Following your passion is a recipe for burnout. I love design, but sometimes it’s tedious, or painful, and hard. Showing up and persevering are way more important than passion.
Politics
I recently re-read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and this time, this quote stood out: “Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think.” I’ve seen so much good work die on the vine and so many bad projects live longer than the Energizer bunny because nobody wants to talk about issues openly. I want to be the kind of leader that makes my team feel psychologically safe enough to tell me what they really think.
We’re not family
Harvard Business Review: ‘The Toxic Effects of Branding Your Workplace a “Family”’ by Joshua A. Luna In short: calling your workplace a family ineffectively shortcuts the hard work of teambuilding (if their conscious or unconscious definitions of family is “functional”). Having a shared purpose bonds people as teams; it just requires clarity and teambuilding.
Dribbble: 2021 Design Industry Report
Dribbble 2021 Design Industry Report Unfortunately, this report doesn’t share as much data as previous reports. It’s a helpful snapshot of the industry but quite generalized.
Dead concept: Greenhouse
Here is a concept I developed for an internal brand within the Alliance. They didn’t pick it but I liked the idea.
2021 in Review
Running: 278.4 km 57 runs 7’24″km pace 34:19:46 time Podcasts: Throughline Science Friday Hidden Brain Planet Money This American Life Code Switch Akimbo Parks and Recollection The Ringer NBA show Design Matters Creative Pep Talk Levar Burton Reads Rough Translation Radio Lab Death Sex & Money Reply All Heavyweight Science Vs. Runners Block Bible Project Podcast Pull up pod Office Ladies Criminal Design Details Design Better Fake Doctors Real Friends Invisibilia The Meeting House Reclaming My Theology Revisionist History The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Stuff the British Stole This is Love Worklife with Adam Grant You are a story teller Zigzag Books: This is Marketing, Seth Godin The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson A Ballad of Song Birds …
Lao Hu
Check out this excellent short story called “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu, read by LaVar Burton. LaVar’s Chinese is dreadful, but the story is magical, beautiful, and deeply meaningful.
Don’t boil the ocean
The most inspiring session for me during Adobe Max 2021 was this one: Doing Great Creative In-House When the House Isn’t Creative – S258 Dennis Lim gave a few poignant points that resonated with me: Don’t boil the ocean Basically do what you can, focus on what matters, don’t try to fix everything Only do work impossible not to love This one doesn’t seem realistic but it pairs well with the above point. Don’t put your effort into projects that are dead ends, just get it done and pour your heart into the things that matter. Build it and they will come If you start making great work, one project at a time, people will come to you for more …
2019 Dribbble Global Design Survey
This global design survey from Dribbble was helpful in asking for a raise last year. It’s still relevant now but hopefully, they’ll put out a new one soon.
Automated export for logos
I made these actions for Adobe Illustrator to export file types for logo export. Before you use the action: Create a folder on your desktop called “Temp” Clear the pasteboard and make sure the artboard is set how you like (if your design doesn’t fill the entire artboard, some file types will preserve the margins (this can be good if you think the client would benefit from having margins baked into the asset to ensure negative space around the logo)) Save two differently named files for a CMYK color profile and RGB color profile When the action runs, it’ll create all the file types you might need for a logo. The CMYK action creates: .jpg, .ai, .pdf, .eps The RGB …
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