I usually don’t know what I want until someone shows me, or until I encounter it in the world for the very first time. That’s why, when I work with a creative professional like an illustrator, I am careful never to lead them too much about what silly ideas I think I have; I want to give them maximum freedom to put their own stamp of creativity on... See more

While it’s probably one of the corniest things I’ll ever write in this column, I’ve come to believe that developing taste is not so unlike going to therapy; it’s an inefficient, time-consuming process that mostly entails looking inward and identifying whatever already moves you. It’s the product of devouring ideas, images and pieces of culture not... See more

All of sudden, we weren’t just designing something visual, but we needed to understand human behaviour, to see ourselves in other people’s contexts ( don’t get me started on our empathy phase!!! ), to learn how the decisions we made could affect a company’s bottom line, etc.

But along the way, we lost something. The actual work we were producing.... See more

Observe that feeling—it is, perhaps, a part of the context. There is some information there. But to unfold, do not write off any solutions. Leave them all on the table; let them combine and recombine. Many good ideas look bad at first. To increase the rate at which you understand the context, you want to develop a certain detachment. When the

... See more

The great Georgia O’Keefe put it this way: "I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me... so I decided to start anew."

And anything new is by nature without precedent — meaning, without data to know whether it will work or not. So when we approach building new things, we don’t optimize for metrics. We optimize for feelings.... See more