I have committed many grave design skills in my day, but I am aware of that and working on it. But one of my weaknesses is that I tend to dive in, give everything and sprint when in reality, acquiring new skills is more like an ultramarathon. So I am writing this for myself - to remind me that I am taking a break, not releasing anything until Fitness Tracker and taking time to reflect on what I have learned and how that can lead into the next chapter of my learning journey.
Here are some things that I have gained:
- I have a sketchbook and I use it daily. It's very hard, I don't like how hard it is and I have to force myself to draw but I do it because there is a lot that I don't understand. And sketching is the most direct way to show myself how little I understand.
- My understanding of spacing and hierarchy has come a long ways. Because of this, I am at the point where I can sort of use two fonts effectively.
- When I look at other people's designs, I can implement them and discuss what I have done in reasonably correct terms about 70% of the time.
And here are some areas where I am still unbelievably weak:
- Perspective is definitely not my friend. My work is very very flat and trying to add perspective is quite dangerous. My tendency as a designer is to always add more to the point that things get too busy and I end up with 200x200 pixel icons. Trying to add perspective ruins things that used to sort of work.
- I am not at the point where I get inspired by applications. Instead, I get inspired mostly by album covers and am a huge huge fan of Peter Saville. So I read a book that inspired him and it didn't go well. It went so poorly that I can tell you that the book is written in English and I can read English, but that's about all I gained. That book is so far over my head that it's analogous to a butterfly trying to get a PhD in quantum physics. I have a better chance at implementing a Tardis than anything out of that book.
- That comes because my knowledge of font is somewhere between totally non existent and somewhere lower than elementary. In terms of font, I am at the developmental stage where songs like "Don't Bite Your Friends" would be mindblowing. I can somewhat work with multiple fonts because I have a better understanding of spacing and visual hierarchy. But I don't a thing about fonts themselves.
- Colour is another area where I am unbelievably weak. I am so weak in colour that I need multiple levels of cheat codes to keep my colour combinations somewhat okay. I am so weak in colour that while I am not colour blind, claiming that I can see colour is disrespectful to people who actually can.
- Great designers blow my mind. I was chatting with a friend and checked out their website and I was just blown away by the elegance of it. Their site is elegant while still being very minimal. And while I could easily implement any individual part, I cannot even fathom how it was all conceived. It's like trying to learn a science I have never heard of in a language that I don't speak.
And here is how I am going to compensate for those weaknesses and work through them:
- I am going to keep reading Pioneers of Modern Typography until it either clicks or I decide to just becomme illiterate and save everyone a lot of trouble. Maybe I should augment that with other learning resources about typography before I turn straight to illiteracy.
- There's a whole field called colour theory and my friend Shawn was really into a guy named Kandinsky. Shawn is such a great artist that I wear his art on my body so Kandinsky beckons. I'm pretty sure this will be another one of those butterfly working on a PhD in quantum physics situations.
- I'll keep sketching but also want to get back into photography. Design is really fun and I realize that a lot of my difficulty with it stems from a lack of basic artistic training and knowledge. Making art badly might help. And considering that I'm less than a week away from 200x200 pixel icons, it cannot possibly hurt.
And so there you have it. After a flurry of activity when I gained the basics, I have discovered that design is really really fun. It's not as fun as doing wacky things with data and it's nowhere near as fun as publishing, but it's a lot of fun and I like to chase fun things. So I am going back into the incubator for awhile to keep learning and see what I can do with myself.
I really can't get much worse so it's risk free fun.