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Writer's pictureJoel Mattern

Designing Quiet Moments


I’ve always been a quiet person. Throughout my childhood it manifested as shyness and a tendency toward social awkwardness, and morphed into more of an aloof introversion into my adolescent and early adult years. Now in my forties, I could describe it as the need for a curated and pervasive calm. No matter the age, quiet moments are what I seek to create and prolong when given the opportunity.


In much the same way we design a website or a logo or packaging for a product, quiet moments must be constructed (often from the remnants of the chaos that surrounds and penetrates us for the majority of the day) with care and intent. Most of the disruptions, the noise, the pandemonium with which we coexist is a byproduct of human creation as well—be it the roar and rumble of combustion engines, the clanging of steel against steel as commercial and residential construction commences in every direction, or the blood-pumping beat of the music we compose to keep us awake and entertained through it all.


If we can create such a beautiful ruckus in so many ways, we can certainly create calm, peaceful moments in which we more readily recognize how we and the organic world around us can coexist and build synergistic relationships with one another.


This is the primary reason for my intense passion for ambient music. Works such as Brian Eno’s Music For Airports (perhaps the best example of "quiet" music created completely by design) and Harold Budd’s The Pavilion of Dreams have the almost magical ability to augment and accentuate the natural and synthetic world around us in ways that spawn experiences akin to spiritual awakenings, births, and deaths. It’s in these moments that we are more in tune with who we are, who we once were, and who we are becoming; the man-made distractions we despise, tolerate, and enjoy are minimized and we suddenly begin to effortlessly design our quiet moments with cherished memories, flashes of past loves, cool summer walks along abandoned beaches, and all of the other things—micro and macro—that assemble our unique human experiences.


The discipline of design allows us to transform the hustle and bustle of urbanity into tranquil vignettes of silent beauty. A brilliant example of this is in Chicago-based musician and artist Sam Prekop’s photography, which does not seek to escape the urban decay and monolithic backdrop of the Windy City skyline, but instead somehow captures and exposes the quiet substance in and around these elements. This is indeed the job of the designer and artist of the twenty-first century: to illuminate and subvert urban and organic forms and their functions with the intention of achieving some type of symbiosis. We listen, look, and respond utilizing the tools of composition, color, and intuition.


Silence has long been a sacred element among all religions. It will never cease to be the medium through which enlightenment takes place, nor will it ever disappear completely despite man’s best attempts at driving it out of existence. How do you design your quiet moments? Where do they find and compel you to actively cultivate the creative landscapes they contain?

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