Anonymous asked: You've mentioned 'Learn to write' several times now. I would just like to hear your thoughts on good writing and how one learns to write well. It's hard to grasp sometimes as we all 'know how to write'. What makes it good? Thanks Frank.
I value: clarity, emotion, and brevity. In that order. These rules do not apply to things like novels, where sometimes length is an asset and clarity can stifle a reader’s imagination.
One gets better at writing by writing and reading good writing. I’d recommend Stephen King’s On Writing for further guidance, because I’m a mediocre writer at best. I’m just playing dress-up here.
Anonymous asked: Favorite Pavement song?
My brain says Gold Soundz. My heart says Stereo. (And you’re my fact checkin’ cuz.)
Anonymous asked: What advice would you give to a graphic design student?
Design does not equal client work.
It’s hard to make purple work in a design. The things your teachers tell you in class are not gospel. You will get conflicting information. It means that both are wrong. Or both are true. This never stops. Most decisions are gray, and everything lives on a spectrum of correctness and suitability.
Look people in the eyes when you are talking or listening to them. The best teachers are the ones who treat their classrooms like a workplace, and the worst ones are the ones who treat their classroom like a classroom as we’ve come to expect it. Eat breakfast. Realize that you are learning a trade, so craft matters more than most say. Realize that design is also a liberal art. Quiet is always an option, even if everyone is yelling. Libraries are a good place. The books are free there, and it smells great.
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.
The best communicators are gift-givers.
Don’t become dependent on having other people pull it out of you while you’re in school. If you do, you’re hosed once you graduate. Keep two books on your nightstand at all times: one fiction, one non-fiction.
Buy lightly used. Patina is a pretty word, and a beautiful concept.
Develop a point of view. Think about what experiences you have that many others do not. Then, think of what experiences you have that almost everyone else has. Then, mix those two things and try to make someone cry or laugh or feel understood.
Design doesn’t have to sell. Although, that’s usually its job.
Think of every project as an opportunity to learn, but also an opportunity to teach. Univers is a great typeface and white usually works and grids are nice and usually necessary, but they’re not a style. Helvetica is nice too, but it won’t turn water to wine.
Take things away until you cry. Accept most things, and reject most of your initial ideas. Print it out, chop it up, put it back together. When you’re aimlessly pushing things around on a computer screen, print it out and push it around in real space. Change contexts when you’re stuck. Draw wrong-handed and upside down and backwards. Find a good seat outside.
Design is just a language, it’s not a message. If you say “retro” too much you will get hives and maybe die. Learn your design history. Know that design changes when technology changes, and its been that way since the 1400s. Adobe software never stops being frustrating. Learn to write, and not school-style writing. A text editor is a perfectly viable design tool. Graphic design has just as much to do with words as it does with pictures, and a lot of my favorite designers come to design from the world of words instead of the world of pictures.
If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life. Sympathy is medicine.
Scissors are good, music is better, and mixed drinks with friends are best. Start brave and brash: you can always make things more conservative, but it’s hard to make things more radical. Edit yourself, but let someone else censor you. When you ride the bus, imagine that you are looking at everything from the point of view of someone else on the ride. If you walk, look up on the way there and down on the way back. Aesthetics are fleeting, the only things with longevity are ideas. Read Bringhurst and one of those novels they made you read in high school cover to cover every few years. (Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby.)
Stop trying to be cool: it is stifling.
Most important things happen at a table. Food, friends, discussion, ideas, work, peace talks, and war plans. It is okay to romanticize things a little bit every now and then: it gives you hope.
Everything is interesting to someone. That thing that you think is bad is probably just not for you. Be wary of minimalism as an aesthetic decision without cause. Simple is almost a dirty word now. Almost. Tools don’t matter very much, all you need is a sharp knife, but everyone has their own mise en place. If you need an analogy, use an animal. If you see a ladder in a piece of design or illustration, it means the deadline was short. Red, white, black, and gray always go together. Negative space. Size contrast. Directional contrast. Compositional foundations.
Success is generating an emotion. Failure is a million different things. Second-person writing is usually heavy-handed, like all of this.
Seeking advice is addicting and can become a proxy for action. Giving it can also be addicting in a potentially pretentious, soul-rotting sort of way, and can replace experimenting because you think you know how things work. Be suspicious of lists, advice, and lists of advice.
Everyone is just making it up as they go along.
This about sums up everything I know.
I am constantly torn between the heroes of the east — who are heroes for their ability to see things as they really are — and the heroes of the west — who are heroes for their ability to see things that are not but that should be, and then to build them. One is mainly about accepting, the other is mainly about rejecting and creating. Being from the U.S., it is natural for me to have the second kind of heroes, even as I see the wisdom of the first. But whenever I try to behave like an eastern hero, it always feels like posing, wasting time, or giving up.
—
Jonathan Harris . Clouds and coins
Jonathan is keeping one of my favorite blogs these days. It reminds me how rare it is to find thoughtful, emotional contemplation (especially online), and how valuable those things really are to our lives.
“Hum.”
So, a small thing I’d like to highlight about The Back Side of Your Gullet series:
This confirms what I’ve been writing about so much it confounds me. Take away: The Internet HATES words. (Just kidding. Sort of. Maybe?)
From the movie The Jerk:
[a sniper keeps missing Navin and hitting cans of motor oil]
Navin R. Johnson: He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!
Part 4 of the Gullet series won’t be out today, I’ll need a few more days to edit, refine, and polish.
For now, a thought to consider.
The Back Side of Your Gullet is Decadent and Depraved, Part 3
This is Part 3 in a series of 4 about visual culture, consumption, and nourishment. A new part will be posted each weekday. Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 (You are here.) · Part 4 (The Future!)
“Some people just can’t handle honesty, I guess,” Paul shrugged.
He poured me a coffee from his thermos and invited me to take a seat in his office. I looked over my shoulder and got one last guilty glance at the student running out crying. I sat down. “What did you say to her?”
“The usual. About how she wasn’t working hard enough. About how when she shows up unprepared it’s a waste of my time, but worse, it steals time from everyone else in the class. How if she’s having issues loving this craft now when she’s doing it for herself, that it’s only going to get more and more difficult to learn to love once she’s got a job with clients.”
After a brief moment of silence, I said, “I think you said something else. You did the part where you say ‘Assuming you get a job,’ didn’t you?”
“Of course! It’s true! She needs to know she has to work harder. She needs to know the reality of the situation. You can’t sugar-coat everything: her work isn’t good enough to pass.”
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