Just a thought. Or maybe a minor fragment of a thought.
Stacks, clips, binders, staples, folders, piles, trays, bins, boxes, shelves, cabinets …
From papers to DVDs, pictures to furniture, food to receipts. Most of us use some sort of organizational system or a combination of a few. Things get groups by category or size; beds in the bedroom, food-related in the kitchen, books are tossed on a shelf, 8.5 by 11 papers are put in stacks by topic, dust settles in the corners. (You can take this metaphor further, our houses/apartment are organizers, our jobs are categories, etc … ) This is how one aspect of our thinking works, we group and associate things in order to make sense of everything around us … times when something defies this categorization system is when things get interesting.
On another note, I generally make one big pile/stack of stuff on my desk, a big pile composed of notes, change, papers, cards, bills and so on. Before I sit down to work on a project I like to organize my giant pile, it helps me get my bearings and helps me collate my thoughts. It isn’t so a strange thing when you think about it … that reorganizing a physical space can reorganize thoughts and memories …
In his essay on Adrian Frutiger in Unjustified Texts, Robin Kinross floated the idea that “one could divide type designers into calligraphers and cutters. The former see and generate strokes, as if with a pen. The latter work by cutting away, seeing rather the space within and around letters.â€
Taken figuratively it can provide a gateway into how we approach the subjects of our work.
My roommate went on exchange to the Hague and she said one day one of the profs was looking at something she did and said that it was too “monkey-eat-bananaâ€. This story made me laugh, and it’s good advice too.
I find that sometimes designers want things to make sense right away, to be rewarding without much thought. Questions like “what do you get out of this” or “what does this say to you” may be good at determining what is immediately sensible but if there is no residue or nothing to be found further—then it can be just boring. It’s easily forgotten that trying to make meaning out of the unfamiliar is sometimes very memorable. At least certainly more involving and invigorating than something that is bent on the obvious.
On that note: what if banana-eat-monkey? What if banana-became-monkey? What if monkey-loves-banana? How about banana-sold-at-grocery-store? Or monkey-becomes-man?
Hah.
This is a small point, I'll keep it short.
Recently I have tried hard to refrain from using the words cute, interesting and weird in conversation. Not that I don’t use the words at all but I think it’s important to stop and think about what I mean when I use them. These three words are used casually in different contexts and sometimes it becomes a sort of substitute for further thinking.