What isn’t Collaboration

Quite often I get ideas for small projects which involve many people, but each person working on their own, but in response to another person’s input. This evening I had an idea for a typeface where each letter is designed individually, but to try to match the font of the previous character, by the previous designer. Although this might be a nice consequences style project, it in fact, is not collaborative.

Although I’ve said it and read it many times now, I am still further understanding that true collaboration comes in the sharing and discussing of ideas between people. The technicalities and production are things which can quite easily be done separately, in isolation even, so long as the conceptual process is done collectively.

That, however, can differ if the outcome itself grows from a mass of inputs. The example above is different as it is a domino-effect process (it relies on the previous input and thus the next relies on it) as apposed to a tree-like process (many inputs work alongside one-another but do not rely on each other to feed the organism).

Josh