This week’s episode of the Back to Work podcast with Dan Benjamin and Merlin Mann really struck a chord with me. In Scream, Poop, and Run they have a long discussion about an article by Jad Abumrad called The Terrors & Occasional Virtues of Not Knowing What You’re Doing. There is one part in particular, where Merlin talks about not listening to people who tell you what you can’t do, that I keep replaying in my head:

There are so many voices that you are going to hear — some of them actually outside your head — so many voices that you are going to hear about what you should be doing differently, what you’re doing wrong, what you’ll never be capable of, what you’ll always suck at, and you’ve got to not listen to those voices.

The people who constantly tell you what you shouldn’t do are typically really good at not doing things. And that is a virus they are very happy to spread. They are people who just don’t make stuff, they are people who don’t do stuff, and they are more than happy to try to pull the entire world down to their level of not making and not doing. And that’s something to watch out for. Because if you listen too much to all those other voices, they’ll eventually become your voice. And that’s the voice that’s going to be with you all the time.

That’s the voice you’ll go to sleep with, and it’s the voice you’ll wake up with, and if you listen to it too much, it’s going to drown out the tiny voices. And the tiny voices are like the little Will O’ the Wisps in Brave, these little blue lights, saying, “Try this way. Come this way. Come this way.” And those little blue lights — or the tiny voices — you’re only going to hear that if you’re not being drowned out by all the things that say that you’re not even worthy of having your own Wisps.

Those are very loud voices — especially if you make stuff for the Internet. It’s just always there — it’s a constant din of people telling you what you should be beside yourself. And that’s the worst advice in the world.

The whole episode is great. Have a listen.

Frieze Magazine posted a great roundtable discussion about the relationship between design and social responsibility. Even though it’s good that “socially responsible design” is becoming more popular, there are also some pitfalls:

There’s a great quote from Brazilian Bishop Hélder Câmara: ‘When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist.’ Everyone loves you for donating something beautiful to a community in need. It’s a good way to win design awards and can sometimes have a meaningful short-term benefit for a community in crisis. But charity work often does not address to the deeper roots and causes of conflict and inequity, and at its worse may even exacerbate a situation, providing the veneer of a solution where deep problems still exist, and creating complacency where there is the need for outrage, tough choices and hard work.

Carina Chocano takes a fascinating look at the neurological component of curation sites in Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With ‘Curation’. It includes my new favorite German word:

If a rat is rewarded for choosing a rectangle over a square, it will learn to respond to “rectangularity” and start to favor rectangles in general. So maybe we are like the rats, and what w’re seeking while idly yet compulsively cruising Pinterest is really just the reliably unpredictable jumble of emotions that their wistful, quirky juxtapositions evoke. Maybe that is our rectangularity.

Ther’s a German word for it, of course: Sehnsucht, which translates as “addictive yearning.” This is, I think, what these sites evoke: the feeling of being addicted to longing for something; specifically being addicted to the feeling that something is missing or incomplete. The point is not the thing that is being longed for, but the feeling of longing for the thing. And that feeling is necessarily ambivalent, combining both positive and negative emotions.

(link via @iamFinch)

Matthew Butterick recently did a TYPO Talk in Berlin that completely blew me away. In Reversing the Tide of Declining Expectations he discusses how we have come to expect way too little from design, with the consequence that most design on the web is complete crap:

And that’s really what I mean tonight by declining expectations. This idea of what happens when we defer to technology, instead of standing on its shoulders. What happens when we choose convenience over quality. Eventually, w’re going to forget what quality was like.

One of the most interesting parts in Matthew’s talk is where he challenges the conventional wisdom that design is about solving problems. He believes that “solving problems is the lowest form of design” — here’s why:

Because what does design want from us, as designers? Does it only want a solved problem? I think it wants more. I think it wants us to take these items that are sort of mundane or boring on their own—like an annual report, or a website shopping cart, or a business card—and it wants us to fill them up. Fill them with ideas, and emotions, and humor, and warmth. Really everything that’s in our hearts and minds. Design wants us to invest these items with our humanity. And the problem that we’re solving—that’s really just the context where that happens.

I don’t want to quote from the talk too much, because you really have to experience the whole thing — it is such a great reminder to have the courage to create better things.

