An Interview with the team at Use All Five
Use All Five opens up on their studio, working process, and the future.
Use All 5: Use All Five is a Los Angeles-based studio started in 2006 by Levi Brooks and Jason Farrell. We’re currently a team of fifteen designers, developers, and strategists.
We help organizations achieve greater impact through design and technology.
Our work is collaborative. It explores new perspectives, flexes under pressure, and is driven by radical curiosity. Under these influences, your organization will succeed and grow with a unique voice and strong presence in the world.
Use All Five is a design and technology studio started in 2006.
Elaborate on your roles as cultural communicators.
Use All Five: Culture is the glue that connects it all.
Today it’s more important than ever that organizations understand how they fit into and thrive within the cultural context of the world at large. We help organizations do this.
When we’re working on a project, we consider “small c” and “big c” culture. “Small c” is the daily interactions between groups. These are the everyday norms and rituals that often go overlooked like how we eat or read or move through the city. “Big c” culture is the creation and works of the musicians, entertainers, and artists.
When we work with our clients, it’s our goal to help them identify their cultural context between small and big C and empower how their purpose, mission, service, and product can positively and provocatively thrive.
How does technology influence your practice?
Use All Five: Technology touches everything we design for our clients. We use it as a tool to communicate and investigate complex problems.
We strive to humanize technology in our work because there’s so much more to it than the popular assumptions about tech. We aim to make tech and culture come together to better serve your company and your clients.
Today it's more important than ever that organizations understand how they fit into and thrive within the cultural context of the world at large.
What inspires Use All Five (day-to-day and in the big picture)?
Use All 5: Our love of the West Coast Way colors what we do every day. It’s a source of inspiration and constant energy.
When we look at the bigger picture, we’re inspired by culture, specifically art. Art changes the way we see the world. It continues to provide us with the creative thinking skills that our clients need and respect.
Why the insistence on the “West Coast Way”?
Use All Five: The West Coast Way is a way of balance…not just between form and function, but also between the formal and the informal, the casual and the rigorous, the planned and the unpredictable, the hot and the cool, the global and the local, the rational/logical and the zen/meditative/poetic, the slow and the instantaneous.
The West Coast Way manifests by way of…The Eames (global and local), JPL (scientific method and wild, rigorous experimentation…it was started after all by a few young dudes who were blowing stuff up at Caltech), Robert Irwin (urban planning and existentially-loaded ideas of perception and being in the world), Surfers! (the culture, the zen and the practice of surfing).
There’s a great quote by John Wooden — “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” This sums up what it’s like to work with us. We’ll take a lot of time upfront to find the nuances and complexities of what the client and consumer needs. This process builds up the momentum that leads to a quick and exacting design and development process. But we’re constantly refining and striving to get to a better version of the work.
The West Coast Way is a way of balance…not just between form and function, but also between the formal and the informal
Who are your ideal clients?
Use All Five: We typically work with clients in the technology and arts & culture industries. Given our background and work history, we understand these worlds and are deeply connected and passionate about them.
But we’re always open to talking to organizations outside of these communities. Sometimes the greatest work comes from unpredictable directions.
When you look to the future of what you do, what do you see?
Use All Five: It’s an exciting and complex time for the arts and technology. These two worlds have fully folded into each other, creating a constantly changing, difficult to maneuver landscape. That being said, this future, is to us, more human than ever.
A.I. will continue to provide fast answers to our most pressing problems, but it is only with a flexible and innovative pursuit of design and technology with a human touch that we can truly solve our most challenging problems.
