Creative Role: The Slow Cooker

There is always a rush to make things—a desire for the instant gratification that creating can bring. This will likely always be the case, as our world dialogue spins around “attention spans shrinking” and the “cost of entry lessening.” But what if the fast and furious way of making was coupled with a slow and gradual path?

One such example is the Norwegian folk-pop duo Kings of Convenience, who take a “leisurely pace” in releasing their albums:

“It was a really long and slow process. It reflects the way we work with song writing, we tend to receive an idea from somewhere—we’ll call it inspiration. So that’s a few lines, some words, a melody and some chords. And then the time it takes for that little idea to become a full song can sometimes be a period of two or three, even four years. And also recording takes even longer. The way we record is mostly live. Both of us play together, both guitars and we sing together. To be able to capture the right mood of the song, and play it really well and groovy at the same time, is really hard. We need like twenty takes to capture a song on tape.”

The band’s resulting numbers—four years, 20 takes—sound extreme but they vary. Everyone’s creative process is different. The total time taken to make something is not as important as the progression toward it; the time attending to creating, leaving it unattended, and then coming back to it again. These tasks and times all collectively accrue toward a state qualified to get the creation “out there.”

Slowly creating something doesn’t necessarily mean a long dramatic pause before finally sharing it. The part of making is happening. Persisting in the making is the hard part. Creativity can be an activity provoked and massaged (re-provoked, re-massaged) over time. It can be a long journey. Because slow was never meant to be easy, like its partner in making. As the slow-cook commandment goes, “Make it fast. Cook it slow.”

Tap into your inner slow cooker.

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This is the first piece of a series focused on the lively cast of characters whose roles make the play of Creativity. For the next character in this series, meet the Like-Minder.

Typographic illustration, tailormade for this series, was done by Shawn Hazen. Read his Designer’s Quest(ionnaire).

Designer’s Quest(ionnaire): Design Collective Scribble Tone

Elizabeth Joy Gershenzon and Travis Kochel are partners who founded Scribble Tone. They work side-by-side with a distributed group of designers and developers “raised on the internet”. They thrive on “creative thinking” for projects dealing with interface design and branding for both web and printed media. Read their concise and insightful take on design and designing.

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The Designer’s Quest(ionnaire) is a Design Feast initiative that describes and captures a designer’s perspective in a succinct format. Read the previous Designer’s Quest(ionnaire) with Interaction Designer Maureen Hanratty.

“REWORK”: Audio Review of 37signals’ Book on Less being truly More

Like Gary’s book, 37signals’ book also looks stunning without the jacket.

Following our review of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It!, my colleague Joe and I rushed to get a copy of 37signals’ latest book REWORK. It’s based on a true story—37signals’ experiences in making and growing a business, being creative all the way. The company created the popular web application Basecamp. I’m a fan of their product Backpack. REWORK offers insightful and ultra-quotable brevity in tidy bites. Consisting of 288 pages, it is concise—no bloat. We had fun creating this review and hope you enjoy it:

Total time: 28.24

To find out more about the book’s making, from seeking a publisher to editorial rounds, listen to 37signals’ podcast. Complementing all of the lean essays are wonderful and simple black-and-white sketchnote illustrations by Mike Rohde. You can read about his process and see his fantastic note taking during the SEED conferences.

Blogger’s Quest(ionnaire): A Piece of Monologue’s Rhys Tranter

A Piece of Monologue is an independent site by Rhys Tranter, a postgraduate student living in Penarth, Wales. What started as personal journal about literature and philosophy in 2007 has embraced art, photography, theatre and film. In fact, it covers such topics as Modernism, Contemporary Theatre, Literary Journalism and more in a tall index. Rhys covers a lot of cultural terrain. As one repeat-visitor put it, “A Piece of Monologue is a piece of monument.” Rhys’ concise thoughts about web-based publishing may help your entrance into the blogosphere or further inform your current work in it:

Why did you create a web site of regular entries?
It’s a wonderful way to express your interests while pretending to be productive.

What web-based solution did you select and why?
I use Blogger. It’s practical and robust, but there’s room to play around with the design and make something that feels right.

What is your definition of a good blog and what are
three good blogs that you frequently visit?
I think a good blog presents content in a clear, engaging and approachable way. For those with an interest in literature and philosophy: ReadySteadyBook, 3:AM Magazine and This Space are all highly recommended.

