Designing the designer

AIGA Design Camp, Nisswa, Minnesota, 6th October 2012

Creative people have a need to inquire deeply into their craft, making new connections and discoveries along the way. We embrace process and measure work against personal values, aware of strengths and weaknesses. Responses are best when instinctive, not bound by tools or methodologies. Join Simon as he considers what makes designers tick, considering the decisions we make and the ideas we should embrace to help us make the cut.

Transcript

1. Designing the Designer
56. Destination
57. What do you think you’ll be doing in five years? Interview question
58. Doing
59. Are you in your work?
60. It took me until my 40s to realize: There’s no destination. There’s no ge ing anywhere. There’s just the going. Pa on Oswalt
61. The reason that most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals—not for the person we’re going to be when we reach them—we set our goals for the person we are when we set them. Dan Gilbert
62. Not necessarily slowing down, but rather just opting out of speed. Frank Chimero
63. Serendipity
64. Strengths & values
65. To progress and to create work of substance or even greatness, we each must start by knowing our values, our strengths, and the level of expertise we seek Strengths and values
66. I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. Thomas Edison
67. Our strengths find us
68. designer developer strategist writer educator manager web designer 100%
69. designer developer strategist writer educator manager web designer 100%
70. Learning
71. I’m self-actualised, without the stamp of approval from any guild, curriculum authority, or academic institution. I’m web taught. Colleague taught. Empirically taught. Jon Tan
72. The sad, beautiful fact that we’re all going to miss almost everything Linda Holmes
75. Cra
78. Cra smanship is a basic human impulse: the desire to do a job well for its own sake Richard Senne
81. Tools
82. Tools are the scaffold for what we produce, the enablers. They help us bring our ideas to fruition. Our tools
85. The tool doesn’t make the cra sman. Choosing the right tool for the right purpose is a technical and personal choice. Oliver Reichenstein
86. delight / emotion / surprise systems / constraint / restraint simplicity / complexity / focus context / reduction
87. Creative inquiry
88. Inquiring beyond the “necessary” to explore other areas, look at things differently, and bring these findings back into our work. Creative inquiry
90. Drone
93. New design principles
94. The web is not print.
95. The screen brings with it different kinds of challenges for visual design, some of which occur exclusively in interactive media. Jason Santa Maria, designer
96. It’s unrealistic to think our old methods can fill in all the gaps, but new interaction pa erns and visual languages emerge everyday. Jason Santa Maria, designer
97. These are the building blocks for our new design principles. Jason Santa Maria, designer
98. Systems
99. We don’t design web pages. We design systems.
101. Responsive
103. Ethan states that a responsive design is composed of three distinct parts: 1. Flexible grid 2. Flexible images 3. Media queries
104. The frame
109. The complete designer
111. Find problems and design responses. Not answers, not solutions. Responses.
113. Design is more than just a job.
115. Talent is cheap You have to be possessed, which you can’t will You have to be in the right place at the right time
117. The extraordinary in the ordinary
119. Simon Collison / @colly / colly.com