I love attending conferences

In February I attended An Event Apart in Atlanta Georgia. Since I love learning (hence the blog title), I love conferences. I learn from the whole experience.

I love being in a new place.

Looking up...

looking down...

looking outside...

looking inside,

 and seeing art everywhere, even on the ceiling.

I love eating in new places... 

meeting new people...

...and thinking new thoughts.

And, if I'm lucky, experiencing some great art. 

[High Museum of Art...amazing and varied collection]

I especially like thinking new thoughts...

gaining new insights about my work...

...and myself.

It's so good to "get out of the house", to clear my head and re-energize. The unmeasurable conference "effect" for me is a certain clarity the comes about issues not even related to the conference topics or events.

Does that happen for you too?

Book - Imagine: How Creativity Works

I have loved reading Jonah Lehrer's book Imagine: How Creativity Works.

Not too concerned
I'm not too concerned about recent controversy concerning a Bob Dylan quote. When I read, I don't take everything on face value. I look for the bits of truth that ring true.

I agree with Roy Peter Clark that it's worth reading despite the problems.

Rather than abandon it in its disgrace, you find yourself engaged and turning the pages, and suddenly your hand grabs for the highlighter to mark up this excellent paragraph about the origins of creativity, and then that one.

Okay, so Lehrer made up a quote and then lied about it. Not good, but doesn't taint the whole.

So he reworked some earlier work—big deal. If it's good, give it to me.

He simplifies neuroscience. Thank goodness, because I can understand it enough to urge me to further reading and study. (I searched out Geoffrey West and listened to his hour discussion about the dimensionality of cities.)

Application
I've been able to apply what Lehrer writes about to my life.

Here are a few examples, that I found interesting and true, in my experience:

On relaxing and indulging in distractions:

"Occasionally, focus can backfire and make us fixated on the wrong answers. It's not until you let yourself relax and indulge in distractions that you discover the answer; the insight arrives only after you stop looking for it." (p. 36)

This happens to me so often, it is ingrained in my work process. I stop, take a break, put it aside to work on something else, or just turn away from the computer for a few minutes. When I return, the answer (or the problem with the design) is obvious. Walks work, weekends work, vacations work even better. I always come back with a new perspective and a fresh look at the work.

On horizontal sharing and conceptual blending:

"The benefit of horizontal interactions—people sharing knowledge across fields—is that it encourages conceptual blending, which is extremely important part of the insight process...our breakthroughs often arrive when we apply old solutions to new situations." (p. 37-38)

This is why the best designers have a wide range of varied interests and a lot of different life experiences. They are better able to draw from ideas from these areas and recombine them in interesting and creative ways. The talented designers I know have full interesting lives with unexpected backgrounds and un-design-related talents.

On cities and creativity:

"It is the sheer density of the city—the proximity of all those overlapping minds—that makes it such an inexhaustible source of creativity." (p. 183)

I love going into Philadelphia because I always think new thoughts, talk to new people and find unexpected art. It's a scavenger hunt for new food, boutique shop finds, and interesting interactions...gluten-free peanut butter and chocolate "cake", brightly-colored rustic figurines from Peru, and a discussion with a parking attendant about the mural in his lot.

Other interesting truths
The stumped phase of creativity, the struggle, forces us to try something new. Because we feel frustrated, we start to look at problems from a new perspective. It's a normal part of the creative process. (p. 16, 17)

Imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles. (p. 23)

A relaxed state of mind allows us to look inward toward the stream of remote associations in our right brain...insights come in the shower, when we are in a positive mood, when we are not looking for an insight.  (p. 31-33)

Taking an idea, really seeing it, drawing it, making it real requires attention, focus and hard work. (p. 68-72)

Milton Glaser: Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order. (p. 71)

Let go of the part of the mind that judges, the worry about doing it "wrong", so we don't constrain our own creativity. (p. 104)

Sleeping is the height of genius. [Love this one! It's the ultimate letting go, associations are free wheeling and the mind is relaxed.] (p. 107)

Travel: when you escape from the place you spend all your time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas previously suppressed. You start thinking about obscure possibilities. (p. 126)

Office conversations are so powerful that simply increasing their quantity can dramatically increase creative production; people have more new ideas when they talk with more people. (p. 153)

The most creative ideas, it turns out, don't occur when we're alone. Rather they emerge from our social circles, from collections of acquaintances who inspire novel thoughts. Sometimes the most important people in life are the people we barely know. (p. 204)

Worth the read
The publishers have pulled the book from the shelves, but if you get your hands on one, it's worth the read. Only if to wonder what all the fuss is about.

And, I agree with Roy...I'm busy learning. Tell me where the mistakes are in the book, and let me get on with it.

Other learnings
Critical insights into creativity

More about the controversy:
Controversy about a Bob Dylan quote
JL resigns from the New Yorker
Another false quotation found
A cautionary tale for today's overachiever

Videos, interviews
Captivating, accessible, never dull
How Creativity Works
How Creativity Works, an interview
The best way to learn at college: Be an outsider
The science of insight creation

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Video: 12 Steps to Hell

According to Milton Glaser, these are 12 steps to hell for a designer.

The music for this video is by Yann Tiersen, and the song is called "Naval".

The animated design is by Amanda Keenan.



 And I would have to agree.

Can design be a moral issue? Do designers have a responsibility to the greater good? What part does personal integrity play in design decisions?


More Milton Glaser:

Milton's most recent show at School of Visual Arts, which is a 50-year retrospective of nearly 100 works he created for the school.

Milton, the Work

His source of inspiration, video conversation

Intro to Inform and Delight, video clip

Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight, 73 min. documentary

A day made of glass

They have me sold...

