“One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”

I’ve been writing to myself a lot on this topic lately. It’s one of frustration and strife in my new freshly graduated world. But also: hope. I’m not afraid at all.

There’s two things that come to mind when I look back upon myself. One. Two. They sum up nicely: knowing that life is finite, how do I choose to spend each hour?

I’m not sure industrial design is my answer. It’s awesome, yes, and I love it with incomparable passion, but I’m also attracted so deeply to the artisan ideals. Wabi-sabi. I want to make things for people. Sometimes there are things that are supposed to reach a lot of people – this is where industrial design is used – but sometimes I just want to make one of something for someone and know that they’re using it and probably will continue to as long as I know them. If they stop, of course, I will never live it down. Just jokes. But seriously. One knife. One chair. Maybe a handful of lamps or guitars. I want to make things for people. That, in whatever form it takes, seems to be the resounding root of my self worth and ‘success’ in life.

As best as I know right now. I mean, the older types would argue I haven’t even begun my life yet.

And now, to begin.

As I continue learning speed painting I continue to be humbled by the masters.

Painting in colour, as I’ve now found out, is much more difficult than originally thought. So even more respect for works like those above.

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Donald Glover is a talented man. His ability to change personas at a whim is remarkable, leading to a career that goes from witty writer to rap star to actor. He isn’t even thirty yet.

And I ask myself, how do people gain such widespread fame so fast? How do these candles burn so bright and so hard that it’s impossible to ignore them?

When I was young I believed deeply in meritocracy. To be famous you had to be good at what you did. I say fame here not in the celebrity sense, but in the leader in your field sense. Do most people know who Donald Glover is by name? Maybe quite a few. Do many know who Jony Ive is by name? Probably not many. Still, I consider that fame in that field.

When I found out about Snooki, that worldview sort of shattered.

My theory could be summed up “If you build it, they will come” as if people just had a talent detector and they would somehow magically find you if you were good enough.

Now, it’s a sort of false dichotomy to compare an entertainer – a person who’s job it is, literally, to sell themselves as fun, likeable people – and a professional whose job it is to make things and otherwise stay out of limelights. There’s also a cultural divide when we look at design specifically. The Scandinavian designer philosophy is very different than the American one.

It isn’t my explicit goal to become famous (it’s been pointed out that prestige is often just another way to get you to do something you don’t like for free) but I do wonder how we can, as people who devote our time into our work and not into our personal marketing, try and sync those up into a resonance that burns bright as tribute to both.

In the meantime, since I don’t have an answer yet, keep burning.

“I actually attack the concept of happiness. I don’t mind people being happy – but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position – it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”

– Hugh Mackay

Spot on.

I’m rarely upset but I’m entirely fine with the state we call sadness. Friends have often raised an eyebrow at my philosophy but the above quote summarizes it really well: happiness isn’t actually my goal. My goal is contentedness, wholeness. Anyway, I’ve touched on this before. Twice. So I won’t get into it again.

In related news I bought Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance yesterday and so far it’s been really good.

The bird, above, is a photo I took a few years back and the flipping effect was probably one of the first tutorials I wrote for the then newly hatched Acrylo.

I find myself at two points simultaneously and as much as I don’t want to bring personal life into this column I feel like it’s an important topic for the inspiration of all: beginnings.

The two points are at odds with each other. The first, a cliff soaring over the sea, with salt and spray and rocks at the bottom. I stand at the top, looking down. The second quite opposite: sitting securely in a rollercoaster cart at the base of a hill, ready to be pulled up by the chain lift. These things both are my upcoming graduation. I’m excited, to say the least.

And so I watch the above and I try to absorb the wisdom of those who have gone before me and I try to keep an even mix of those who succeed and those who fail, which often become the same person over time. Ze Frank, as I’m sure we’re all familiar, is a fantastic example of both of these; perhaps one of the first viral sensations.

