## The Shape of Design ### The Shape of Design  #### Metadata * Author: [[Frank Chimero]] * Full Title: The Shape of Design * Category: #books #### Highlights * Why is usually neglected, because How is more easily framed. It is easier to recognize failures of technique than those of strategy or purpose, and simpler to ask "How do I paint this tree?" than to answer "Why does this painting need a tree in it?" (Location 137) * The hand axes record the first moment that we understood that the world was malleable – that things can change and move, and we can initiate those transformations ourselves. To be human is to tinker, to envision a better condition, and decide to work toward it by shaping the world around us. (Location 208) * The Shakers have a proverb that says, "Do not make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both, do not hesitate to make it beautiful." We all believe that design's primary job is to be useful. Our minds say that so long as the design works well, the work's appearance does not necessarily matter. And yet, our hearts say otherwise. No matter how rational our thinking, we hear a voice whisper that beauty has an important role to play. (Location 218) * Craft links us to a larger tradition of makers by folding the long line that connects us across the vast expanse of time. I am in awe of the brushwork of Van Dyck even though the paintings were made four hundred years ago. My jaw drops at the attention to detail in Gutenberg's original forty-two line Bible, and can't help but be impressed by the ornamental patterns of Arabic mosques and their dizzying complexity. We all bask in the presence of beauty, because there is a magical aura to high craft. It says, "Here is all we've got. This is what humankind is capable of doing, with every ounce of care and attention wrung out into what's before you." Craft is a love letter from the work's maker, and here in my hands is that note enveloped in stone. (Location 227) * Some experts believe the secret to his violins lies in their filler and varnish, which is believed to contain volcanic ash, insect wings, shrimp shells, and "tantalizing traces of organic compounds that could be bedroom residues, sweat, or pheromones of the master's own breath." Secret recipe, indeed: each instrument was a beautiful union, where the maker was himself a material used in the construction. There is no way to describe Stradivari's work other than as a labor of love. (Location 248) * The products of design, like Stradivari's violins, possess an aspect that can only be revealed through their use. It is why I'm always compelled to pick up my hand axe and roll it around in my hand, rather than letting it sit on the mantle. The stone is pleasing to the eye, but it was made for the hand, so it feels more appropriate to hold than display. (Location 253) * The restrictions of a framework take many shapes. They may be conceptual and based on the content, where the limitations determine the subject matter of the work: Write a song for each one of the muses. Create an illustration for each letter of the alphabet. Write a short story inspired by each of the astrological signs. Restrictions can also be structural and create compositional limitations: Paint on surfaces that are three inches wide and twenty inches tall. Write a sonnet or a haiku. Choreograph a dance contained in a six-foot square. (Location 348) * Limitations narrow a big process into a smaller, more understandable space to explore. It's the difference between swimming in a pool and being dropped off in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. Those limitations also become the basis for the crucial first steps in improvisation. After those, the momentum of making accelerates as ideas are quickly generated without judgment. New ideas interact with the old, and spur off into unexpected places. (Location 360) * If I can't get out of the studio and into the city, I've taken to letting my hand wander on a pad of paper by drawing spindly, loopy, mindless marks. I make the sorts of drawings people produce on the backs of envelopes while on hold with the gas company. There is no subject, just as a good walk has no destination; their purpose is movement. My pencil cuts across the paper like a figure skater zipping around her rink, overlapping, skipping, and spinning. The skater ignores the mark that comes in the wake of her movement, and I do the same. This drawing isn't aesthetic, it is kinetic  –  more like dancing than drawing. (Location 372) * The message is what is being said, the kernel of information to be communicated, or the idea trying to be expressed through the work. If the work of design is to be a tool, the message is the utility of the tool. The message speaks to the objectives of the work, and is the promise that the work makes. The value of the work is defined by the usefulness of that promise, and the work's ability to make good on it. (Location 397) * Sometimes the results of graceful rethinking can be thought of as magic, because it produces something we previously thought to be impossible. It subverts the established ways of working, either through sheer talent or brute force, and questions the standard settings of the three levers. Magicians don't just create new things, they invent new ways of doing so, and these new methods only appear from intense analysis of the assumptions about their work. The products of the process are contrarian by nature as a