austinkleon asked: What have you read recently that's really blown your mind?

Let me show you what I think is blogging done right. I think we’re learning how to use this internet thingie better, and figuring out ways to leverage blogs better to make more convincing, fully fleshed-out content appropriate (and, in fact, custom-made) for the web.

Books in the Age of the iPad from craigmod - Take all of your skills as a designer: critical thinking, communicating, writing, forecasting, narrating, organizing, synthesizing and hypothesizing, and put it into one blog post. Then, use the distribution of the internet to do it in a timely fashion. That’s this blog post. Imagine what would happen if we all took the care to craft such a convincing hypothesis… How would the discourse online be elevated?

Designing for Improvisation from Bobulate If you’ve read my blog over the past several weeks, you’ll see several recurring themes here: platforms, frameworks for improvisation, etc. These models directly address a couple of the big questions we face on the internet: how do you get people’s attention, how can you let them contribute, and how can you make those contributions meaningful?

Anonymous asked: What do you see yourself doing 3 years from now? Is there anything you'd like to dabble in, that you haven't already.. or maybe incorporate your work into a different medium?

I don’t know what I’ll be doing 3 years from now. Three years ago, I would have never predicted I’d be writing, speaking, and illustrating more and designing less.

We’ll see where things go, because new opportunities bubble up every day. If there’s something that I think will unify my efforts over the next couple years, it’s these three things: purpose, impact and legacy. I want to have a reason to do the work, I want the work to have meaning and influence, and I want the work to last and not have a short shelf-life.

Anonymous asked: What illustration or cartoon (but not comic) character would you like to be?

Probably Roger from 101 Dalmatians. Let’s see: a great wife, a maid, spends most of the day sequestered up in his attic working on his craft. Also, a house full of puppies in London and a cool pipe and sweater vest. Sounds like a dream life to me, right?

Anonymous asked: When's the store coming back? I wanted to buy some stuff around Christmas but missed out.

The Shop will be back in a couple weeks. I took it down because of moving preparation. Sorry about that. Once I get my feet under me again, I’ll flip the sign to “open.”

Anonymous asked: what is your all time favorite design book?

The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher.

You know how most good movies aren’t about how to fall in love, but are about the experience of what it’s like to be in love? That’s what this book is to me. It’s not about how to design, it’s not a documentation of specimens of design, it is a giant book that is about what it’s like to live a visual life where everything is special and interesting. It’s a treasure chest of insight, wit and delight. And it made me realize that even though this work may mutilate us in its own special way, maybe that mutilation is desirable, if we can just steer it correctly.

Thanks, Mr. Fletcher.