It is almost 2:00am. I have to get up and drive to class tomorrow at 6:00am, and I am not upset about that. I've been recently working on a re-branding project, and needless to say it almost got my goat. Or at least, that's what I had thought.
As a young designer not only am I inexperienced with the practices of the modern workplace, the hustle and bustle of deadlines, or the complexities of client vendor relations, but most importantly I am really inexperienced with my own process. Real process, not that Velveeta stuff. It's all of the latter that give the process it's pressure. I'm not sure if that can truly be experienced during our undergraduate work. It's not that its fluff, its just that its different. For instance I was considering getting on a plane to Ecuador and changing my name to Boris Von Dooshenbag if i didn't get this figured out by this Saturday. I've never done that for a project in class, no matter how much I cared about the project or the professor. As they said in the hood, "this ain't baseball."
The point I'm trying to make is, when people tell you that you get ideas somewhere between sleeping and waking it's true. I had heard that, even believed that. But I didn't know it. So, as I worried about concepts until my r.e.m. cycle finally took me out of my misery and let me concept in peace I got it. Now, this is not something I think you can rely on. Perhaps working myself until the point of where exhaustion meets oblivion, magic happens. I don't know. But, I'm happy it did because I was getting so fucking frustrated. And now, I am just to excited to sleep.
I think I made the right choice following my Design affair and leaving English behind. No matter how much I love literature, I don't ever remember waking up in the middle of the night saying, "Jesus Christ, get me some Keats! I just had a vision of a nightingale."
Farewell. :P
1 comment:
Bruce Mau first presented this as a lecture on “Play" and who doesn't like a little bit of play!
He calls it "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" I just may have to make a post out of it myself!
He says: "If there is an overriding theme in the deceptively “lite” manifesto, told as a children’s fable, it is that design is nothing if not a biological process and a precarious social activity. Indeed, design is a profound engagement with everything around us that remains unmastered — everything that is “ugly,” wet and free."
Ugly, wet and free?! Sign me up!
Here it is!
ALLOW EVENTS TO CHANGE YOU
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: The openness to experience events and The willingness to be changed by them.
FORGET ABOUT GOOD
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.
PROCESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUTCOME
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we're going, but we will know we want to be there.
LOVE YOUR EXPERIMENTS
(As You Would an Ugly Child)
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the Liberty in casting your works as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun failure every day.
GO DEEP
The deeper you go, the more likely you will discover something of value
CAPTURE ACCIDENTS
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
STUDY
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of
production as an excuse to study. Everyone will
benefit.
DRIFT
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
BEGIN ANYWHERE
John cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
EVERYONE IS A LEADER
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
HARVEST IDEAS. EDIT APPLICATIONS
Ideas need a fluid, dynamic, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to application.
KEEP MOVING
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be a part of your patience.
SLOW DOWN
Desynchronize with typical time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
DON'T BE COOL
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
ASK STUPID QUESTIONS
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at a rate of an infant.
COLLABORATE
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight and vast creative potential.
_____________
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven't had yet, and the ideas of others.
STAY UP LATE
Strange things happen when you've gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and your separated from the rest of the world.
WORK THE METAPHOR
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
TIME IS GENETIC
Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future. Be careful to take risks.
REPEAT YOURSELF
If you like it, do it again. If you don't like it, do it again.
MAKE YOUR OWN TOOLS
Hybridize your tool in order to build unique things. Even simple tools can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities so even a small tool can make a big difference.
STAND ON SOMEONE'S SHOULDERS
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
If you like it, do it again. If you don't like it, do it again.
AVOID SOFTWARE
The problem with software is that everyone has it.
DON'T CLEAN YOUR DESK
You might find something in the morning that you can't see tonight.
DON'T ENTER CONTESTS
Just don't. It's not good for you.
READ ONLY LEFT-HAND PAGES
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
MAKE NEW WORDS. EXTEND THE LEXICON.
The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
CREATIVITY IS NOT DEVICE-DEPENDENT
Forget technology. Think with your mind.
ORGANIZATION = LIBERTY
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, was only able to realize the Guggenheim in Bilboa because his studio could deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a "charming artifact of the past."
DON'T BORROW MONEY
Once again, Frank Gehry's advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It's not exactly rocket science, but it's surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
LISTEN CAREFULLY
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with them a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires and ambitions, we fold their world into our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
IMITATE
Don't be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get it all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton's version of Marcel Duchamp's large glass to see how rich, discredited and underused imitation is as a technique.
MAKE MISTAKES FASTER
This isn't my idea - I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
SCAT
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: Make up something else. . .not words.
BREAK IT, STRETCH IT, BEND IT, CRUSH IT, CRACK IT, FOLD IT
EXPLORE THE OTHER EDGE
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can't find the leading edge because it is being trampled underfoot. Try using old tech, equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
COFFEE BREAKS, CAB RIDES, GREEN ROOMS
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to. In the interstitial spaces - what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist, an exhibit curator in Paris, once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference - the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals - but no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
TAKE FIELD TRIPS
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time graphic-simulated computer environment.
AVOID FIELDS, JUMP FENCES
Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
LAUGH
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortable we are expressing ourselves.
REMEMBER
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely a novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from it’s source and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
Post a Comment