There’s a subtext in that video that I really like, and it reminds me of Ira Glass’ writings on the similar subject: a call to make mass, mass bodies of work. Whatever you want. Who cares? And this is where obscurity actually works in your favor because you can put crap out there and learn from it and not fail in front of (too) many people (something that I, though minor in my celebrity as I am, fear personally). And I think we as designers get pigeonholed into genres that we feel trapped in. I think Ira and Ze (and, for that matter, Jobs and Rams and Eames etc.) were successful simply because they did whatever they felt like. Typography here, toy design there, maybe some bottles for a craft brewhouse, radio plays, interviews, dancing videos. I mean, the diversity of Ze’s work by itself is bizarre and remarkable. Having never met him, obviously, I can’t really testify, but he seems like the kind of guy who a) often finds something around him that trips his fancy and b) actually does it. I am, at the moment, trapped in the first part. I’m constantly amazed and inspired and in love with the world itself but I get distracted and forget to ship, which is the key part to the whole learning-by-doing/failing – you actually have to do things. I know. Shocker.

So. An invocation for beginnings. “Fuck, let’s do this.” as he says, to be blunt. Throwing caution to the wind (which, let’s be honest, is anything you design actually going to be that dangerous to make?) and just getting things done. Seeing all those inspiring things and actually doing them. Walking Dead isn’t that good anymore anyway, you don’t need to sit around and waste your time on that.

As for me: I don’t even mind the cliff I’m looking over. I think I know deep down inside that I can swim and the fall in between, well, is an Olympic dive really any different from a fool’s flailing? Nah. It’s a good show either way.

Gorgeous, both the finished project and and process itself.

There’s something lovely about a craftsman, if you’ve ever just sat and watched one. Aged hands with surprising grace and dexterity from years of use. They grasps things differently. Watch them. The touch is a different thing, it’s tuned and refined and the interface between flesh and material is so pure and seamless. When working with tools or simply touching a surface the fingers know exactly where to stop and how to move. It’s practice of course – sheer repetition – but there’s something that falls short if you describe it like that. My appreciation for it is so much deeper and more subtle than that.

And it doesn’t matter if the above paragraph is read about man or machine, there’s a beauty to each. An outcome that boggles my mind even as I’ve seen it happen so many times. A fascination, I guess, with process.

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The perfect campy horror movie title, no doubt.

We were talking about it the other day: you have a set number of hours in your life. We all know this. We don’t like to think about it, but it’s nonetheless a fact: no one gets out alive.

As a Canadian male my life expectancy is about 81 years. 710046 hours. Getting to this point right now took up about 168315 of them. That leaves me with 693233 left.

Depressing.

And, since waking up this morning about three and a half of them have slipped by, forever removed.

But I don’t see this as much a gloom and doom as a reminder of how valuable time itself is. Time isn’t money – money is time. How much would somebody have to pay you to take one of those hours off your counter? You only have a limited amount of them. $1000? $100? Or… $9.50? Minimum wage.

There’s been a lot of existentialist thought going on in the past few weeks with my rapidly upcoming graduation and that ejection from the womb of academia, and I guess that’s what it comes down to for me. Sure, I could be a doctor or a lawyer and make ridiculous amounts of money per hour, but it I hate what I do, what’s the point? Like, all that money just goes into trying to live at the end of your life – trying to undo all the damage you did working like a mad man the first chunk of your life. It’s bizarre to me.

And the Dalai Lama too, apparently:

“Man.

Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

I’d like to construct a giant hourglass, with enough sand to last until my theoretical death, and put it on a shelf or somewhere where I can always see it. A reminder. Both to hustle, but also to live. To be awesome. Not about houses or cars or show boats. About taking each of those hours and making something awesome out of them.

And, if I live to see the day when it eventually runs out of sand I can watch that last grain fall and laugh, because I’ve then beaten the average. In a fate of cruel irony, moments later I’d be struck by a heart attack or something and that’d be okay, because I’d still have gotten that much more out of life. And that moment would be awesome.

I appreciate any concept artist who can move so fluidly from characters to props to environments. Bradley Wright, you are the man.