result, because the maker is exploring a terrain no one else has been able to realize. Laid bare in his work is an example of how craft and art grow, how they serve as an example of a new possibility. (Location 449) * Using the structure and affordances of content, tone, and format, one can riff on how the elements interplay and come to exceptional ends. (Location 488) * The qualities of design consistently change, because there is a wide variety of characteristics in what design connects. It means that design lives in the borderlands – it connects, but it does not anchor. The work must provide a path without having a specific way of its own. The design is always the middle position, but rather than acting as an obstruction, it should be the mortar that holds the arrangement together. (Location 531) * Design's connective role is meant to support the movement of value from one place to another for a full exchange. It means that the products of design are not autonomous objects, but are creations that bridge in-between spaces to provide a way toward an intended outcome. The design must be transformative for it to be successful. It must take us somewhere. Airports and train stations are other examples of non-autonomous creations that exist as in-between spaces, because they have been built out of our desire to go somewhere else. Even cathedrals could be considered spaces of transit, because they seek to connect the physical world with the spiritual realm. Design is akin to these places in that their usefulness is defined by the consequences of the connections they facilitate. A train station that doesn't create a lust for exploration is flawed, just as a cathedral that doesn't inspire awe is a failure. (Location 543) * This makes the whole arrangement precarious, because it means that the designer is being paid by the client, but is obligated to the audience, for it is the audience's presence that imbues the work with its value. It is a double-allegiance, a necessary duplicity. Design's two-faced behavior is a product of its middle position between the elements it connects. Bridging two things means a bond with both of them. (Location 559) * The salesman doesn't tell an untruth in order to get us to work towards it. Instead, he misrepresents what is in front of us so that we buy into a mirage. It's a messy distinction, and it's why design, rhetoric, and politics are so sticky and often mistrusted: the language we use to build the world is so close to what can be used to undermine it. Design and persuasion are manipulative, and if we have the skills to seduce others toward green pastures, we can also lead them off a cliff. (Location 591) * In other words, Irwin's process begins by listening: to the room, his intuition, and the work as he is making it. He then enters a dialogue with the space, going near and far just like the painter in the studio. (Location 627) * That night, on his way home, Ogilvy said hello to the beggar, and was pleased to see his cup overflowing. The beggar, frazzled with his success, and uncertain of what Ogilvy did to the sign, asked what words were added. IT IS SPRING AND I AM BLIND. (Location 778) * There is a tendency to think that to delight someone with design is to make them happy. Indeed, the work may do that, but more appropriately, the objective is to produce a memorable experience because of its superior fit. The times that design delights us are memorable because we sense the empathy of the work's creator. We feel understood, almost as if by using the work, we are stepping into a space designed precisely for us. (Location 899) * Delight fades when there is entitlement or predictability, and that's why so many of the delightful experiences in commerce involve a customer being under-promised then over-delivered. They get into an engagement expecting a certain amount, and are delighted when they get more than they bargained for. (Location 935) * It is a chore in most hotels and airports, for instance, to get connected to the public WiFi. The process is wrought with roadblocks and complications: login screens, user agreements, registration pages. The web page used to access the WiFi at the Ace Hotel, however, has a simpler approach to that interaction: The internet button surprises and delights, because it understands what the user wants to do, and eliminates everything else that doesn't pertain to that goal. Clarity emerges, and delight shows up with it, because we feel like our intentions are plainly understood. (Location 955) * There is an old Japanese tale about a poor student who was away from home and living at an inn. One evening, as his stomach grumbled, he smelled the briny scent of fish coming from the inn's kitchen as the innkeeper made his dinner. He wandered his way outdoors to the kitchen's window, and sat below the sill with his meager meal of rice, hoping that the scent of the fish might improve his paltry dish. The student did this for many weeks, until one night the innkeeper spotted him and became furious. He grabbed the youngster by the arm and dragged him to stand before the local magistrate, demanding payment from the student for the scent of the fish that he had stolen. "This is most curious," said the magistrate, who thought for a moment and then came to a conclusion. "How much money do you have with you?" he asked the student, who then produced three gold coins from his pocket. The student feared that he would be forced to pay the innkeeper the