creative wisdom

When we recognize true taste, we are recognizing that alchemic combination of skill and soul.

It’s easier to recognize beauty than it is to create it. You’re good enough to know that what you’re doing isn’t good, but not good enough to produce something great. When you find yourself in this frustrating limbo, the challenge is to never forget what got you there in the first place. Remember that thing that got you into the game.

Your love. You... See more

My best thoughts – the ones that make the most difference in my life – are rarely the byproduct of thought.

A-ha moments.

Epiphanies.

Inspirational insights.

They rarely arise from thinking hard.

They are, instead – a byproduct of leaning back.

Finding flow.

Letting go

The backward step.

A clearing – for me - is where clarity calls home.

Eventually we’ll have machines that can dream. But there’ll always still be the hard, dumb, bottleneck that is human effort. You shape what you make and it shapes you right back. When you get stuck nothing is going to help you get unstuck except sheer stubbornness and self-driven motion. That’s the most rewarding part though: if you expend enough e... See more

All this is to say is that for design, as for other fields, the road to greatness is often paved with obsession—an immoderate, unjustifiable surplus of care. Doing things that no-one asked for with a love that no-one could reasonably expect.

Graphic designer and painter Paula Scher on how to make something great:

"Less is more and more is more. It's the middle that's not a good place."