, despite the extent to which our lives are infused with and shaped by design, it is not a subject accorded much critical attention, certainly not when compared to art criticism.”¹¹ ¶ The second point [the “steadfast siloization of studios and scholars”] highlights a concern that, in academia, design, and beyond, there is now a vast disconnect across disciplines. For example, a typical undergraduate graphic design student might now encounter architectural vocabularies and even architectural plans as if they are a foreign language. Moreover, some fear that a lack of understanding or exposure to a variety of fields may limit a student’s problem-solving capacity and epistemological breadth. ¶ The third point [the “resistance to rigorous reading renaissance”] suggests that some, but not all, students now seem resistant to long-form, theoretical, or challenging readings: especially theory. This resistance, exemplified by the now-common TL;DR acronym,¹² persists despite a more-than-ever pressing need for students to engage in critical reading and writing as essential modes of critical thought. Put another way, these are the very habits that may help cultivate designerly discernment. ¶ Alas, this list maker is not the first to identify such entangled and pressing issues. As Pope John Paul II noted back in 1990, “Integration of knowledge is a process, one which will always remain incomplete; moreover, the explosion of knowledge in recent decades, together with the rigid compartmentalization of knowledge within individual academic disciplines, makes the task increasingly difficult.”^13|14

Read This

A second, somewhat more personal and abstract point of inspiration for these lists arrived in the mid-2000s. Around this time, I had just started working in the marketing department of a Boston-based architecture firm. Just as I started at the firm, the office was relocating to a two-floor self-designed open-plan space in Boston’s Seaport. Upon arriving at the office, as the architects and support staff unpacked, I, like everyone else in the firm, received a desk, a file cabinet, a computer, and a brand-new Aeron office chair (produced by Herman Miller). Attached to each Aeron chair was a small magenta booklet with crisp knockout serifed type on the front that read, “Read this while adjusting your Aeron chair.” (Fig. 1) ¶ By this time, the Aeron chair¹⁵ had become a (albeit somewhat corporate) symbol associated with those who worked in creative or “creative class”¹⁶ fields. Akin to opening a fortune cookie, this list maker somehow expected the manual to offer some kind of inspiration, insight, philosophy, or encouragement. In hindsight, this false expectation of an instruction manual seems quite odd. ¶ My best rationalization of this divergent mishap may lie in what I had come to perceive about the Herman Miller “brand.” In design history circles, Herman Miller has long been viewed as a pioneering, design-centric organization.¹⁷ I must confess that I was at least somewhat disappointed to encounter a typical, step-by-step chair-adjustment instruction manual. ¶ Many years later, I asked myself: what was it (beyond instructions) that I was expecting to find within that chair-adjustment booklet? I began to imagine a dialogic treatise for the creative occupant of these then futuristic-looking chairs. I then also recalled the independent, sometimes subversive zines¹⁸ I had encountered while in art school. As a graphic design student, I found the “non-design” quality of these zines refreshing and fascinating. In the spirit of these zines, I wondered whether the Aeron chair manual could give the chair a symbolic or contemplative quality, perhaps much like Rodin’s Thinker, the chair or act of sitting might symbolize introspection? ¶ Alas, my off-beat “instruction manual” ponderings ended quite quickly when a work order for a client proposal arrived on my desk. I share this odd memory here because, in part, the lists that follow may well be or represent the imagined contents of that never-produced zine-like chair manual.

Watch This

A more recent point of inspiration for these lists were the Tanner Lectures on Human Values. As a multi-university lecture series in the humanities, the Tanner Lectures were founded in 1978 by the American scholar and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner.¹⁹ Fortunately, many of these lectures are available online and can be watched for free. The lecture that most directly inspired this series was delivered in 2024 by Rachel Barney, Professor of both Classics and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Barney has been teaching at the university level for over 30 years. Her research has “ranged from the early sophists to the late Neoplatonic commentator Simplicius,” but primarily focuses on Plato.²⁰ Barney’s Tanner Lectures, delivered over three consecutive days at UC Berkeley, were titled “The Authority of Craft.”²¹ ¶ Before hitting play on Barney’s lectures, I wondered how one might approach delivering anything cogent or substantive with a topic as broad and multifaceted as craft. But Barney’s approach to the lecture itself was quite masterful. At the outset of her talk, instead of diving headlong into scholarship, Barney began with a memorable story. The story takes place in New York City, where, as Barney recalls, her wealthy aunt stops to observe a skilled wallpaper hanger at work in a hotel lobby. The aunt then asks the worker if they can watch him paper the wall. In response to Barney’s aunt, the worker says, “Lady, does Joe DiMaggio mind if you watch?” This story immediately immerses the listener and, more importantly, frames the broad topic of craft in a memorable way. Then Barney proceeds to explore the broad humanistic qualities and tensions of craft through a multi-pronged mix of historical, divergent, and convergent approaches. In this way, like a hawk scoping its prey from high above, Barney triangulates the topic from multiple angles before diving in. At around the 17-minute mark, Barney states plainly that craft is an endlessly vast subject. As Barney states, craft is “a very big tent.”²²