last of his money, but the magistrate continued. "Please," he said, "put all the coins in one of your hands." The student did as he was asked. "Now, pour those coins into your other hand." The student dumped the coins. With that, the magistrate dismissed the innkeeper and student's case. The innkeeper yelped in confusion, "How can this be settled? I've not been paid!" "Yes, you have," replied the magistrate. "The smell of your fish has been repaid by the sound of his money." (Location 974) * These are the elements that resonate with the audience, because the work becomes a link between two individuals. Both sides of the equation are humanized, initiating a relationship between them through publishing the work. A few years ago, my friend Rob Giampietro was designing a business card for a client, and during a presentation of design options, the client chose one, then asked if the design was completed. In a moment of insight, Rob responded that the design of the business card wouldn't be finished until the client gave it to someone else. The implied exchange was part of the design, and Rob's task was to create a framework for that gift exchange to occur. The measure of a design is in its capacity to be shared: something travels from one person to another, and in the process, they both gain. Like a gift, design requires movement; the work must be shared, the ideas must move. A business card that stays in its owner's pocket is no good. (Location 1085) * "There's an important distinction to be made here," [Irwin] continued, "between organizing and proselytizing, on the one hand, and responding to interest, on the other. I was and continue to be available in response. I mean, I don't stand on a corner and hand out leaflets. I'm not an evangelist. I'm not trying to sell anything. But on the other hand, if you ask me a question, you're going to get a half- hour answer." (Location 1103) * And I believe in so much. I believe in the two-way bridges we build that connect us to one another. I believe in the deep interconnectedness of everything, in the benefits of our codependency, and in the opportunity of today when we believe in a tomorrow. I believe in the gift that creative people are given and in the obligation to use it. I believe that we have done well, but I think we can do better. I believe we can do much, much better. There is more making to be done. There are dreams out there that must be made real. (Location 1146) * And if you look closely, and ignore the things that do not matter, what comes into focus is simply this: there is the world we live in and one that we imagine. It is by our movement and invention that we inch closer to the latter. The world shapes us, and we get to shape the world. (Location 1150) # The Shape of Design  ## Metadata - Author: [[Frank Chimero]] - Full Title: The Shape of Design - Category: #books ## Highlights - Why is usually neglected, because How is more easily framed. It is easier to recognize failures of technique than those of strategy or purpose, and simpler to ask “How do I paint this tree?” than to answer “Why does this painting need a tree in it?” (Location 137) - The hand axes record the first moment that we understood that the world was malleable – that things can change and move, and we can initiate those transformations ourselves. To be human is to tinker, to envision a better condition, and decide to work toward it by shaping the world around us. (Location 208) - The Shakers have a proverb that says, “Do not make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both, do not hesitate to make it beautiful.” We all believe that design’s primary job is to be useful. Our minds say that so long as the design works well, the work’s appearance does not necessarily matter. And yet, our hearts say otherwise. No matter how rational our thinking, we hear a voice whisper that beauty has an important role to play. (Location 218) - Craft links us to a larger tradition of makers by folding the long line that connects us across the vast expanse of time. I am in awe of the brushwork of Van Dyck even though the paintings were made four hundred years ago. My jaw drops at the attention to detail in Gutenberg’s original forty-two line Bible, and can’t help but be impressed by the ornamental patterns of Arabic mosques and their dizzying complexity. We all bask in the presence of beauty, because there is a magical aura to high craft. It says, “Here is all we’ve got. This is what humankind is capable of doing, with every ounce of care and attention wrung out into what’s before you.” Craft is a love letter from the work’s maker, and here in my hands is that note enveloped in stone. (Location 227) - Some experts believe the secret to his violins lies in their filler and varnish, which is believed to contain volcanic ash, insect wings, shrimp shells, and “tantalizing traces of organic compounds that could be bedroom residues, sweat, or pheromones of the master’s own breath.” Secret recipe, indeed: each instrument was a beautiful union, where the maker was himself a material used in the construction. There is no way to describe Stradivari’s work other than as a labor of love. (Location 248) - The products of design, like Stradivari’s violins, possess an aspect that can only be revealed through their use. It is why I’m always compelled to pick up my hand axe and roll it around in my hand, rather than letting it sit on the mantle. The stone is pleasing to the eye, but it