“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Hearing the phrase multi-disciplinary studio is like reading the word culture, it means everything and nothing at the same time. Yet you see it everywhere and from every studio and agency.

In the world of design, there are many great studios, but how many of them are truly as multi-disciplinary as they project?

Ill-Studio is one and they’ve been on a trajectory that neither we, or frankly they understand is going. But that’s how they like it, bouncing from one world to the next — always with an open mind to reassess the places, the products and the ideas that founder Thomas Subreville has experienced.

“It’s like preserving my own youth. This idealistic, this utopian vision of things when you’re a kid. When you’re a teenager, you’re always like, ‘maybe I’ll do this, maybe I’ll do that.’ To this day, I still say, ‘maybe I’ll do this, maybe I’ll do that,’” Subreville told HYPEBEAST.

“They sought out new ideas, new problems to answer or at the very least, explore.”

In the nearly two decades since starting, the studio has go on to collaborate with Supreme, Chanel and Soulwax, Leica, NOCTA and Mercedes, to ECAL, Paris National Opera and pretty much every client that every creative aspires to work with.

But whether it’s a Louis Vuitton campaign or a cassette tape, they treat each project with the same focus. In turn, the smaller projects influence the bigger clients and vice versa — a symbiotic relationship that must have been inspired by the remix culture that raised them.

Entirely self-taught, Thomas Subreville has enjoyed meteoric success over the years but began to feel “stuck” like everyone does at some point. Rather than resort to what works, they sought out new ideas, new problems to answer or at the very least, explore.

Charles Sanders Peirce, the American philosopher known in some circles as the “father of pragmatism” once recommended “that every person who wishes to form an opinion concerning fundamental problems should first of all make a complete survey of human knowledge, should take note of all the valuable ideas in each branch of science, should observe in just what respect each has been successful and where it has failed.”

“It was almost a shame to say you were really inspired by this or that.”

In 2019, Ill-Studio took Peirce’s advice and began to reveal the well-spring of information that has shaped their career. “We came up with this idea of doing a shape-shifting encyclopedia that takes various forms — whether a website, installation, book, record — any form possible.” The project is called GENERAL_INDEX, an encyclopedia focusing on information from all corners of human knowledge.

“When we started Ill-Studio, nobody would show their inspirations. Pre-Tumblr, pre-Instagram, pre-Pinterest,” Subreville added. “It was almost a shame to say you were really inspired by this or that.”

Made in conjunction with Slam Jam, the niche blog-turned Instagram page grew a cult following, then the pandemic happened and the two sides decided to share it with the world. The resulting book is called ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER PROSTHETIC MEMORY PROGRAM.

“There was always something missing in my mind. I didn’t really know why.”

“A lot of the things I wanted to do with Ill-Studio, I did them. A lot of people I wanted to work with, a lot of places I wanted to do something, a lot of brands I wanted to collaborate with — a lot of boxes are ticked. But there was always something missing in my mind. I didn’t really know why,” said Subreville.

“With the pandemic going on as well, what I realized was missing was actually sharing, actually turning our job into something that you can transmit, something that is educational and relevant for the next generation. It’s not about business, money or fashion, etc.

How do you take all of this body of work and rather than just show it displayed somewhere, you use it as a tool for empowerment. For kids to get inspired and to learn,” he added.

For those who don’t have the book, visit GENERAL_INDEX on IG and swipe up. For those who do, turn to any page. From the “Effects of Psychoactive Drugs on Spiders”, a “Timeline of the Far Future” to a visual essay of “Dennis Rodman’s Hairstyles.“ There’s plenty of inspiration and more.

“Just taking a half-hour of your day to do it was like meditation to us.” GENERAL_INDEX became an extension of the studio in more ways than originally may have thought, as has the importance of using their platform for education.

“It’s important to keep in mind that we all have unique perspectives and ways of looking at things.”

The project was initially planned to tour around the world in various different forms, but was ultimately put on hold due to the pandemic. As restrictions are slowly being lifted in many parts of the world, Ill-Studio and Slam Jam have resumed their promise.

The first stop in the tour was a recent invitation by the University of Venice, where the design studio presented a series of workshops and exercises with kids about associational systems — a concept Ill-Studio equates to “remix culture and the different “perceptions that you or me can have on the same visual stimulus.”

Subreville explained further:

“Let’s say I give you one image — the way you look at that image will be different than the way I look at it. We’ll see different things according to our background, our life, our education and experiences. That makes us all unique human beings.

At a time when we converge at the same point — because we all have the same source of information, reading the same things and going on the same social networks — it’s important to keep in mind that we all have unique perspectives and ways of looking at things.

All the exercises that we had them do was based off this idea — how to be confident with your own vision and tastes, how to make sure you look at things the way you are and not the way they are, how to make sure you don’t get stuck if you’re a fashion student in the fashion world — thinking outside of the box.”

