Yvette Shanks, Winter 2026 Featured Illustrator Yvette is a graphic design enthusiast turned digital illustrator with a growing collection of cute and colorful greeting cards, art prints and stickers. Her work is an exploration of senses and emotion – appealing to the need to express our feelings, to embrace nostalgia, to promote positive mental health,Continue reading “Yvette Shanks, Winter 2026 Featured Illustrator”
Author Archives: publicdesignbureau
Mindsets of Public Design Bureau: Non-Linear Thinking
Illustration by Yvette Shanks. Learn more about our illustrators. Mindsets of Public Design Bureau: Non-Linear Thinking What’s the mindset Non-linear thinking is the creative, connection-driven process of thinking that notices possibilities, identifies ideas and solves problems by bouncing, winding, or dancing from thought to thought, led by intuition or feeling. Non-linear thinking is the otherContinue reading “Mindsets of Public Design Bureau: Non-Linear Thinking “
Creating a space for sharing by building autonomy and privacy into research
Illustration by Yvette Shanks. Learn more about our illustrators. Creating a space for sharing by building autonomy and privacy into research In our work, we think carefully about how we design the way collaborators interact with us and with each other. For some topics and some people, this can come easily, but for others, peopleContinue reading “Creating a space for sharing by building autonomy and privacy into research”
Strategies for cultivating & facilitating non-linear thinking
Illustration by Yvette Shanks. Learn more about our illustrators. Strategies for cultivating & facilitating non-linear thinking One thing we love about our projects is that we get to work with people with a wide range of thinking styles. We have the extreme linear thinkers, who are bringing their skills of analysis and the scientific methodContinue reading “Strategies for cultivating & facilitating non-linear thinking”
Mindsets of Public Design Bureau: Creativity
Illustration by Bob Hansman. Learn more about our illustrators. Mindsets of Public Design Bureau: Creativity What’s the mindsetCreativity as a mindset is using imagination (and some suspension of disbelief) to solve problems, address opportunities, and come up with ideas. Creativity is fundamentally tied to making things — deriving from the verb create — but itContinue reading “Mindsets of Public Design Bureau: Creativity “
Where do ideas come from?
Illustration by Bob Hansman. Learn more about our illustrators. Sometimes creativity sparks an image of wild, out of the box ideas that are totally novel and different from anything ever done before. Those can certainly be good ideas, but we’re big fans of creativity that acknowledges and recognizes that there’s rarely something new under theContinue reading “Where do ideas come from? “
Bob Hansman, Winter 2025 Featured Illustrator
Bob Hansman, Winter 2025 Featured Illustrator Bob Hansman is a teacher, an author, an activist, and an artist in St. Louis. He teaches in the College of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, and is the founder of City Faces, a program for children living in the Clinton-Peabody housing project. The illustrations in thisContinue reading “Bob Hansman, Winter 2025 Featured Illustrator”
Constraints, not Rules: Creativity with Bob Hansman
Illustration by Bob Hansman. Learn more about our illustrators. Constraints, not Rules: Creativity with Bob Hansman Our illustrator for this newsletter is Bob Hansman, who not only is a talented artist but also a dedicated teacher. As someone who taught drawing to architecture students for many years (including to Annemarie!), as well as art toContinue reading “Constraints, not Rules: Creativity with Bob Hansman “
Mindsets of Public Design Bureau: Embracing Empathy
Illustration by Kris Russell. Learn more about our illustrators. Mindsets of Public Design Bureau: Embracing Empathy What’s the mindsetEmpathy is a core human-centered mindset that pushes us to listen to, center, and attempt to understand other people’s lives and experiences. The definition of empathy is “the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with theContinue reading “Mindsets of Public Design Bureau: Embracing Empathy”
Question & Answer with Ezra Kong of the Design Futures Forum
Illustration by Kris Russell. Learn more about our illustrators. Question & Answer with Ezra Kong of the Design Futures Forum In May, the Design Futures Forum will be in person in St. Louis for the first time! We sat down with Design Futures Forum executive director Ezra Kong to learn more about the Forum andContinue reading “Question & Answer with Ezra Kong of the Design Futures Forum”
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