30 14 20 09
So how do you explain your fascinations?
When I moved in, one of the first things I did [after making sure there was toilet paper in the bathroom and turning on the air conditioning] was paint the bedroom a textured poppy red. It’s a terrible, garish colour. All my furniture is black, deep browns and creams so it matches nothing. It’ll be hell to repaint when I move out.
If I had to do it all over again, I would’ve painted the entire apartment that colour.
There is, in every one of us, a bit that is marvelously irrational. It slaps stickers on your laptop, doodles epic battles between Vikings and space lions on your meeting briefs, paints your bedroom red. It’s why we get into design, to take those formulaic interfaces and grid-based layouts and turn them into something *ours*.
It’s also a terrible master. It has no concerns for usability, deadlines, client requests and will leave you poor and bitter wondering why the world just can’t seem to understand your genius. Take a deep breath there, butch, you just forgot the most important part about your profession:
Design is achieved when we learn how to translate our creative impulses to suit a purpose. Good design is when that translation needs no explanation.
