Thinking with Type_ A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students - PDF Room

appendix | 219

Pay attention to your clients, your users, your readers, and your friends.

Your design will get better as you listen to other people.

It is easier to talk than to listen.

Designers respond to a need, a problem, a circumstance, that arises in the world.

The best work is produced in relation to interesting situations—an open-minded

client, a good cause, or great content.

Design is an art of situations.

Design helps the systems of daily life run smoothly, letting users and readers ignore

how things are put together. Design should sometimes announce itself in order to shed

light on the system, exposing its construction, identity, personality, and politics.

An interface calls attention to itself at its point of failure.

A graphic designer can set out to change the world one business card at a time—

as long as it is the business card of a really interesting person.

No job is too small.

A powerful concept can drive decisions about color, layout, type choice, format, and so on,

preventing senseless acts of whimsy. (On the other hand, senseless acts of whimsy sometimes

lead to powerful concepts.)

The idea is the machine that makes the art. (Courtesy of Sol Lewitt)

Your best time for thinking could be early in the morning, late at night, or even, in rare

circumstances, during class or between nine and five. Whether your best time is in the

shower, at the gym, or on the train, use it for your hardest thinking.

The early bird gets to work before everyone else.

Design is social. It lives in society, it creates society, and it needs a society of its own—

a community of designers committed to advancing and debating our shared hopes and

desires. Read, write, and talk about design whenever you can.

Build the discourse.

Go forth and reproduce.

go have some fun