the stakes

In a 2026 article published by Fast Company, Grace Snelling poses the question: “Can ‘Applied Creativity’ be the next ‘Design Thinking?'”²³ In the article, Snelling points to recent research that suggests that in the AI era, creativity may in fact be one of the most essential assets an executive can have.²⁴ At first, this assertion may seem odd; after all, isn’t AI lowering the bar on creativity? While not explicitly addressed in the article, the opposite may actually be closer to the truth. In fact, as Snelling’s article unfolds, a glaring “gap” emerges: creativity is at once a highly desired skill, a literacy, and a competency, yet few embrace or understand it. Moreover, while executives say they value creativity, only a small percentage of highly innovative firms seem to successfully implement and understand creative principles, methods, or processes—and, as a result, creativity, a key pillar of value and innovation, often gets sidelined. ¶ As we ponder such gaps, we will explore various notions of practice across several disciplines but with a focus on three intersecting ideas: creativity, design, and projects. These three areas are explored at a level akin to general education literacies. One way to posit the “who” these lists are geared towards is to reflect on what the late Virgil Abloh²⁵ (1980–2021) once described as “tourists” versus “purists.” In a 2017 guest lecture²⁶ at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Abloh metaphorically cast the notion of design for everyday people, or real people, as “tourists”—those who are curious, creative but perhaps not formally educated in art, architecture, culture, or design. Abloh seems to contrast or complement tourists with “purists”—those who formally research, study, or understand cultural and aesthetic context, techniques, and works. With Abloh’s notion of tourists and purists in mind, this list-maker might contend that these lists might appeal to both groups, but as an undergraduate instructor, they are weighted towards the tourist. ¶ In response to the three concerns noted earlier, the stakes are likewise threefold: 1) these essential discourses could sadly remain the realm of purists, and thus educators will abandon a whole swath of the populace in regard to creative, design, and project-based literacies and competencies. 2) Our silos will remain siloed, or worse, they may deepen, and 3) the resistance to a rigorous reading renaissance might claim victory—over what alternatively could be a radical resurgence and renaissance towards rigorous reading. As the Hungarian-born painter, photographer, designer, educator, and art theorist György Kepes²⁷ (1906–2001) noted back in 1944, “To function in his fullest scope man must restore the unity of his experience so that he can register sensory, emotional, and intellectual dimensions of the present in an indivisible whole.”²⁸

The Thesis

With tourists, purists, and Barney’s notion of “a very big tent” in mind, these lists aim to parse common and, in some cases, less common perspectives for those interested in creativity, projects, and design. While Barney’s talk serves as a reference point for this introduction, nearly any Tanner Lecture may lead one to contemplate “big-tent” humanistic ideas and issues.²⁹ As we ponder the incompleteness of this journey, I am reminded of the title of a 2009 paper by design educator Geoffry Fried. Fried’s somewhat obscure paper, first delivered at the International Association of Societies of Design Research conference in 2009, was appropriately titled “Chasing Infinity: Defining the Purpose of Design.” With his use of “infinity” in the title of his paper, Fried likewise acknowledges the impossibly vast “big-tent” nature of his subject. Moreover, for the reader, this literary device simultaneously invites an open-ended exploration of the themes and references provided. Thus, like Fried, Barney, Mau, and others, the goal here is to encourage an exploration of some “tents,” or perhaps even for some to discover some tents within tents.³⁰ As Bruce Mau stated in the very first point of his manifesto, “You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it.”³¹ Said another way, you are what you eat.³²

Amor vincit omnia.

With utmost gratitude to the many voices cited and referenced. First published 1 Apr 2026. Last updated 30 Aug 2026. Please send edits, corrections, and suggestions to this address.

