99% recently published highlights of designer Frank Chimero’s “everything he knows about design“. We went to the original and culled our own. As usual, we see them being about LIFE, not just design.

If you can’t draw as well as someone, or use the software as well, or if you do not have as much money to buy supplies,or if you do not have access to the tools they have, beat them by being more thoughtful. Thoughtfulness is free and burns on time and empathy.

Change contexts when you’re stuck. Draw wrong-handed and upside down and backwards. Find a good seat outside.

Stop trying to be cool: it is stifling.

Buy lightly used. Patina is a pretty word, and a beautiful concept.

The best communicators are gift-givers.

If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life. Sympathy is medicine.

I have no idea what I’m doing, and everyone is just making it up as they go along.

Start brave and brash: you can always make things more conservative, but it’s hard to make things more radical.

Take things away until you cry.

All useful, especially “stop trying to be cool”. The last two make an interesting combo-platter: “brash and brave” + “take things away”…

But our favorite is also our operating principle: “making it up as you go along.”

 

Related posts: more bill murray: ‘being relaxed’ (+ how to get there)
creative process: doing this-or-that ‘in your head’
houdini’s mantra: “my brain is the key that sets me free”
what happens if you say ‘yes, and…’ (instead of ‘no’)? 
chuck close’s ‘note to self’ (eight perfect rules for living)

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One thought on “chimero: ‘everyone is just making it up as they go along’

  1. “Take things away until you cry…”

    I think this is the hardest one for a writer/designer/any artist.
    Big blind spot when something looks and feels so good, and yet
    it doesn’t belong, slows the action or the eye,
    or simply just isn’t good enough.
    Ciao for now.
    Catch you later in another artwork.

    Easiest one?

    “Stop trying to be cool.”

    At one point or another you realize
    it’s over, you’ll never be cool.
    You’re too old.
    Let those freedom bells ring.

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