Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
“The art of remembering is the art of thinking.”
-William James, 1892
Musings: Remembering As Thinking
Musings: Hard Things Aren’t Always Bad
Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
“Tools that make hard things easy can make us less likely to tolerate things that are hard.”
-Clive Thompson, in his Wired article on automotive automation
Personally, I long for a future with self-driving cars, but Thompson makes some great points in his article. More important is the above sentence, which sums up a paradoxical challenge of modern life. In a society where we’re much less worried about subsistence and survival, concerns of comfort rise to the top. Unfortunately, in the quest for ease and luxury, trying to find ways to do less can have an overall negative effect on our ability to do things that are still difficult.
Striving, working hard, taking the road less traveled — whichever turn of phrase you prefer, it seems there is still a lot of value in embracing the hard things of life. “The hard” is often more satisfying, growth-inducing, and life-changing.
Musings: Our Polar World
Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
Why it is that we can’t seem to allow gray concepts, nuances, or middle grounds these days — whether it’s in politics, headlines, or cultural battles? Is it because choosing an extreme is easier and faster? Or owing to the fact that our mostly-electronic communication doesn’t handle shades of meaning, subtlety, or nuance well?
I’d like to call for a return to degrees of agreement, which is much easier to find when we don’t think of our positions as islands, but instead, as steps along a wider road where everyone is also walking.
Musings: The Impressive Difference
Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
What’s the difference between trying hard to impress someone, and just being plain impressive?
The first allows a lack of confidence to push you into action, even if it’s unwise or hastily-planned. The second is just a state of being, allowing some internal strength, competence, or other compelling quality to shine. The harder you’re trying, the less impressive it will probably seem.
Musings: Doing Something About It
Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
Super inspiring thoughts from Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and father of the video game industry:
Musings: Saul Bass On Presentations
Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
“I often think that presentations are more difficult than the work itself. A presentation has to share just enough of the process so that someone who has not been a participant can understand the ‘inevitability’ of the solution, and that the solution is the culmination of a rigorous and systematic investigation of all reasonable possibilities. It’s surprising how hard that can be sometimes.”
-Saul Bass, from Saul Bass: A Life In Film And Design
(Hat tip from David Airey’s LogoDesignLove)
Musings: Death To Cynicism
Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
Cynicism (and its practitioners) should be confined to the museum of your organization as a long-dead relic — helpful to study, but worthless in practice.
Musings: Emotions As Fuel
Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
It can be easy in business or life to discount the importance of emotions in favor of things that are more easily measured. But the difficult-to-quantify are sometimes the most valuable and crucial in the long run. Nothing inspiring or meaningful ever gets done without the application of genuine emotion. Emotions might be ethereal and ephemeral when compared to numbers on a spreadsheet, but they are the fuel rods that power passionate action.
Musings: Weave Passion Into Business
Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
Sure, we all have to eat and pay the mortgage. But it’s easy to become a creative mercenary if you’re merely chasing lucrative markets or the next profitable, exploitable space. The wise and happy path:
Either figure out how to get deeply excited about the work you’re doing, or find a way to integrate your already-existing passions into your business. The world doesn’t need more creative hired guns; it needs more people who truly believe in what they do.
Musings: Great Thoughts From Greater Designers
Our short musings on design, branding, business and the human condition.
These incredible designers and thinkers said it well:
“The discipline of asking bigger questions can lead to profound changes for brands.” -Marty Neumeier
“You design for durability, for function, for usefulness, for rightness, for beauty…” -Paul Rand
“Navigating through the political process — building trust — building relationships — it’s everything.” -Paula Scher
“Marketing without design is lifeless, and design without marketing is mute.” -Von Glitschka