Possibility usually comes disguised as hard work. Don’t expect your next project to be easy. Things fall apart Anyone who tries to make something or do something finds that there is resistance. It’s an accepted fact of life that things tend toward disorder–cars break down, paint peels, joints begin to ache as we age. We […]

This article is in: Community, Creativity, Ideas

Not my best work One of the cold hard facts of the creative life is that we all have some past work that we’re not proud of. We’ve all put our names on projects in the past (maybe not even the very distant past) that we now hope will be forgotten. Sometimes the most painful […]

This article is in: Creativity, Design

We are drawn to things that we know have been handled and shaped by human hands. We sense that those things have taken time to craft, and they feel more valuable. “That human quality is what attracts me to it. Those imperfections, mistakes–that’s interesting.” Even if there are imperfections, we prefer our mom’s lumpy chocolate chip cookies […]

This article is in: Creativity, Design, Illustration

My first ideas are usually terrible. But those first attempts aren’t a waste of time, because working through bad ideas is what makes good ideas possible.

This article is in: Creativity, Ideas, The Nerdatorium

A friend asked me a few days ago about the pros and cons of doing freelance design work along with your primary design job. Even though I approach the question as it relates to my work as a graphic designer, I think there are general principles here that apply to any profession. The biggest benefits […]

This article is in: Creativity, Design

MJM logo woodcut As a Christmas present to the MJM team, I made a woodcut based on the MJM logo and hand-printed a copy for each team member. It’s a good change to leave the computer and work on a physical project–sometimes it’s refreshing to make a huge mess and get wood shavings all over your kitchen […]

This article is in: Creativity, Illustration

Years ago I read in the preface of a collection of a photographer’s work about a book that was impossible to make.  The book he was describing would never exist because it was a collection of  images that had never been created.  This photographer (whose name I’ve forgotten) was referring to the missed images–the moment […]

This article is in: Creativity, Design, Ideas, Illustration, Logo Design