how to get unstuck

Move. former professor Sandy Wheeler gave me this simple but beautiful piece of advice in her conversation with John Malinoski, and Scout (see my previous post).

Sometimes when you're making something you get stuck in terrible molasses swamps. Somehow, you manage to work yourself into corners from which no escape or forward progess can be made. Most of us have experienced those off-days. Feelings on those days range from mild exasperation to existential despair.

The problem of being stuck has been mulled over and talked about by artists, scientists, teachers, musicians, and probably every human being ever. We refer to it as "writer's block", "hitting a wall", or "the well running dry." 

How do you get the well wet again? What's the solution?

Sandy's answer was so simple it floored me. Move. Engage your body physically. Take a walk, or dance. Body movement takes you out of a mental space and into the physical one. Striking a better balance between physical and mental activity (aka giving your overheated mega brain the occasional rest) could be just what you need to get unstuck.

on wearing rabbit ears

I was lucky to see two of my old professors talk last night about their childhoods, old jobs, families, and design. it was a true gift and i'm going to try and spend a little bit of time reflecting on sharing some of the pearls that were given to me last night. here's one:

John Malinoski spent a little time talking about the small town where he grew up. His father was a coach of all sports, and gave the following advice to his son: don't play the game with rabbit ears. If you think about it, rabbits are always picking up on the slightest vibrations and disturbances around them. While this hyper-attentiveness to one's suroundings has done wonders for the survival of the rabbit species, it does little for atheltes who need focus and resolve in order to play to the best of their abilities.It's amazing how much this advice also applies to people in any sort of creative field. (the parallels between the life of an athlete an the life of a designer are astonishing!) For a creative person looking to flourish and thrive, one has to be able to turn off all the peripheral noise that can surround the work ("What will my colleagues think?", "How will this be received?", or "How does this compare to what has come before?"). Focusing too much on external non-issues is detrimental to quality. Instead one must turn inward, and concentrate on the task at hand. 

Put another way: we need spend less time listening to the commentating and more time in the gym.

a case for a new education system, elegantly and passionately argued

mr. seth godin asks a deceptively simple question of all of us: what is school for?

we agonize, we endlessly tweak, because

I had the honor of being one of Law Alsobrook's students when I studied at VCUQ in the spring of my sophomore year. Although it's been two or three years since then, there are things I haven't forgotten about him. He was always full of energy - never in one place for too long, quick to draw a diagram or to scribble notes on the whiteboard. The classes he taught with Leland Hill always seemed to hum with anxiety, excitement, and laughter. Law had high expectations for us students. We had to be dedicated to research, iteration, and making things with intentionality. I look back at that semester now, and I see it as a time when I cut my teeth and began to understand what design is and how it works.

I remember one day Law talked me through a moment of self-doubt and despair. I was designing postage stamps and I wanted so badly to make something meaningful, beautiful, and good. At a certain point in the process I got so stuck and twisted up about these tiny stamps that I broke down. I was beginning to seriously doubt if I was capable of being a designer.

Law told me to trust the process and to not be so hard on myself. He reminded me that they were just stamps, and not the Mona Lisa. He also explained to me that there are naturally going to be moments when you doubt your process and capabilities, and that founduation-shaking mega-existential meltdowns happen from time to time. I remember leaving the studio that day feeling humbled, relieved, and at peace.

Law was one of the first to help me understand what design is and how it works. Here he is again, reminding me and everyone of design's power, intensity, and importance.

manifestos

this is incredible! a collection of design manifestos from as early as 1909 can be found right here.

here is the first part of F.T. Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism.  Futurism is something I have been reading about, an early modernist movement that started in Italy. fascinating, poetic, strange...

We had stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging mosque lamps with domes of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits, shining like them with the prisoned radiance of electric hearts. For hours we had trampled our atavistic ennui into rich oriental rugs, arguing up to the last confines of logic and blackening many reams of paper with our frenzied scribbling.

An immense pride was buoying us up, because we felt ourselves alone at that hour, alone, awake, and on our feet, like proud beacons or forward sentries against an army of hostile stars glaring down at us from their celestial encampments. Alone with stokers feeding the hellish fires of great ships, alone with the black spectres who grope in the red-hot bellies of locomotives launched on their crazy courses, alone with drunkards reeling like wounded birds along the city walls.

Suddenly we jumped, hearing the mighty noise of the huge double-decker trams that rumbled by outside, ablaze with colored lights, like villages on holiday suddenly struck and uprooted by the flooding Po and dragged over falls and through gourges to the sea.

to read the rest of this click here

thank you thank you thank you to swissmiss

trust, tt&tot