Robert Guyser on a linked in forum got me thinking about ISMs like modernism and minimialism… ISMs are about absolutes, a belief in a set of principles to guide how you see the world. As an example in the design world maybe there’s something like: consultancyism. A belief that there are set of formulaic processes […]
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Kenya Hara, the art director of Muji, spoke about their philosophy of “emptiness”. The concept of “emptiness” is a philosophy that is prevalent in designs throughout Japan. He gave a similar lecture at Google headquarters that you can watch here. In a recent blog post on Core77, I commented on a misconception of the futon’s […]
Monday, September 27, 2010
I looked at the “T” in T-Shaped Designer under a microscope and the vertical is actually a lot more complex. Though the name is simplified to a marketable catch-phrase, it looks more like the image below: The misunderstanding of the T-Shaped Designer (specialization + generalist knowledge/experience/outlook) is explained in real-world terms in much more detail […]
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Design was making me depressed. I brought it up to Steve that the more I learned about how to see the world through the lens of the designer, the more energy was getting sucked out of me. Everything around me needed to be fixed, everything around me could be better, everything undesigned needed our help, […]
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The intensity poured into the crowd as Henry Rollins, the Leonardo DaVinci of this generation, painted a vivid description of his world through the eyes of punk rock. He is seriously doing as much as possible, as one human could. The funny, sad, and enlightening stories from his Siberian trainrides to the world of the […]
Friday, September 10, 2010
They wanted me to read to them. The book, carefully chosen, was about Oliver the Elephant who wanted to grow up and be a dancing circus elephant. So I asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. I had just read the page about the girl who wanted to be cowgirl […]
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Artists have a focus to their work. The freedom and limited constraints, forces them to look internally and search for a meaning to infuse into their creation. With less outside-constraints comes a need to self-focus. In a zen-like state, the focus comes from within. Unlike design, they don’t have to consider the market, the audience, […]
Friday, September 3, 2010
The following are some lessons that Frank Garrity, who owned and ran Bally Design, taught me – how to have principles in the business of design. When I was a freshman, I spent hours crafting a resume-package asking… begging to be considered as a design intern. I didn’t want to spend my summer in any […]
Thursday, September 2, 2010
How can you know your users and customers if you don’t know yourself? If you don’t first define yourself, your research analysis is just mistranslated data. To design a solution for someone else means to truly understand who they are. But that’s impossible to do without knowing who you are, because only then can you […]
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Being “A Professional” is a state of mind, a way of life. To act “Professional” is just a behavior, a facade. Being “A Professional” is a deliberate everyday practice of your inner pursuit to achieve perfection, from how you fill your cup of coffee to how you present your design to your colleagues. It takes […]
