By Nishant Kothary CHAPTER 12I just couldn’t shake the fear that Dave was in over his head on this
project. And by the time he posted the next color comp, a beautiful and
entirely fresh direction for Project Redo, I was well into a psychological
tailspin. What’s worse was that I was completely unaware of it.
When I first opened the newly posted design, I was pleasantly
surprised. It was definitely different. But after a few minutes, my limbic
system — responsible for emotions such as fear and anger, and also the
home of the amygdala that I mentioned earlier — took over. I concluded that
this new design, while better, was simply a cousin of the first one, which,
I was convinced, was truly horrible. Knowing well that I may have been
under the spell of irrational biases, I decided to sleep on it. The next day, I
pulled the design up on my monitor and nothing had changed. In fact, it’d
gotten worse. I showed it to my wife, a teammate and a few others. Nobody
shared my reaction. Most people said, “It’s nice. But I’m not a designer.”
I reasoned with myself, “OK, I’m a designer. I’m someone who’s very
aware of irrational behavior. I know how it works. I’ve read so much about
the brain and psychology. I’ve followed the advice of many of my favorite
authors: everything from getting a devil’s advocate to letting my initial
reactions simmer. But I still feel that this is the wrong direction. I must be
right. Right?” Of course, I concurred with myself.
I then quickly decided that I had to save the day, and committed the
ultimate designer faux pas: I started working on a color comp myself.
Eagleman was twitching somewhere in the distance as, in one swift
moment, all of my knowledge escaped my awareness. But what’s truly
frightening is that this occurs far more often than most of us know, and
this is by design. It is quintessentially human.
And nothing exposes this elegant flaw better than a seemingly
unrelated fact about ourselves: most of us can’t draw.
in oRDeR To leaRn To DRaw, You MuST leaRn To See
“I can’t draw,” said my wife plainly. “Well, I can draw stick figures, but
that’s about it. But sure, I’ll give it a try.” I had suggested that we work