What’s in a Name?

I said I’d post next about how I came by the name Polymath Design Lab, and I tried to write the post at least three times without getting anything sufficiently coherent to come together. Then I sat down to write an About page for the site and ended up putting together a pretty good summation:

I’ve always been more of a generalist than a specialist, my curiosity drawing me in many different directions. And, more than that, I am a synthesist – I love looking at different concepts or viewpoints and finding the parallels and the places where they overlap. I’ve chosen the name Polymath Design Lab because I want my business to reflect that same tendency towards synthesis – exploring the intersections of art and craft with science and technology. The design lab for me is a place to experiment artistically and play with involving all different kinds of influences – from historical photos to cellular models or electronic circuitry.

I looked up the term ‘synthesist’ before posting it, to verify that the term didn’t have some meaning wildly different than what I would expect, and found this post, nearly 2 years old, coining the same term for the same concept I was thinking of, and describing it beautifully.

So that’s my goal with Polymath Design Lab – to combine different subjects, media, and techniques and find the points of synthesis. I’m aiming to create items that might be just as at home on the shelves at Anthropologie or the OMSI store.