You can watch the video or read the transcript.

(transcript link via @jbrewer)

Alex Maughan adds some fresh perspective to the reasonably stale “Should designers learn to code?” debate. In The click of a well-made box he writes:

I don’t just believe that having development knowledge helps me and others get stuff done. I believe it makes me a better designer. It does this in the same way that being empathetic to both user and business need does; in the same way that aesthetic theory in visual design does; in the same way that content awareness does; in the same way that knowledge of cultural semiotics and iconography does; in the same way that all sorts of knowledge systems do. Many things can positively influence a designer, and many things ultimately do, just as many areas of knowledge can enhance the value and efficacy of on’s work in any discipline.

Spot on. The code aspect is just something we’ve recently been focusing on, but let’s not forget all the other things that can make us better designers. The key to becoming a better designer is not necessarily to learn to code (although it could be — as Alex argues for very effectively). The key to becoming a better designer is to keep learning something related to the craft, always. I love how Alex Charchar (too many Alexes!) describes the current shift to more knowledge-based design in The Principles of Style:

The importance that designers place in their skills is increasing at a staggering rate. We have always taken our craft seriously, but now we are treating it as the architects do. We are working hard to shake the shadow of the artiness and whimsy of our work and are showing that being creative is serious stuff. Some of us have nerded out over theory forever, but the dusty tomes are no longer propping up the wonky table of our profession. Things are getting increasingly balanced and level.

It happened so quickly and what was once hard to find knowledge is now base knowledge. A dependency upon style has been replaced with fundamentals. Theory has become methadone and sobriety looks damn pretty.

So let’s relax a bit about learning to code, and rather stress out about whether we’re learning something. And as Alex (Maughan this time) points out at the end of his essay, make sure it’s something you enjoy:

I also simply enjoy the hell out of it, no matter what value others end up placing on it.

I got an interesting email from Surat Lozowick about my post on coffee houses and creativity. He pointed me to a piece he wrote called Working at the coffee shop: the right environment and the right distractions — a very interesting post that concludes with a great perspective on the issue:

Creativity does not exist in a vacuum; experiences, conversations, reading, writing, the constraints of time and the distractions of life are just as important as quiet moments of focus. And conveniently, the coffee shop is there to provide them.

He also links to Conor Friedersdorf’s Working Best at Coffee Shops, in which Conor presents four possible theories to answer the question, “Why are many telecommuters most efficient in noisy public places with lots of distractions?” It’s worth a read not just for his theories, but also for this goose bump-inducing Ernest Hemingway quote:

It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write.

It annoys and inspires me in equal parts when I see language like that — simple and elegant, yet dripping with meaning and emotion. So jealous.

In The distractions of social media, 1673 style Tom Standage provides an excerpt from his upcoming book “Cicero’s Web”. He points out that public officials and university authorities were very much against coffee houses, because they kept people from doing real work. According to one critic in the 1600s:

And the scholars are so greedy after news (which is none of their business) that they neglect all for it, and it is become very rare for any of them to go directly to his chamber after prayers without first doing his suit at the coffee-house, which is a vast loss of time grown out of a pure novelty. For who can apply close to a subject with his head full of the din of a coffee-house?

It’s that last sentence that I find particularly amusing. For who can apply close to a subject with his head full of the din of a coffee-house? It is precisely in the din (“A loud, unpleasant, and prolonged noise”) of coffee houses that I find I do my best work. In fact, coffee houses have a long history of being spaces where creativity tends to thrive. For example, in Claudia Roden’s Coffee, she notes:

Catering equally for the working and the leisured classes, [coffee houses] have tended to be democratic in character. As a French periodical of the 1850s entitled Le Café pointed out in its slogan: “The salon stood for privilege, the café stands for equality.” Coffee has been called the intellectual drink of democracy. In times of upheaval, coffee houses became revolutionary centers, encouraging the interchange of ideas and usually generating liberal and radical opinion. It has been said that the French Revolution was fomented in coffee-house meetings, and the Café Foy was the starting point of its mob spirit.

