I have fond memories, from when I was young, of how my parents would sit at the kitchen table before serving dinner and talk to one another about their day. My sister and I weren’t terribly interested in the office politics at my mother’s job, but my father was always there, listening and nodding. Now that I’m older, I realize that the point of those chats was to give my mother an opportunity to tell a story so that my father could understand why she was a different person that night compared to when she left for work in the morning. She was describing the change in her over time, bridging the void between her and my father that developed throughout the day. There was distance between them, and her story closed the gap.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:55pm on January 11, 2016We’re attracted to the painting [Nighthawks] because it is not finished. All of the paint has been applied, but there’s a gap that frustrates the viewer from deducing what is happening in the picture. […] The painting is lacking; it requires us to contribute something of ourselves in order to fill the void and finish it.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:54pm on January 11, 2016Design can speak the tongue of art with the force of commerce.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:52pm on January 11, 2016Picasso, during his Blue Period, painted only monochromatically. Limitations allow us to get to work without having to wait for a muse to show up. Instead, the process and the limitations suggest the first few steps; after that, the motion of making carries us forward.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:50pm on January 11, 2016I find the best way to gain momentum is to think of the worst possible way to tackle the project. Quality may be elusive, but stupidity is always easily accessible; absurdity is fine, maybe even desired.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:50pm on January 11, 2016Objectives guide the process toward an effective end, but they don’t do much to help one get going. In fact, the weight of the objectives can crush the seeds of thought necessary to begin down an adventurous path.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:48pm on January 11, 2016I can imagine the excitement in the room when Stradivari would hand his newest violin to a skilled musician, because the violinist would unlock the instrument’s full potential by playing it. The products of design, like Stradivari’s violins, possess an aspect that can only be revealed through their use.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:48pm on January 11, 2016Education, just like climbing the ladder, must be balanced between How and Why. We so quickly forget that people, especially children, will not willingly do what we teach them unless they are shown the joys of doing so.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:46pm on January 11, 2016We use design to close the gap between the situation we have and the one we desire.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:45pm on January 11, 2016What is the marker of good design? It moves. The story of a successful piece of design begins with the movement of its maker while it is being made, and amplifies by its publishing, moving the work out and around. It then continues in the feeling the work stirs in the audience when they see, use, or contribute to the work, and intensifies as the audience passes it on to others. Design gains value as it moves from hand to hand; context to context; need to need. If all of this movement harmonizes, the work gains a life of its own, and turns into a shared experience that enhances life and inches the world closer to its full potential.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:44pm on January 11, 2016Every jazz club or improv comedy theater is a temple to the process of production. It’s a factory, and the art is the assembly, not the product. Jazz is more verb than noun.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:44pm on January 11, 2016
The best is often when nothing is happening.
[…] Our lives happen between
the memorable.
I don’t understand the need for trickery or some new way of arranging words on a page. You’re allowed to do that. You’re allowed to write all kinds of poetry, but there’s a whole world out there.
Paris Review – The Art of Poetry No. 91, Jack Gilbert 10:38pm on January 9, 2016Unfortunately, we found the Greece we knew was no longer there. Our Greece was wonderfully bucolic. Very quiet, peaceful, slow, friendly—farmers plowing, a couple of men in small boats, almost no electronics. A civilization that lasted four hundred years is gone now. Gone the way Paris is gone, the way Italy is gone. All gone. Everything that I dreamed of is gone. It was such a blessing to get over there when it still was. All of the things that I loved were on the brink of disappearing without my knowing it. You can’t go to Paris anymore; it’s not there. Greece and Japan aren’t there anymore. The places I’ve loved no longer exist.
Paris Review – The Art of Poetry No. 91, Jack Gilbert 10:32pm on January 9, 2016To celebrate life, but not in a way that ignores its complexity.
The Sun Magazine | About The Sun 8:31pm on January 8, 2016Spending time among the replicators has helped me become aware of what it’s easy to acknowledge intellectually but more difficult to feel: that a piece of art is mortal; that it is the work of many hands, only some of which are coeval with the artist; that time is the medium of media; that one person’s damage is another’s patina; that the present’s notion of its past and future are changeable fictions; that a museum is at sea.
Working with the Whitney’s Replication Committee – The New Yorker 9:36am on January 8, 2016If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment.
I mean, photography is all right if you don’t mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed cyclops—for a split second
Austin Kleon — David Hockney’s “Joiners” 10:38am on January 3, 2016