Rather than adhere to a traditional educational structure, the workshop was an equal exchange from people of all backgrounds. “That’s the good thing about it, if I give you one image, the way I look at it will be different than the way you look at it, there’s no level — the way I look at it is no better than you, it’s just a different perception. Even though we’ve been doing this for 15 years, we were not being superiors or professors to them, but we were on an equal playing field.”

“Look at an image — any image. What do you see?”

More than just a workshop, Ill-Studio has devised a formula that you can use in every situation imaginable.

“It worked like this: we gave them five images which they had to break down into an equation of different ingredients. It can be two, three, ten. If I give you an image, you might say, ‘I see Napoli, Mickey Mouse, or something from my youth.’ There are so many different layers of perception in that one image — whether it is visual perception, emotions, memories. That was the goal of this exercise.”

Subreville began to showcase the exercise further by showing the kids a picture from a Comme des Garçons show. “One kid saw Siamese twins, an old monument, and a google map image. (Pointing to one image), that I get, that I don’t. But that is what is cool about it. A lot of them picked some very random images, like someone saw dominoes, a Palestinian football game and blood cells.”

At the core of the equation is a “way of thinking that helps you classify and organize your thoughts.” With the overload of information in the present-day, that’s not as easy as it sounds. “I see kids now being able to put the best mood board together in ten minutes. But once you have to do something with it, they get lost, because they forgot how to organize this information in their head. So this formula helps you establish an almost mathematical way of looking at things. It’s very helpful, we do this for every project.”

Try it for yourself. Look at an image — any image. What do you see? Create a new folder on your comp or phone and describe it in the form of an image you perceive. There’s no right or wrong answer, but for the purposes of the comments section, be chill.

“If you break the project down into a formula into say two or three images, then it becomes interesting, because out of 500 images, only two or three of them fit within this formula. Then you’ll be able to say, ‘I love that image, but not for this project.’”

But before you can get to that point, take the images you’ve compiled and describe your perception in a few words. “I want this project to sound like this, provoke that emotion, to look and feel that way. Once you establish this thing, then it’s very easy to connect images. The other way around doesn’t really work.”

“I think that was what’s missing for us — that shift that made us feel more useful than doing projects for ourselves.”

Ill-Studio recently had a group of students try the equation out and although many came up with great research, many of them didn’t know how to articulate it. “If you go to a therapist, 50% of the job is finding a way to verbalize the things that are in your head. They seem pretty clear in your head, but once you have to actually articulate it, you realize it’s not as clear as you may have thought,” Subreville added.

GENERAL_INDEX marked a new phase for the studio, where they could finally “do something that is not business-oriented,” according the creative polymath. “Most of the things that I do at the end of the day is for myself, even though some people might get inspired or some people might hate it, but at the end of the day, I’m the only one getting the reward — whether it’s emotional, money or whatever it is. I think that was what’s missing for us — that shift that made us feel more useful than doing projects for ourselves,” he added.

From a blog to a cassette tape to a book, GENERAL_INDEX recently shape-shifted into the form of an installation called Real-Life Algorithm. Only on view at the start of the current Venice Biennale, Ill-Studio selected “Me at the Zoo” — the first-ever video uploaded to YouTube.

“Without saying what it was, we sent a screenshot of it to someone and told the person to answer with your own YouTube link. So he answered with his own YouTube link, took a screenshot and sent a picture to the next person and so forth. It was very interesting to see that exercise unfold into a two-hour video, that spans DNA chains, bread tutorials, to rush hour traffic on a highway. You really see the development of a chain of ideas and perception from one person to another,” said Subreville.

An image of a shuttle turned into an octopus which turned into people carrying a house. “It’s the same exact idea of the workshop we did at the university, but just a different exercise. We all have unique perceptions of things. What you see in that YouTube screenshot will be different than what I’m going to see.”

“Just the question: why that image? What made you think of that?”

Of course, this formula opens the door to any and all images — from hyper-political statements to the downright weird and disturbing. “We had a few cases in the workshop of kids who came up with images that were very political references. ‘That’s a very offensive image, what made you think of that?’

If you have a good reason, then why not? But even if you have a good reason, be prepared to defend your point of view. Your perception is important, but the perception of everyone else is just as important. So whenever you’re going to share something, make sure you can explain it. Make sure you can explain to other people where you’re coming from, otherwise you’re going to be in trouble.”

Some people deliberately picked images just to provoke, “but after the exercise they said, ‘Oh, I actually don’t want to use that image again.’”

In this sense, it’s a good way for people to educate themselves. Like having a dialogue within your own mind. “Just the question: why that image? What made you think of that?”

The formula can take any path, but it becomes all the more prevalent considering the age that we currently live in. Described by some as the era of post-truth, the legitimacy of history is constantly in question.

Despite embarking on a journey to mine the history of knowledge, Ill-Studio has already detoured to a range of projects — from an iridescent campaign with A$AP Rocky and Mercedes Benz, a chair dubbed Mind Gravity with Varier, to a new in-house venture called NEW NEW AGE.

Just reading that phrase, NEW NEW AGE, gets the mind spinning. War, space, climate change, anything. Whether we like it or not, we’re entering a new age. How will you define it?