Coffee houses have been linked to intellectual activities for a long time:

The French coffee shop ennobled the ways of its frequenters by inaugurating a reign of temperance and luring people away from the cabaret. Today the institution is still one where everything is discussed and where people sharpen their wits in debate.

The influence of coffee houses was enormous on the political, social, literary, and commercial life of the times. They were the stage for political debate, fringe centers of education and the origin of certain newspapers. Insurance houses, merchant banks, and the stock exchange began in coffee houses.

There is just something about coffee shops that helps me focus. It’s the ambient noise. It’s the knowledge that I’m not alone, that there are people around me whose diverse lives are happening in the background. It’s the constant, nagging thought that some of those people might be the audience for what I’m making. It’s like working inside a contextual inquiry all the time.

Also, coffee is pretty great.

I think Kottke nailed it:

Maybe the reason the whole “can’t use the iPad/iPhone for creation” thing persists is that everyone is using the damn things to play tower defense games instead.

Towards the end of Finding Meaning in the Technium Cave — Francisco Inchauste’s essay for Distance 02 — he urges us to be more cognizant of the lasting impact of our work:

What we create today will become the baseline for future generations. In the future, explorers will find our technium cave, filled with the artifacts of our present. What will they find in there? What will our creations tell them about what was meaningful to us? I can only hope it’s not what I see today. I know it can change, and I hope you see it too.

This is the theme that echoes through Distance 02, a collection of three essays on the topic of “Extracurriculars” — how to take ourselves out of the daily grind and think more clearly about how the things we make impact the world around us. It’s a topic that I see more and more designers touch on, starting with Wilson Miner’s excellent When We Build talk, all the way through Frank Chimero’s The Shape of Design, parts of Mike Monteiro’s Design is a Job, and smaller essays like Dmitry Fadeyev’s Moral Design. I’ve also touched on this before:

I wonder what would happen if we felt the weight of responsibility a little more when w’re designing. What if we go into each project as if the design will be around for 100 years or more? Would we make it fit into the web environment better, aim to give it a timeless aesthetic, and spend more time considering the consequences of our design decisions? Would we try to design something that “makes life worth living”?

The cynic in me worries that this vitally important topic is getting a bit too trendy, which brings with it lots of attention but also hoards of Internet critics. But before the possible backlash gets into full swing there is still time to read Distance 02 and be challenged to be better designers, not just people who design things better. For example, Sharlene King urges us to do more side projects in Do Your Homework:

I believe success comes through homework: the projects we do separate from our day-to-day work, that help us live design rather than simply work in design, allow passionate designers to break through.

And in The Embedded Designer, Cassie McDaniel talks about designers’ ability to influence adjacent industries in a positive way:

While design processes are available to anyone, regular experience with the creative process makes the designer particularly adaptable to new environments. An eagerness to understand the nature of our design challenges is part of our mandate. We ask tough questions of our clients and their industries. We need to know: Why are things done this way? What problem is it solving? What can we get rid of to make this simpler? Designers are receptive to new input by definition, and that makes us inherently more malleable than other kinds of workers.

What I found pleasantly surprising about Distance 02 is that it doesn’t stick to the philosophical. There is plenty of practical advice on how to make these ideas real in our everyday design work. Francisco’s framework for measuring meaning will come in particularly handy in all my projects.

Like any publication, Distance 02 is not perfect. It buckles under the weight of its 100+ citations, which sometimes makes it hard to follow the authors’ own story threads through the essays. Either that, or I’m just very easily distracted.

But that is a small complaint, and certainly not enough to make me discourage you from reading the book in any format your heart desires. In fact, at $5 for a digital copy and $15 for print & digital, it’s pretty much a no-brainer. You can buy Distance here.

I remember when Wilson Miner’s talk When We Build first hit the web with a bang — for days you couldn’t open Twitter without seeing a link to it. I don’t know why, but I just never got around to watching it until today. It is, in a word, extraordinary. I generally don’t want to post things that you’ve likely seen before, but I need to make an exception on this one, just in case some of you procrastinated like I did.

It’s not really possible to summarize, but if I had to, I’d say that the talk is loosely based on John Ruskin’s words from his 1849 book The Seven Lamps of Architecture:

When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, “See! This our father did for us.”

If you can make 40 minutes to watch this, you won’t regret it.