What's on Your Home Screen

Whenever someone shows me their iPhone I'm always curious about what's on their home screen and what it may say about them.

Here's what I have lately.


Wonder what it says about me...stays in touch, loves reading and baseball, curious, surfs, tracks, and saves?

Here's the thing. My apps have to audition for the home screen.

Tell me about yourself...uh huh. How many clicks do you get? Are you a rookie that needs a trial run? How much distraction will you be? Are you seasonal? Will you make my life better or easier? Will you entertain me when I'm bored? You know, if I don't use you much you're off to join the jumble of apps on deeper screens? I'll have to separate you two, Camera and Clock, if you keep fighting with each other.

Here's my second screen.


There's a lot of pushing and shoving here to earn a spot on the home screen.

That Good icon will never make the home screen. Too loud. Just screaming to be buried. (It's actually my app to access my work e-mail, making it a good candidate for relegation to the heap.)

There's not a lot of special interests going on here because my phone really is about communication and usefulness, including the church stuff.

And, no, I haven't upgraded to 4.1 OS.

My husband did though and it screwed up a lot things...his wifi settings, and his Mail access and a few other things.

And, yes, I know you can group your apps into folders with the new OS, but now his phone is just a nondescript jumble of icons that all look the same...black with tiny dots of color representing the contents.

Indistinguishable.

You have to read the tiny labels under each group to know what's in it. It's no longer visual and easy to find the app you want.

Icons are powerful little colored gems that save space and create an identity that's easy to recognize. They are there when I need them without extra fuss. And I don't need reading glasses to navigate!

What does your home screen say about you?

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The Art of Folding Paper

Stumbled upon this documentary on Netflix, Between the Folds. It's fascinating. I highly recommend seeing it.

Filmmaker Vanessa Gould takes you on a provocative odyssey into the mesmerizing world of modern origami, where artists and scientists use the ancient art form to craft works of delicate beauty and to model cutting-edge mathematical theories. Pushing the envelope of origami to include caricatured portraits and elaborate abstract designs, these experts examine how paper folding can reveal the profound connection between art, science and philosophy.

It sparked a long-forgotten memory, lost in the necessity of day-t0-day demands of current circumstances.

I love math.

Few people know that about me.

It started with pop-up books. I remember when I was three years old, or four, sitting on the floor in the children's book section of a large department store, looking at the magic of a pop-up book, and closing my eyes, imagining what the shapes would look like if I took them off the page and laid them flat, and wondering if I could put it all back together to work again.

I loved the fun of learning math. I've loved solving those little puzzles of number logic since I was in elementary school first learning the rules of the game. So black and white. Either your solution was wrong or it was right. But rewarding when it was right. A game.

I remember one Jr. High math teacher, who fancied herself an inventor, who could explain an algebra problem in several different ways until nearly all the students understood, one way or another. We caught her enthusiasm for algebra and learned that it could be practical and not just theoretical.

Later in high school I found such a sense of accomplishment at completing a complex proof of a theorem, proving a truth through a series of logical steps, or explaining a complex trigonometry shape with a formula of numbers and letters. But these were always private victories because what girl brags about that to their friends. Not cool. Such a geek.

Then came a fascination with Tessalations, then fractals, and on to scherenschnitte (paper-cutting) and then quiltmaking. The folding, bending, reflecting, matching, and snipping and cutting, and then the recombining, repeating, rotating, seeing it come together in new and intricate and interesting ways.

Art and math.

Wanting to continue on in the same vein I chose Graphic Design as a career...art, and possibly beauty, explained mathematically through the Golden mean and the Fibonacci series and more. To take line and shape and make something beautiful and meaningful and useful. Visual explanations that communicate on several levels. And then came web design where math and code is what underlies some beautiful digital work.

Now today, I'm inspired by this documentary on Origami, and paper folding. Math can be explained through art. Art can be explained by math. The color, the feel of the paper, the old-fashioned work of hands...making something dimensional from a flat 2-dimensional plane.

Hmm, maybe it's time for a new hobby.

e

Photo credit

3 Things

There are three things that take time:

1. Making friends
2. Raising children
3. Creative work

There is no rushing through.

I have to remind myself.

These are the things that bring the most meaning to our lives...lasting relationships, our families and the creative work of our minds and hands.

And they are worth the time and effort.

Wise words repeat in my head. "Do not labor for that which cannot satisfy."

In the workplace, hoping to build a quick relationship in order to "leverage" that relationship, is phony and easily spotted. Be genuine and caring.

At home, rushing kids from place to place, through meals and into bed, will bring regret and missed moments of joy and contentment. Let chores and "me"-dia time go.

In creative work, meeting a deadline with something slapped together in short burst between meetings, will never satisfy you or the client or the audience. Don't over promise.

Take the time.

A Good Day

The other day I was working through an online tutorial and at one point, I thought, "Wow, that's cool!" In an otherwise slow and repetitious lesson was a bright flash of light, a new thought, a gem.

Maybe that's all there is to a day, a project, a job, or even life.

Maybe it's just a few sparkles of mica in a long stretch of gray sidewalk.

The next thought was about something I told to my boss years ago as a new designer, "If I can open up Photoshop every day, then it's a good day and I'm happy." Well, that's a fairly simple formula for happiness.

In the children's book A Good Day by Kevin Henkes, it's as simple as freedom, love and food.

So after some thought here's what I've discovered. It's a good day when I can help someone be happy, make something, or learn something new. It's that simple.

What makes a good day for you?

"...data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions."

Douglas Bowman, former Visual Design Lead for Google