Dear Designer,
I’m on vacation this week but I wanted to write a lighter post for a lighter day to you, my fellow designer and artist friend.
Anyway, cringe is in, so…
I have been thinking about how we might maximize our impact through the skills and resources that we already have. The ones that are already sitting there, waiting to see the light of day.
The magnitudes that already ready.
This self-critical filter (or the crisis-generating perpetual slip of self-confidence) is something I suffer from very often.
If I just knew one more thing or read one more book or took one more course, then, then, I would be a better writer, designer, maker or monkey.
“I’m only 10 steps away from starting to write this new piece.” “I’m 5 steps away from creating that journal.” “I’m 2 steps away from applying for this program.” “I’m 1 step away from completely re-organizing my life.”
Do you know it took me eight months to start writing Dear Designer? Two hundred and forty days of complaining to myself — and others.
I know you
I do. Designers suffer from wanting to be seen while hiding in the shallows.
We uphold unacceptable procrastination tactics. It’s why folks like Seth Godin and Austin Kleon and Suleika Jaouad have books and careers. They write to an audience of a single creative soul, replicated by the millions.
But following their advice, or mine, is different from following your own, which is the only one that matters.
How can you use what you have — your beautiful, G-d-given talents, your years of learning coupled with your ideals and values — now in order to create the thing you most want in the world?
How can you build your own shop, ship that new idea, or craft that new project, without buying that new desk, getting that new tool, or finding brand new inspiration?
How can you build a little more community, create a little more kindness, snare a modicum more peace by leveraging what you own now.
It’s in you
Everything is already before you. Take 25 minutes today. Spare the new pomodoro tool and make that thing.
I know it’s in you to create. Because it’s in me. It’s in us.
Yours,
P.S. If you haven’t already, subscribe to get this in your inbox every week. Dear Designer is for designers who are worried — and shouldn’t be.
Image of the Day
New York City recently redesigned its subway map for the first time since 1979, almost my entire life. I lived in New York for eleven years and that old map is still embedded in my brain. But the new one by Michael Hertz Associates, is a stunning work of informational art and it is strikingly similar to that wonderfully controversial one from 1972 designed by Massimo Vignelli. The map is not the territory — but it often is the terrain. Even in this day of Google Maps and bio-mechanically automated directions, it’s a pleasure to know that maps, in fact and with infatuation, matter.
Quote of the Day
“Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”
~ Seth Godin
Thank you for reading Dear Designer, dear designer. Wishing you a good, peaceful week ahead.
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