For me, success is not a public thing. It’s a private thing. It’s when you have fewer and fewer regrets.
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If this feels obvious to you, that’s because you too are in the business of the good life. As architects of desire, the advertising industry shapes our cultural understanding of a life worth wanting. Every time we step on a bus or open a social media app, the invisible hand of our industry is there to build demand for new products and services that might make life better. And with up to 10,000 ads floating into our consciousness every day, how can we resist?
This: Advertising folk, it’s time to rethink what we’re selling
thedrum.com/opinion/2023/02/21/advertising-folk-it-s-time-rethink-what-we-re-selling
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Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention.
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If it is right, it happens –
The main thing is not to hurry.
Nothing good gets away. -
Because empathy is a cornerstone of design.
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Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful … be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.
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In this article, I set to understand and explore fundamental thinking that examines a new design worldview. A proposal to change our ways of working as designers, first in voluntary communities (which we already have, but with different goals) and then to be better equipped to understand and explore as individuals and as a community. This is not a desperate article. Believe me when I say this is an article full of hope and wonder.
A great plea by fellow designer Angelos Arnis to transform design (and business) and get ready for the new realities and challenges of the future: Designing for the last earth.
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The Etsy Strike raises essential questions about our relationships with the platforms we use to run our businesses. Are they service providers? Are they tools? Are these platforms our bosses?
There are some interesting thoughts about the relationship between our online platforms –in this case, especially Etsy– and the (small) businesses using them to make a living in the article Always On: The Hidden Labor We Do Every Day by Tara McMullin. Interesting regarding the role of the internet for modern work culture, but even more so if you plan to sell your craft online yourself.
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We can determine what kind of human our technologies can help us become, and build technologies that enable that. In fact, we should directly tie the success of our technologies to how much they enable our humanity (as in, our positive human characteristics), and use this criteria to evaluate past, present and future technologies.
Letters to a Young Technologist is a great online collection of (at the time of writing this) five essays about technology written primarily for soon-to-be technologists:
1. What is Technology? / 2. Value Beyond Instrumentalization / 3. It’s Time to Govern / 4. Study the Past, Create the Future / 5. To be a Technologist is to be Human.
If you’ve followed this blog for a bit already –and noticed the quote above, you are probably able to guess which section I might like the most.
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filed under hyperlinks, articles
The point is, when you’ve been conducting your working life at the speed of a freight train, it takes quite a long time to roll to a stop and/or point yourself in a new direction—toward a new way of being, living, and working.
An article worth reading —especially but not only if you’re working in the creative industry; Confessions of a Burnt Out Over-Achiever by Jocelyn K. Glei.
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Find your reason, practice, and go on holidays.
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I don’t care about my body of work. I don’t care about having some ceavure. I don’t care about having a consistent body of work. The only thing that gives me enjoyment is the current pursuit of whatever I’m doing.
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© Kirby Ferguson (via YouTube)
There is an element of explotation to all creatitvity, to appropriate is to take without permission —that’s creativity. You don’t ask others if you could do it, you just do it. Who would you ask anyway? It’s okay to take if you do it the right way.
As a foreigner very much into Asian –more particularly Japanese– culture, philosophy and design, cultural appropriation is a topic I’ve thought about quite a bit already —and even more so since I’m a father now, trying to be the best role model I can be.
Just like with his absolutely amazing series on remixing, Kirby Ferguson makes some valid points on this sensitive topic during his Farewell to Cultural Appropriation.
On a related note: Ferguson is bringing his 2020 series This Is Not a Conspiracy Theory to YouTube (for free). Episode one is available already, the other five parts will be released every two weeks. I haven’t seen it as of now, so I can’t tell you if it is any good, but given the recent track record of the filmmaker, I’m going to watch it for sure!