was made for the hand, so it feels more appropriate to hold than display. (Location 253) - The restrictions of a framework take many shapes. They may be conceptual and based on the content, where the limitations determine the subject matter of the work: Write a song for each one of the muses. Create an illustration for each letter of the alphabet. Write a short story inspired by each of the astrological signs. Restrictions can also be structural and create compositional limitations: Paint on surfaces that are three inches wide and twenty inches tall. Write a sonnet or a haiku. Choreograph a dance contained in a six-foot square. (Location 348) - Limitations narrow a big process into a smaller, more understandable space to explore. It’s the difference between swimming in a pool and being dropped off in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. Those limitations also become the basis for the crucial first steps in improvisation. After those, the momentum of making accelerates as ideas are quickly generated without judgment. New ideas interact with the old, and spur off into unexpected places. (Location 360) - If I can’t get out of the studio and into the city, I’ve taken to letting my hand wander on a pad of paper by drawing spindly, loopy, mindless marks. I make the sorts of drawings people produce on the backs of envelopes while on hold with the gas company. There is no subject, just as a good walk has no destination; their purpose is movement. My pencil cuts across the paper like a figure skater zipping around her rink, overlapping, skipping, and spinning. The skater ignores the mark that comes in the wake of her movement, and I do the same. This drawing isn’t aesthetic, it is kinetic  –  more like dancing than drawing. (Location 372) - The message is what is being said, the kernel of information to be communicated, or the idea trying to be expressed through the work. If the work of design is to be a tool, the message is the utility of the tool. The message speaks to the objectives of the work, and is the promise that the work makes. The value of the work is defined by the usefulness of that promise, and the work’s ability to make good on it. (Location 397) - Sometimes the results of graceful rethinking can be thought of as magic, because it produces something we previously thought to be impossible. It subverts the established ways of working, either through sheer talent or brute force, and questions the standard settings of the three levers. Magicians don’t just create new things, they invent new ways of doing so, and these new methods only appear from intense analysis of the assumptions about their work. The products of the process are contrarian by nature as a result, because the maker is exploring a terrain no one else has been able to realize. Laid bare in his work is an example of how craft and art grow, how they serve as an example of a new possibility. (Location 449) - Using the structure and affordances of content, tone, and format, one can riff on how the elements interplay and come to exceptional ends. (Location 488) - The qualities of design consistently change, because there is a wide variety of characteristics in what design connects. It means that design lives in the borderlands – it connects, but it does not anchor. The work must provide a path without having a specific way of its own. The design is always the middle position, but rather than acting as an obstruction, it should be the mortar that holds the arrangement together. (Location 531) - Design’s connective role is meant to support the movement of value from one place to another for a full exchange. It means that the products of design are not autonomous objects, but are creations that bridge in-between spaces to provide a way toward an intended outcome. The design must be transformative for it to be successful. It must take us somewhere. Airports and train stations are other examples of non-autonomous creations that exist as in-between spaces, because they have been built out of our desire to go somewhere else. Even cathedrals could be considered spaces of transit, because they seek to connect the physical world with the spiritual realm. Design is akin to these places in that their usefulness is defined by the consequences of the connections they facilitate. A train station that doesn’t create a lust for exploration is flawed, just as a cathedral that doesn’t inspire awe is a failure. (Location 543) - This makes the whole arrangement precarious, because it means that the designer is being paid by the client, but is obligated to the audience, for it is the audience’s presence that imbues the work with its value. It is a double-allegiance, a necessary duplicity. Design’s two-faced behavior is a product of its middle position between the elements it connects. Bridging two things means a bond with both of them. (Location 559) - The salesman doesn’t tell an untruth in order to get us to work towards it. Instead, he misrepresents what is in front of us so that we buy into a mirage. It’s a messy distinction, and it’s why design, rhetoric, and politics are so sticky and often mistrusted: the language we use to build the world is so close to what can be used to undermine it. Design and persuasion are manipulative, and if we have the skills to seduce others toward green pastures, we can also lead them off a cliff. (Location 591) - In other words, Irwin’s process begins by listening: to the room, his intuition, and