EP.77 UNCOVERING BUILDINGS’ STORIES THROUGH A WALK WITH A SKETCHBOOK with Charles Leon, Author, Illustrator, Publisher of Local London Sketch Journal

ABOUT CHARLES LEON:

CHARLES' LINKEDIN PAGE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chleon/

COMPANY WEBSITE: charlesleon.uk 

CHARLES' BIO:

Writer and Illustrator of Sketch Journals, including The Kew Sketch Journal. 
International Speaker and Trainer on the Creative Process and how Applied Innovation actually works. 
With more than 30 years experience in design, and an extensive knowledge of neuroscience and the working of the creative mind, I bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to helping Organisations and Individuals overcome Innovation Stagnation and achieve Creative Breakthrough.

SHOW INTRO:

Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.

EPISODE 77… and my conversation with Charles Leon. 

On the podacast our dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.    

he NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD Magazine part of the Smartwork Media family of brands.

VMSD brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant. 

You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.

Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience. 

SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org 

On this episode I connect with Charles Leon who has 30 years experience in design, and an extensive knowledge of neuroscience and the working of the creative mind.

We’ll get to all of that in a moment but first though, a few thoughts…

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When I was nine years old my mom put me in a after school art program in a small little studio a few minutes walk from my school. 

Every Thursday afternoon, after my regular school classes were done, I would walk down the street, sit in an art studio and learn how to paint in oils. 

For the next 10 years this was a welcome change in my daily routine that became in some sense a safe place. A place where all the world's troubles or the typical challenges I was having as a teenager would disappear and I would spend a couple of hours focused on painting. 

My mom had recognized early on that I was pretty handy with a pencil and very interested in creative expression. She did her very best to make sure that I was continually engaged in creative processes whether it was doing Ukrainian Easter eggs or sketching and drawing or baking creative Christmas cookies.

She was always there pushing the go button on creativity. As it turns out, she was actually a pretty good artist herself and later in her life she began doing decorative painting which she became exceptionally adept at and the house was full of wonderful pieces of her craftsmanship.

My interest in art followed me through the first few years of high school and finally landing in a place where it was just time to decide where I was going to university and to which program I would go.

My mom, recognized that I was firmly sitting on either side of the creative and scientific fence, 1 foot firmly in both worlds, and she suggested architecture since it seemed to combine both of my interests.

While I was studying to be an architect I took every single drawing and painting course that I could possibly take, whether they were weekly freehand drawing studios or evening classes or sketching schools.

These courses during my university years were a safe place there I had more confidence than in doing pretty much anything else.

But it really wasn't until those years in university under the tutelage of a great art teacher Gerry Tondino that I really began to understand drawing and painting.

It wasn't so much that I was learning technical aspects of drawing or painting but that I was more learning how to see rather than simply look at things.

Gerry would say, ‘once you learn to see and draw what you actually se, rather than what ou think you see, the drawing takes care of itself.’

I had deep respect for Gerry Tondino and I think I really finally learned how to deeply appreciate the world around me to see the color, texture and value relationships. To understand how objects exist within a context and it wasn't specifically the thing you   looking at but everything around it that helped to define its edge.

In college I would continue to take afterschool watercolor courses thinking that it was more convenient than painting in oils since there was a technical challenge of oil painting taking much longer to dry.

There was something about the immediacy of watercolor that I liked. You had to think fast and plan. Watercolor was the process of painting in the shade and shadows leaving the white of the paper as the light and highlights. In oils, or now acrylic which I use almost exclusively, you are starting from the dark tones and building in layers to bring out the light.

In watercolor there was equally some unpredictability and a learned skill of being able to get certain effects like running a clean wash of graduated blue for a sky over a background or how some pigments we opaque and others transparent, or how colors would interact with each other as water spread across the paper.

I was taking workshops once and the teacher said to me “well it's clear you can draw and you've got, you know, a good hand, but I guess the question really is what do you want to say with the work that you create”

That was a whole different way of thinking that I'd never really spend time with prior to that moment. I painted and drew simply because it was fun.

What did I want to say?...

And so I began to think pretty significantly about what message I wanted to convey or rather what stories the things that I drew or painted I might want to share with other people.

It was interesting when I began to study architecture and think about design of places and things that I was drawn to the same question about what the architecture meant and what stories it would hold over the years that people would use it.

I was always fascinated with traveling and standing within old buildings and wondering what the people wore when they were visiting here hundreds of years ago.

What would they talk about. What was the news of the day or the politics what secrets were being not told as people visited and who came and went from within a building’s walls.

