One of the perks of my job is that I have access to pretty amazing people. Today, for example, I got to take a half hour away from my desk to swing downstairs and talk design with Darhil Crooks, Creative Director for The Atlantic. He does work like this:
I admire a lot about Darhil’s work, not least of which is that I have no idea how he does it. I’m a designer who tends to work with a lot of rules and tricks and guidelines and plans — but either Darhil just feels it all out, or else he’s not telling otherwise.
While in his office, we were talking (well … he was talking, I was furiously agreeing) about the value of taking time, as a designer, to just look at other work. He pointed me towards some of his favorite design inspiration sites, and I had a realization which I kinda gave away in the title of this post…
I need to be less productive.
Right now, I try hard to make every work-minute count, moving from project to project aggressively and churning out the best design I can, given realistic deadlines. And let’s not kid ourselves, that’s still going to continue to happen. However, what I realized is that one of those projects I should be making time for is looking more at a wider body of design. And art. And photography, and illustration, and whatever else I can find out there. As designers (and definitely as creative directors) it’s so easy to make the urgent the most important. But I was in Darhil’s office because I needed help getting out of a sort-of-rut of design sameness, where I’ve been spinning out for a while. The issue is that if I want to do truly quality design for my company, I need to be taking the time to see and understand what people around me are doing — and not just in a “Oh, yeah, I saw that magazine cover, great right? Okay, coffee and then priority A-1-b-xiv-j on my task list” kind of way. But in a way that stops, and notices why something works, and why the thing you hate about “ugly” design might actually be the brilliant thing that’s making you look twice at it.
All I guess I’m saying is, as a busy designer, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of urgently doing the best design you can within tight deadlines; but if you don’t take the time to slow down and look around, your best design won’t be good enough for very long.
Be less productive. Do better design as a result. That’s one of the things I’ll be working for the next however long.