Design Storytelling

Very much enjoying the following three things today:

a) Adrian Shaugnhnessy’s ”The 12 paradoxes of graphic design”

1. There’s no such thing as bad clients. Only bad designers.
2. The best way to become a better graphic designer is to become a client.
3. If we want to educate our clients about design we must first educate our self about our clients.
4. If we want to make money as a graphic designer we must concentrate on the work, not the money.
5. For graphic designers, possessing verbal skills is as important as possessing good visual skills.
6. Most ideas fail, not because they are bad ideas, but because they are badly presented.
7. Designers who use the argument “I know best because I am a professional” are usually unprofessional designers.
8. We often imagine that all the good projects go to other people. Not so, in fact, nearly all jobs start off as neither good nor bad.
9. The best way to self-promote is to avoid talking about yourself.
10. A designer’s brain is capable of much more than making things look pretty.
11. If we believe in nothing, then our clients will have no reason to believe in us.
12. Designers often imagine that they need to be embedded with the clients, but there are advantages in being an outsider.

b) Tobias Bergdahl’s beautiful graphic interpretations of each paradox - see my faves (no.10) above and (no.6) below - the rest on his site.

c) Luke Neff’s excellent interpretation of Shaugnhnessy’s list with “The 12 Paradoxes of Education”

Marvellous stuff all round.

The very wonderful Sir Ken Robinson @TEDtalks picking up where he left off at TED 2006. “So as I was saying…”

My favourite quotes from this year’s talk:

“There are people who love what they do. Because isn’t what they do, it’s who they are. They say, ‘but this is me, it would be foolish for me to abandon this because it speaks to my most authentic self.’”

“Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability.”

“It’s about passion and what excites our spirit and our energy. If you are doing the thing that you love to do, that you’re good at, time takes a different course entirely… If you’re doing something you love an hour feels like five minutes. If you’re doing something that doesn’t resonate with your spirit five minutes feels like an hour.”

“We have to recognise that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. You cannot predict the outcome of human development, all you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”