How to design better?

One of the biggest hurdles to working is how boring it is, but there’s a lot of value in doing manual and mundane work. It’s rote, but embracing the mundane is more than just getting work done; it’s about being the solution rather than finding one.

While I was making Sparkle’s website, I realized that this working definition of “quality” wasn’t enough in this new context. A magical experience would show, not tell. It would give you the sense of living in the future and seeing the future happen before your eyes. It required something the people at Every have written a lot about: It required ta... See more

But at the time, I questioned this approach. Why study semiotics when I could be building a portfolio site? Why pull all-nighters just to endure brutal critiques—tossing the work away and starting over? But the process—thinking, making, critique—proved transformative. The school wasn’t teaching design as ornamentation or styling. Instead, it was an... See more

Because of the pre-work I’ve done before starting—back to physics—I’m already moving by the time I “start” working, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion. The bad news is that my work will almost always be acted upon by an unbalanced force. It’s called life. Counteract this force by building momentum. Start all pieces of work a bit earlier,... See more

Get good at asking the right questions. Elon said, the answer is usually the easy part. The hard part is asking the right questions. Questions are the only tool we have to inquire about this reality. It is our pickaxe to inspect the world we live in. It also happens to be the backbone of our cognition, we literally think in questions. Getting good... See more

Conviction often stands in opposition to market trends. To have conviction before validation may make you seem weird or delusional, but it defines great artists—the ability to appreciate what others overlook or even fight against. To borrow YC parlance, they pursue “low-status things.” Maintaining this vision requires courage, especially when it... See more