Footnotes

1. See also: Jones, Derek et al. Studio Properties: A field guide to design education. Bloomsbury, 2025. ↩︎
2. See: “Bruce Mau.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Mau. ↩︎
3. “IMFG,” Bruce Mau Studio, https://brucemaustudio.com/projects/an-incomplete-manifesto-for-growth/. ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. Ibid. ↩︎
6. One of Bruce Mau’s most remarkable and celebrated “collabs” was the 1997 book S,M,L,XL—a 1376-page volume that was the result of a multiple-year intense partnership between Mau and Rem Koolhaas (founder of the Dutch architectural firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture or “O.M.A”). See: Koolhaas, Rem, and Bruce Mau. S, M, L, XL. The Monacelli Press, 1997. ↩︎
7. Mau. Directed by Benji Bergmann and Jono Bergmann, Greenwich Entertainment, 2021. ↩︎
8. See: Mau, Bruce. “2012 Class Day Lecture,” YouTube. May 24, 2012, video, 33:00, https://youtu.be/K3Q5bjDOYoQ?list=PL309451B70B1DE1FF. ↩︎
9. In design education, the most prominent of these contextual factors over the course of this list maker’s career has been human factors, sometimes called “human-centered design.” Over time, however, architects and designers seem to be becoming more adept at navigating the complexity of multivariate factors beyond human-centered concerns alone. ↩︎
10. Lokko, Lesley. “Introduction.” La Biennale di Venezia, 2023, http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2023/introduction-lesley-lokko. ↩︎
11. Williams, Wayne A., and Janice Rieger. “A Design History of Design: Complexity, Criticality, and Cultural Competence.” RACAR : Revue d’art canadienne, vol. 40, no. 2, 2015, p. 16. https://doi.org/10.7202/1035392ar. ↩︎
12. “TL;DR.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 April 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TL;DR. ↩︎
13. John Paul II, Pope. Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Apostolic Constitution, 15 Aug. 1990. Vatican, www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_15081990_ex-corde-ecclesiae.html. ↩︎
14. This passage was cited at a 2014 colloquium celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame, led by the Scottish-American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–2025). See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCwKdkW6-lw. ↩︎
15. The Aeron chair was designed by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf, who began working on it in the late 1970s, only to have early iterations canceled. The Aeron went on to become one of the best-selling individual office chairs in the world. ↩︎
16. The notion of the “creative class” is largely attributed to Richard Florida, an American urban studies theorist and author. An overview of Florida and his work is included in the Introduction section of An Incomplete List of C-Words for the Creative Course. ↩︎
17. As a graphic designer, I have always admired Stephen Frykholm’s well-known and nearly timeless picnic posters for Herman Miller. These lovely screen-printed picnic posters spanned twenty years and can be found in art museums around the world. The poster series serves as an example that even the smallest project, such as a company picnic, can be elevated through creativity, craft, humanism, and design. ↩︎
18. “Zine” is shorthand for fanzine. Zines are often used to promote music, bands, and culture. Many zines use low-cost or rudimentary production techniques (photocopiers, typewriters, collage, pens, markers, glue, tape, etc.). ↩︎
19. “Tanner Lectures on Human Values.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 August 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanner_Lectures_on_Human_Values. ↩︎
20. “Rachel Barney.” University of Toronto, 17 Oct 2025, https://philosophy.utoronto.ca/directory/rachel-barney/. ↩︎
21. “Rachel Barney | Tanner Lectures.” Berkeley Tanner Lectures, https://tannerlectures.berkeley.edu/rachel-barney/. ↩︎
22. Barney, Rachel. “Tanner Lectures on Human Values with Rachel Barney: Lecture I – The End of Craft.” YouTube, uploaded by UC Berkeley Events, 4 May 2024, https://youtu.be/chDcuJmqBjc. ↩︎
23. Snelling, Grace. “Can ‘Applied Creativity’ be the next ‘Design Thinking?’.” Fast Company, 18 June 2026, https://www.fastcompany.com/91560629/applied-creativity-accenture-song-report. ↩︎
24. Ibid. ↩︎
25. “Virgil Abloh.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 16 July 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_Abloh. ↩︎
26. Abloh, Virgil. “Core Studio Public Lecture: Virgil Abloh, “Insert Complicated Title Here.” YouTube, uploaded by Harvard GSD, 30 Oct 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qie5VITX6eQ. ↩︎
27. “György Kepes.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 July 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/György_Kepes. ↩︎
28. Kepes, György. Language of Vision. Paul Theobald and Company, 1959 [1944], p. 13. ↩︎
29. Another wonderful “big-tent” example among many is Rowan Williams’ 2014 Tanner lecture, “The Paradoxes of Empathy.” Williams is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian, and poet who served as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012. Part 1 of Williams’ lecture can be found here: https://youtu.be/fdeoU0aJLX8. Part 2 can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/mQF_y24rZjY. ↩︎
30. Along these lines, akin to discovering Barney’s lecture on YouTube, many excellent lectures can now be accessed online. For instance, I also discovered a masterful series of lectures on the history of philosophy by the late Dr. Arthur Holmes, which Wheaton College appears to have made public in 2015. See, for instance: Holmes, Arthur. “A History of Philosophy | 01 The Beginning of Greek Philosophy.” YouTube, uploaded by wheatoncollege, 2 April 2015, https://youtu.be/Yat0ZKduW18. ↩︎
31. “IMFG,” Bruce Mau Studio, https://brucemaustudio.com/projects/an-incomplete-manifesto-for-growth/. ↩︎
32. See point #10 in Chris Pullman’s 2008 essay “What I’ve Learned.” Available at: https://designobserver.com/what-ive-learned/. ↩︎

FILED IN: Perspectives