the work as he is making it. He then enters a dialogue with the space, going near and far just like the painter in the studio. (Location 627) - That night, on his way home, Ogilvy said hello to the beggar, and was pleased to see his cup overflowing. The beggar, frazzled with his success, and uncertain of what Ogilvy did to the sign, asked what words were added. IT IS SPRING AND I AM BLIND. (Location 778) - There is a tendency to think that to delight someone with design is to make them happy. Indeed, the work may do that, but more appropriately, the objective is to produce a memorable experience because of its superior fit. The times that design delights us are memorable because we sense the empathy of the work’s creator. We feel understood, almost as if by using the work, we are stepping into a space designed precisely for us. (Location 899) - Delight fades when there is entitlement or predictability, and that’s why so many of the delightful experiences in commerce involve a customer being under-promised then over-delivered. They get into an engagement expecting a certain amount, and are delighted when they get more than they bargained for. (Location 935) - It is a chore in most hotels and airports, for instance, to get connected to the public WiFi. The process is wrought with roadblocks and complications: login screens, user agreements, registration pages. The web page used to access the WiFi at the Ace Hotel, however, has a simpler approach to that interaction: The internet button surprises and delights, because it understands what the user wants to do, and eliminates everything else that doesn’t pertain to that goal. Clarity emerges, and delight shows up with it, because we feel like our intentions are plainly understood. (Location 955) - There is an old Japanese tale about a poor student who was away from home and living at an inn. One evening, as his stomach grumbled, he smelled the briny scent of fish coming from the inn’s kitchen as the innkeeper made his dinner. He wandered his way outdoors to the kitchen’s window, and sat below the sill with his meager meal of rice, hoping that the scent of the fish might improve his paltry dish. The student did this for many weeks, until one night the innkeeper spotted him and became furious. He grabbed the youngster by the arm and dragged him to stand before the local magistrate, demanding payment from the student for the scent of the fish that he had stolen. “This is most curious,” said the magistrate, who thought for a moment and then came to a conclusion. “How much money do you have with you?” he asked the student, who then produced three gold coins from his pocket. The student feared that he would be forced to pay the innkeeper the last of his money, but the magistrate continued. “Please,” he said, “put all the coins in one of your hands.” The student did as he was asked. “Now, pour those coins into your other hand.” The student dumped the coins. With that, the magistrate dismissed the innkeeper and student’s case. The innkeeper yelped in confusion, “How can this be settled? I’ve not been paid!” “Yes, you have,” replied the magistrate. “The smell of your fish has been repaid by the sound of his money.” (Location 974) - These are the elements that resonate with the audience, because the work becomes a link between two individuals. Both sides of the equation are humanized, initiating a relationship between them through publishing the work. A few years ago, my friend Rob Giampietro was designing a business card for a client, and during a presentation of design options, the client chose one, then asked if the design was completed. In a moment of insight, Rob responded that the design of the business card wouldn’t be finished until the client gave it to someone else. The implied exchange was part of the design, and Rob’s task was to create a framework for that gift exchange to occur. The measure of a design is in its capacity to be shared: something travels from one person to another, and in the process, they both gain. Like a gift, design requires movement; the work must be shared, the ideas must move. A business card that stays in its owner’s pocket is no good. (Location 1085) - “There’s an important distinction to be made here,” [Irwin] continued, “between organizing and proselytizing, on the one hand, and responding to interest, on the other. I was and continue to be available in response. I mean, I don’t stand on a corner and hand out leaflets. I’m not an evangelist. I’m not trying to sell anything. But on the other hand, if you ask me a question, you’re going to get a half- hour answer.” (Location 1103) - And I believe in so much. I believe in the two-way bridges we build that connect us to one another. I believe in the deep interconnectedness of everything, in the benefits of our codependency, and in the opportunity of today when we believe in a tomorrow. I believe in the gift that creative people are given and in the obligation to use it. I believe that we have done well, but I think we can do better. I believe we can do much, much better. There is more making to be done. There are dreams out there that must be made real. (Location 1146) - And if you look closely, and ignore the things that do not matter, what comes into focus is simply this: there is the world we live in and one that we imagine. It is by our movement and invention that we inch closer to the latter. The world shapes us, and we get to shape the world. (Location 1150)