The Why Now
The Why Now: Reflections on a Year of Pause, Teaching, and Practice
When I began my sabbatical in Fall 2024, I carried a question with me: what does it mean to be a designer right now?
It’s a question I’ve been asking my whole career, going back to my time as an undergrad design student at UMass Dartmouth, where I interned for my mentor, Todd DePerno in Burlington, VT. Todd is now a prolific painter still living in Vermont, but when I knew him as a young designer, he was the one who gave me a way to put words to what I was feeling. With his encouragement, I wrote a cover letter for my first job that has stayed with me ever since:
“We are, at the truest core of our beings, animals. Instinctual and impulsive. And so it is for art. The artist has no more control over the need to create than a wolf does to protect her young. It is what we are. It is not an option. It is how we relate, communicate, feel, and react. Instinct. Pure and simple.”
Those lines became a compass for my work. They remind me that design isn’t just skill or strategy — it’s instinct.
This past year — a semester of sabbatical, a spring of teaching, and a summer of practice — was a chance to rediscover that instinct, to see why it still matters, and why it matters now more than ever.
The Pause: Rediscovering Instinct
My sabbatical in Fall 2024 was not a break but a return — a return to the idea that creativity is instinct.
Stepping back from daily teaching opened space to focus on my research — including Random Actor, where computation and performance intersect. What struck me is how much the project mirrors instinct itself: you don’t control the outcome, you respond to it.
Travel also played a central role. Time in Amsterdam, Maastricht, Stockholm, Karlstad, and Reykjavík offered a blend of family, friends, inspiration, and observation. That mix of conversation, culture, and quiet reflection refreshed my perspective and reframed how I see my work moving forward.
The sabbatical also gave me the space to step back and take stock. I assembled a 100+ page dossier reflecting on my career — especially the past eight years at BU — weaving together research, teaching, and service. At the same time, I updated my website profgrady.com to make this work public-facing, giving shape to the full arc of my practice.
Looking back, these months weren’t about stepping away from design but about re-grounding myself in it — through travel, reflection, and the instinctive need to create and share.
The Return: Teaching in an Age of Acceleration
By Spring 2025, I returned to Boston University, where design education feels more urgent than ever. My students are navigating an environment where AI can generate images in seconds, where content floods faster than it can be absorbed.
In class, I encouraged them to balance the timeless with the emergent: fundamentals like audience, context, and craft alongside experiments with AI. Projects like AI && You —yes two ampersands—made space for both hand-driven and machine-driven methods. The point wasn’t to elevate AI as replacement, but to show that it can be supportive — an amplifier, not a substitute for instinct.
This work also reached a wider audience. AI && You was featured at Boston University’s inaugural Symposium on Generative AI in Academics and Administration and in a faculty interview with the BU Institute for Excellence in Teaching & Learning, where I shared insights on integrating AI into creative pedagogy.
Teaching in this moment reaffirmed something I’ve always believed: our task as educators is not simply to teach tools, but to cultivate instincts. To help students trust their curiosity, embrace uncertainty, and create meaning in a rapidly changing world.
The Summer: Practice as Proof
Summer 2025 brought momentum in practice. With Design Axl, I collaborated on projects that stretched from venture capital to engineering, from packaging to digital storytelling. Whether it was Companyon Ventures’ new site, a brand identity for a civil engineering firm—to be announced, or packaging for Bubble Works, each project asked a common question: how do we create clarity and trust in a noisy world?
What made this summer especially meaningful was the chance to share that process with Andi Zhang, a current BU MFA student who joined Design Axl as an intern. Years ago, my mentor opened a door for me, and I’ve never forgotten how transformative that was. To be able to do the same for students now — to give them real-world opportunities where they can grow and contribute — feels like completing the circle.
Andi’s impact this summer reached well beyond what’s usually expected of an intern. Through client work, portfolio development, and countless conversations that challenged and inspired me, he became a true creative partner. His energy and perspective reminded me why I value mentoring as much as designing: it keeps the work alive, evolving, and connected across generations.
The breakthroughs, as always, came from instinct. Strategy framed the work, but intuition made it resonate. That same lesson I learned early in my career — design isn’t just about knowing, it’s about sensing — is one I see reflected now in those I mentor.
Why Now
This year reaffirmed something I first put into words at the start of my career: creativity is instinct.
In a world overflowing with generative content, that instinct matters more than ever. AI can accelerate, but it can’t feel. It can’t wrestle with complexity, or care about audience, or imagine better futures. Only people can do that.
Design is how we respond to complexity. Education is how we teach the next generation to respond with curiosity, empathy, and imagination. And instinct — the impulse to create, to question, to connect — is what carries it all forward.
As I reflect on this year, I’m reminded of the influence of my earliest mentor, who continues to inspire as a painter today. His words helped me define my “why.” Sabbatical, teaching, and practice have given me my “why now.” And right now, instinct feels more important than ever.
With gratitude to my family, friends, and the mentors who have shaped me — past, present, and those who continue to guide me today.
