Aug 23, 2010

[T]here are two kinds of purposes. The purpose of having a result, something that exists after the process is stopped, and does not exist until it has stopped, … and there is the purpose of carrying on, of keeping the process going, just as one may breathe so as to continue breathing. The purpose is to carry on.
John Chris Jones, Welsh designer and author of book Design Methods. Hurry off to read the full text. [via]

Email, Einstein, and the presence of power laws

Aug 23, 2010

The illusion of literalness

Aug 23, 2010

Occupational alphabets

Aug 21, 2010

Tag off

Aug 20, 2010

My mother wouldn’t remove the tags from items for quite a long time. She’d save our purchases — any new items — until some future, unidentified date. The practice bedeviled me.

The items, still packaged and stored on a too-high shelf, tempted us. At the time, I believed she believed this taught us the virtue of waiting. But in fact what it taught us was the value of stewardship.

Later on, I regarded these exercises as calisthenics for what was to come. Our ability to judge when to exercise restraint and good judgment is one of the only true virtues we have. Whether it’s deciding whether to abandon the responsibilities of ownership or take on new ones, to take the last xx or to take on a new one, ownership becomes stewardship, and it’s a responsibility that comes with a relationship with things, however transient.

See also:
Speaking of the nearly 1980s, insights on waiting.

The physical item decision, then, is almost inconsequential. Tags need to be taken off with abandon. But our ability, our generosity — with people, with ideas, — isn’t to be stored and saved for some future unidentified date. It should be used and shared until it’s threadbare, and then some. Take the tags off.

Conversational marginalia

Aug 19, 2010

Aug 19, 2010

A photograph from Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s 1927 failed attempt to recreate the American small town deep in the jungle of Brazil. But ultimately, [An] “undertaking that had cost Ford upwards of $200 million dollars was abandoned. … Ford had tried not simply control rubber production, but to export the American way life, to force his will on the natural world, and both respects he failed colossally.” Then and now.

A photograph from Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s 1927 failed attempt to recreate the American small town deep in the jungle of Brazil. But ultimately, [An] “undertaking that had cost Ford upwards of $200 million dollars was abandoned. … Ford had tried not simply control rubber production, but to export the American way life, to force his will on the natural world, and both respects he failed colossally.” Then and now.

The extraordinary of doing 'being ordinary'

Aug 18, 2010

Eight variations on being thwarted

Aug 18, 2010

Aug 17, 2010

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but a vague spot a little east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teen-aged boy finding them, and having them speak to him.
John Updike, The Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, the Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953 cf. “Throw that draft away. Write a new outline. Go over your notes. Re-interview a few people. Realize, as if you hadn’t realized this a thousand times before (most recently, a few minutes before) that your own big ideas about this story are pathetic, but this list of details and the more decent quotations from the interviews — there’s some pretty good stuff in there. Fiddle with writing a few more paragraphs. Microwave your cold cup of coffee for the third time. Go over your notes again. Yell irrationally at your spouse/child/dog/a bare wall. Now, kick the wall. Limp. Review all the transcribed interviews one more time from beginning to end. Paste a large sheet of paper to a wall and, standing up with a fresh cup of coffee in your hand, outline the piece in really big letters. Realize that you’ve misunderstood the point of the entire story all this time.” —Jack Hitt, from an interview, Part II



With Thanks To

POWERED by FUSION


About Liz

Danzico is part designer, part teacher, part editor. As an independent consultant, she traces the roots of her craft back to her parents. According to Liz, "Growing up at least a little information architect gave me an organizational advantage over my friends." More