How do you create content for your blog?
I use my blog as a kind of scrapbook of ideas. If I come across something interesting, I make a note and up it goes. It’s like a private notebook that, for some reason, I’ve chosen to share with the world.

How do you stay organized and motivated
to contribute to your blog?
I enjoy sharing news and ideas with readers who have similar passions. The blog also provides a nice distraction from the daily humdrum of work and routine. If I don’t have anything to write, I don’t worry about it. It’s just for fun. And by keeping that in mind, content and motivation generally takes care of itself.

For those aspiring to make a website composed of
regular thoughts and/or images, what is your advice?
No advice, really. Speaking from experience, I would say that it’s easy to get started and a lot of fun. Just give it a go and see what you think!

What is your quest in blogging?
I just like keeping track of my interests, and enjoy discussing them with enthusiastic people.

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Read previous Blogger’s Quest(ionnaire) with Papertree Design’s Jeremy Jaymes

“Crush It!”: Audio Review of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Book about Passion and Personal Branding

Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It! was part of Design Feaster’s Highlights of 2009. Vaynerchuk and his book are both regular topics of conversation with my co-worker Joe, who makes electronic music on the side. We’re bona fide “Vayniacs,” making regular visits to his Wine Library TV and vlog on personal branding. I pitched to Joe an audio review—my first attempt at creating audio content. I’m more used to the written word and saw this as a way to engage in a new medium. It also happened to be Joe’s first attempt at doing something like this with audio. So we had fun making it, and hope you enjoy it too:

Total time: 29:59

The setup for making the audio review was basic: Sony stereo condenser microphone and Ableton Live software.



It took place at a music rehearsal facility where Joe rents half the room. Joe’s side is filled with his analog synthesizers:



Big thanks to Joe for his enthusiasm in doing the review and lending his awesome audio tools and space. When we get around to it, we hope to tackle an audio interview of 37signals’ new business book REWORK, a published counterpart, like a wine-to-wine pairing, with Gary’s book.

Words: One of the Designer’s Best Natural Resources

I’ve become more interested about how designers describe themselves on their websites. The designer’s ability to arrange words in a layout; be it printed or digital, on a surface large or small, requires skill. The skill of describing what one does as a designer, or expressing one’s attitude as a designer, is what I’m honing on.

I’ve discovered a lot of well crafted—that is to say, well worded—statements by designers about themselves, like this “About” wording by Artist and Musician Scott Hansen of the popular design-and-music blog ISO50:

“Design, to me, is the search for efficiency. Efficiency in conveying a message, efficiency of form. In this way I see some of my own work falling into the category of design, while some of my other work falls under the umbrella of illustration. With the more illustrative pieces my primary goal is to create something beautiful or striking in a visceral sense. These goals remain intact when I create a purely design-driven piece, but there is the added goal of minimalism and efficiency which constrains the process and limits the content. It is these constraints that force us as designers to reveal the core of the idea we are trying to express and to seek the most direct route to it. In this way, all of the periphery and excess of illustration and fine art can be shed to expose the roots of visual communication and express them in a concise and instantly understandable form. When I see something that embodies these ideals it is always very moving, these are the things that drive me to create.”

I wonder if these “About Me” sections are read or largely ignored, but they fascinate me. I’ve heard, depending on what pro gives the writing advice, that writing what you know is what not to do, perhaps because it’s too easy. Even so, it could be the hardest thing for a designer to do. Though all people—not only designers—are in daily situations where they talk about what they do for a living, it’s impossible to also listen at the same time. I would find it helpful to have automatic playback of my telling about who I am, how I think and why it matters in a way that is clear and fits with my personality. Putting all this in a tidy sentence or a succinct paragraph is a tall order. Noticing and reading statements by designers, whatever the discipline, about themselves helps learning about designing and writing.

Author Samuel Johnson said that, “What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure.” Designers strive for results of effortlessness; though creating something which projects that effect, more often than not, demands considerable effort.

At first, I wanted to start a blog exclusively dedicated to this topic of how designers describe themselves, but why not add it as a new category called Designer’s Self-Statements to this blog, plus it’s so easy to set up yet another blog at the start. I see this category (for now) as a dedicated place to collect and point to designers’ “effortless” expressions when they reveal themselves, one “About Me” at a time.