Honestly, I wish I could post more but I’m already way over my vertical usual, so I’ll just have to redirect you to his wall of awesome. Seriously, I’m in awe at the sheer amount of work here. Fantastic.

A tweet the other day from @eris reads:

I’d pick a villain as my project manager any day. Heroes are too reactionary. Villains can scope a Death Star and ship it. Twice.

It may be playful, but it’s entirely true. Good designers ship. Ideas are worth very little; execution is everything. These are mottos repeated endlessly by the startup industry and contribute to the very small rudder steering the very large ship slowly but surely. These are things worth listening to.

I wouldn’t even call the market equivalent ‘heroes’ – they are the lazy and unimaginative, the safe and the apathetic. They see a trend years past it’s prime and try to bank on it. That’s not really helpful to the people to whom the trend applies because they are exactly the demographic who has already ridden over that wave. Is your business plan to cater to late adopters? Not in writing, but all too often happens in practice. Being small is especially wonderful to take advantage of that agility and human nature; you’re allowed to make moves that the slow and ugly simply cannot make. These are the hard decisions and what used to be niche markets becoming larger and larger every day. These are the people you should be selling to: those who used to be bleeding edge but are now broadening into the general 10-40% of everymen. The people who follow these trends because it’s deeply ingrained to who they are in the marketplace but don’t feel pressed to buy the obscure things just for some marginal difference. They’re smart enough to realize a good, innovative idea and they’re a generally willing to take the gambles that the older types won’t. They’ll be your smoke when your product is on fire. You need that word of mouth to drive your small, agile company and they’re happy to provide it given they feel at home and believe in your product. There’s a transparency about companies like yours that they can appreciate and get behind. Personable.

So if the ‘heroes’ are the Walmarts out there villainy looks pretty appealing. You get to play by your own rules and do things however you want which usually means efficient and cunning. You survive by innovating circles around them and have schemes and plans for everything you see. You watch people and cater to what they want instead of waiting around for trouble to happen and trying to give them what they already have. That’s what heroes do. They react. They don’t sit in lairs inventing life rays. They wait until the villain invents a death ray and then stops it. If we put aside the metaphor for a moment, that isn’t actually helping anybody. Sit in your lair and make an awesome ray.

One more thing: villains don’t sit around reading blogs. They’re busy taking over the world. What are you busy doing?

I love this style. I’m not sure if it’s a new thing or if it’s just gone vogue recently but it’s a perfect mix between the old shiny anime robots and the stealthy military types.

It pops in and out of the augmentation’s style in the newest Deus Ex:

Speaking of which, played the Missing Link DLC since it was dirt cheap on Steam sale recently. Quite liked it. I once again promised myself I’d do a stealthy non-lethal playthrough and once again filled my inventory (+2 expansions) with guns and left no man standing, so, that’s terrible of me. I’m such a hoarder. I feel the need to pick up everything I find. The final boss battle was underwhelming given the struggle that was the main game’s three major baddies, but I really don’t mind. The bosses shouldn’t have been there in the first place, so perhaps this is just learning from that mistake. The story is good and comes so close to having an opinion on human trafficking but – like the main game re: the augs – backs down and eludes actual comment. There are some big choices to be made and consequences for your actions which adds to the gravity of the game / +1 to immersion. The background lore fits surprisingly well given it’s slot into a game that already exists and holds a nice weight despite the whole ‘ending must make everything go back to normal’ to lead back into HR’s last chapter. It’s neat that you start off with a blank slate of augs and a hefty number of Praxis kits to reassign as you please. None of these make any difference to the main game’s augments, of course, so it’s cool to experiment with the ones you didn’t pick up during the normal playthrough.

Overall? It was five dollars for about four hours of gameplay. That’s pretty expensive for my usual entertainment/dollar ratio (Just Cause 2 was also $5 and I’m 27 hours in, 28% done the game) but I’m sure the less miserly of you out there wouldn’t mind spending such. It’s still a better deal that buying a grande latte.

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