Design Paradoxes

I found this on kottke today... it's some fantastic advice and reflection on design paradoxes, and working with clients: 11 Design paradoxes. From #8:

"Truth is, nearly all jobs start off the same, and our responses as designers determine the success or failure of each job. There are no good or bad projects in design, only good or bad responses. Good projects are made not found."

Having just finished Art and Fear, which focused more on the fine arts - i.e. producing work for yourself/galleries - it's great to read some thoughts on the commercial art world that I live in.

Side note: I love the page width of that blog, I wish more online reading material would follow it's (and the New Yorker's) example, it makes for much easier readability.

Oh, and here's some new art... another piece from the Dogs of Winter album:

Art and Fear

I bought Art and Fear last night after work, and I couldn't put it down until I went to bed. Well, there WAS that one hour when Lost was on... but come on, it's Lost. This book is fantastic, I would recommend it to anyone who is making any kind of art. From the Amazon description: "The authors explore the way art gets made, the reasons it doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way." It focuses on making a LOT of work, and in the process learning from your mistakes along the way. I love this quote:

The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.

On a related note, here's a list of good rules to remember.

Dogs of Winter

Working on some more images for the upcoming Dogs of Winter album. Here's one!