As I moved along my career, thinking about the stories that buildings would hold, it's perhaps not surprising that I somehow serendipitously end up in the world of brand experience place making,

that the places that I would create for retailers would be imbued with a brand narrative and that somehow the buildings, stores or hotels would need to be able to demonstrate that subplot about who the intended user was, what their story was and how the place was a physical expression of both the person and the brand.

Another experience while an architecture school was with a visiting professor and while I don't remember the exact project we were working on, I do remember her saying a phrase including the word “hodological”

Hodological refers to the study of pathways or connections. It's used in fields of neuroscience sometimes thinking about the pathway and connections between neurons and synapses how signals move from one place to the other how information is shared across brain functional areas – 

In psychology it talks about things like paths in a person's life space 

and in the world of philosophy it might be considered to take in things like the interconnection between ideas a pathway between thought exercises and where one thought leads to another and what conclusions we might draw from that that decision making tree

in terms of geography it’s really is about actual paths, walking paths for example, connection paths between geographic locations thing like trade route paths

The interesting thing about the word hodological is not just that all these years later I clearly recall that word but that it also seemed to me that the idea of ‘transition’ - moving from one place to the other - was very much a part of experience - that we don't stand still in buildings or public squares or on streets, we move and as we move, we naturally have a different experience at every moment.

Sure, there's a gestalt experience of being in Times Square for example but every time we take a step our perspectival view of the context around us ends up changing and every moment technically speaking is also new,

We're are clearly taking in some constants in sensory input but our point of view within that context ends up changing.

I love this idea of walking through space and experiencing it differently with every step. Every step is a different vantage point to learn something new to see something from a different angle. 

In a broader sense, my fascination with the nature of change totally aligns with the idea the early -learned term – hodological.

Pathways of change. 

Change through experience or experience through change. 

We may think that buildings don’t change, but they do, albeit in some cases slowly. And over their lifetime they may be experienced be multitudes each one leaving and taking away a story.

Transitions are important. I might suggest that all the good stuff happens in the in betweenness of moments in time, places and things. Transitions are where learning lives.

Transitions become important as experience makers. 

So, things like stairs become fascinating places for architectural study. 

It's not surprising that many of the great architects also spend time designing stairways so that transitions between floors were less about a practical matter of moving your body up to a different level, but could be seen as an opportunity to experience new things along the way. 

An experiential moment that requires the person’s commitment, to willingly give them self over to the idea of change. 

Cities have memories and our bodies have memories of cities. Buildings have memories and our bodies have memories of buildings.

I have expressed before that I believe that there's very much a ‘give and make’ of experience - that we interact and share with the built environment around us and it affects us as well. 

We and the environments we spend time in are deeply connected and our experience lives within us, within our bodies, not just within our heads. Our experience of building leaves within us a body memory, a narrative residue of how we felt while in one place or another.

If you look at buildings overtime and understand that they've been used for years, they too have held countless numbers of stories of people that used them. Where they came from. Where they would go back to. Maybe they were transitioning through for a moment. Maybe they were lost and ended up taking a wrong turn and discovering something new.

Those stories of buildings are interesting because it gives a life to architecture beyond stone, steel and glass. 

And this is where my guest Charles Leon comes into the story. 

Charles is a writer and illustrator of Sketch Journals, including The Kew Sketch Journal. 
He is an international speaker and trainer on the Creative Process and how Applied Innovation actually works. 
With more than 30 years experience in design, and an extensive knowledge of neuroscience and the working of the creative mind, Charles brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to helping organizations and individuals overcome Innovation Stagnation to achieve Creative Breakthrough.

During the COVID pandemic Charles had a challenge simply staying inside while all of us were held up in our homes for months. 

With sketchb  ook in hand, Charles saw London England as a hodological space – one to be experiences not in the scientific, objective and measurable sense of streets of a certain distance ad width, buildings of a certain height, pathways connecting purpose driven users or as seen from a 3d person sense 

but more in the Jean-Paul Satre sense aptly described in Satre’s essay, "Sketch for a Theory of Emotions," where his city was to be experienced in a lived-existential subjective sense. 

One in which he would travel daily, which sketchbook in hand, not always sure about the destination but certain that the path would be one of discovery, connection, and collecting through drawing and painting the memories of the buildings he encountered along the way.

The output of these wanderings yielded 5 volumes in drawings and paintings of learnings about the buildings, their architectural details as well as the stories they revealed from within their walls…

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ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:

LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b

Websites:  https://www.davidkepron.com    (personal website)

vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)

Email: david.kepron@NXTLVLexperiencedesign.com

Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/

NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/

Bio:

David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe. 

David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels. 

In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies. 

As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace. 

David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.

He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.  

In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com. 

The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production is by Kano Sound. 

The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.

Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.