I'd like this page to be an online notebook for me to keep track of my online info mining, image searching, and the drafting table for my connections I make from sources physical and virtual. My insights bloom out of my engineering background, architectural interest, and artistic bent (as I've been told). And, I want it to keep me earnest.
Lately, I've been reading quite a bit of what good design entails. Not only just: What is good design? But, also: what are the steps one has to take?
There are some preconceived ideas I've had before I started on this pursuit of reading essays and interviews by folks I admire. Below are those ideas married with the recently found new ones. They've have been recycled and sown together many a time by other folks and with different anecdotes. I've put them below, and will elaborate on those ideas with personal anecdotes and examples in future posts.
Some ideas:
- Good design is in the pursuit of truth
- Good design is integrated with process
- Good design is invisible
- Good design is art (art needn't been good design, although it can be.)
The pursuit of truth is the guiding light to good design. When you're confronted with a disgruntled user or cannot connect two pieces together, you've got to ask what is missing? What is there? And, to be brutally genuinely honest when answering those questions -- that's the hard part and results in iterations and failures all in the pursuit of becoming invisible. Saddle up and good design will become something that wows you and those around you -- opening up doors you never even knew existed. (Although I can't guarantee surprise relations to rich folks like Oscar Wilde's play.)
In addition to reading, I've also been consuming radio shows, podcasts, museums, galleries, and really anything that catches my senses. And, I ask why?
So, what exactly have I been consuming (as of late and constantly)?
99u's Make your Mark series
Barnes Foundation
Metropolitan Museum of Art
MoMA
Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweatheart