It was the last semester of architecture school. We were all just beginning to receive rejection letters or worse—nothing at all. Despair was forming on the horizon. Our professor, a seasoned professional before he came to the university, reflected on his own trajectory, and gave us this advice: When I was in school I planned, much like you, to be a successful architect…
Richard Holmes always gave us ice cream. Whenever my siblings and I would walk down the road to say hello, the first thing he’d do would be to tell us there’s “ice cream in the back.” Although he was just a neighbor who lived down the road, I’m pretty sure he never actually ate any of the ice cream he bought for us. It was just something he did for our benefit…
The first movie in a theater I remember seeing was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was 1983 and I was four years old. I remember being fascinated by the different personalities of each of the Dwarfs, and truly frightened by the evil Queen. As I recall at that young, impressionable age it being my first real experience with the reality and presence…
It is often said that the real learning and hard work comes when you leave school or university, when you first set foot into the very real world of making a living for yourself, building up a career and becoming everything you ever dreamed of. This was something I was always told when I was at college and later on at university, alas, as a student you…
The level of available information we have reached is unprecedented. Anyone with a connection today can reach more resources in seconds than any researcher at any other point in history could pull together in hours from the largest libraries. This is almost scary—and indeed, has potential for serious drawbacks. People increasingly rely on Wikipedia…
Graduation kicks ass. Big time. It’s the grand culmination of delayed gratification: a lifetime of academic rigor rewarding you with an open door of opportunity. It’s pure elation cut with relentless optimism. Excitement multiplied by confidence. You are unstoppable, on top of the world, and hopefully still a little drunk. But as thrilling as it is, the euphoria inevitably dissolves…
It’s surprising how bad people are in the memory department, at least in the details. It’s even more surprising given how we think we are awesome at remembering experiences, life, products, friends, etc. The brain is an elegant machine designed for a purpose, specifically to recall important lessons and experiences. Even so, there is so much to remember and such an…
I have a markerboard in my office. I also have a Macbook Air with as many prototyping and design creation apps as you can think of. But I prefer to kickoff most projects on the markerboard. Sometimes, instead of the markerboard, I’ll even use some scrap paper – either from my printer, or from a little pile of cut up sheets of paper I have on my desk…
When I started out in design, all I knew is that I was passionate about it; no direction, no long term plan, I just wanted to be creative and make stuff. I drifted along for a few years and, after seeing 37Signals release Basecamp, it dawned on me: this is what I wanted to do—I wanted to build products. Marketing work had grown tiresome and I felt…
We all have them—busy schedules and digital distractions. I know with absolute certainty that I do. For me, both have seeped into being central to my world, but they don’t have to be. One of my dearest friends who I consider a brother is getting married the first week of May. As a “last hurrah” of sorts, four other guys and I went on a ten-day adventure. Escaping the frosty…
I always assumed I’d go on to graduate school. The pattern set by my parents and plans made by college peers pointed to graduate school as the obvious or eventual next step. But as graduation approached, the last thing I wanted was more school. I wanted to design things, see them produced, and be compensated for my work. After getting my Bachelor’s in architecture…
There was a drop of sweat dripping from my brow. It had been like this for the past few hours as I chipped away at completing the task at hand. What I had before me was a challenge, that is, a new opportunity to completely reinvent myself once more and make a masterpiece. This is one of the many beauties behind the life of a designer: creating sustainable products…
I believe, especially in a creative professional’s life, there is a tendency to garner prestige surrounding awards, job titles, and clients, rather than focus on the details in our work. The pursuit of prestige comes naturally to us, yet it is frequently interpreted as the pursuit of excellence with the goal of recognition. Pursuing recognition as reward without the input of…
When I was still in school, my architect major friend asked me what designers did day to day. I explained it was a lot of coffee, x-acto blade magic and squinting at computer monitors. But, in a more meta sense, designers help people do what they want, or get the information they need. People who build things share a particular esprit de corps. So many foundational…
I saw him as a superhero. He stood six feet tall, a giant in my 8 year-old eyes. My grandfather was the type of man who would stand with dignity, he was the type of man who would instill courage in you just by staring into his eyes. My grandfather’s name was Blas, an uncommon yet familiar name. He was a musician. He played trombone for the National Symphony of Spain…
You hear it all the time, “keep moving forward, not backward”, “put one foot in front of the other”, “never stop trying”, but if only it were that easy. The truth is, the path to accomplishing your goals isn’t always forward and everyone needs time to rest once in a while to assess where they are. For the last few years, on my birthday I’ve set a single goal for that year, sort of like…
A week before September 11th, my husband and I separated. We had been together since high school and had two young children. I didn’t know any other life and definitely not one that involved being alone. The nights without my children were especially hard, and the night of September 10th was one of them. The next morning, I dragged myself into work, drained from the crying…
The search for reason is the most powerful of quests one can journey upon. Some find it and are filled with bliss, while some search for it all their lives. It is valid to say that what you find at the end of the tunnel will no better define you than the journey it took to get there. Once you reach the end of the beginning of the epiphany you’ve search for, a new dawn…