Take on take offf

OfffTLV design festival is over.

A fine festival indeed, of design, inspiration, and fun times. Speeches were great, and it was very interesting to have a peek into the backstage of different designers, artists and studios, their processes, their thinking, their take on things and much more. Being as inspiring as it is, these days make you open up, look around, and take in so many thoughts and ideas. Here are a few takes of mine from these 48 hours:

Trust your clients. So simple yet so true. We so easily tend to lose our trust in them, feel as if they don’t really know what their doing — and above that, force us to do something we don’t believe in. The basis for a good project is trust. From both sides. And often this trust is as much intentional as it is developed.

Do your routines, differently. On the quest for inspiration, we try taking special measures for obtaining it. Curate consumption and experience, so it delivers effectively. We overlook the power of chance, randomness, unseen opportunities. Go to work differently everyday — you never know what you might run into. Allow yourself the advantage of chance. Be open to change you’re routine you’ve been taking for granted while searching in defined boundaries.

Your voice is yours, you don’t need permission to speak it. You don’t need the acceptance of others to make your voice relevant and withstanding. Don’t wait for others’ approval, don’t shy away when they don’t. Take strong confidence in who you are and what you have to say, any way you want to say it.

Animated GIFs rule. They shine new light on what you say, they inject humour. Allowing for a comic pause, the metaphor they serve bypasses any cynicism people might have. Its easily available everywhere, and just as easily selected to offer enhancement for your presentation.

Designer your own T-Shirt (if you’re a designer). How easy is that? If your tool is available so quickly at your hand, literally, it would be a shame not to use it and express yourself. Typography, illustration, pure graphic design — let yourself out and inspire everybody around you. You owe it to the world.

The world’s writing systems someone actually sat down and traced all the writing systems in the world. And made a cool unanimous layout to present them all, nice and clean. You can list them historically, geographically, and more. Who imagined there are 294 different ones?! Who knew the last one was invented in 2009?! worldswritingsystems.org

Karloff font The Beauty and the Beast. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Make sure you watch the promotional video. Blew my mind. https://www.typotheque.com/blog/beauty_and_ugliness

Sometimes knowing what you are looking for is harder than finding it. An old Chinese proverb. Or Indian.

How do I take my coffee? Seriously. Very seriously. (The back of the bartenders shirt, intermission).

Content — push or pull? In this era of overloaded content, how do we like our data? are we in charge, or just to the extent of choosing who is in charge of us? Our time, our attention, our life — are we pushing it forward or being pulled?

Check in with your client, daily. We strive to sprint on our own expense, and deliver on progress, on conclusions, on capacity. And yet all too many times we catch up with the client just to find we’re off. Way off. So let’s include him in the process, have a lot more touchpoints along the way. Stick our head out the window each station, and make sure we’re on the right track, heading towards the right endpoint.

Focus creative efforts internally, not just outwards to clients and your projects. Inject the creative spirit inside, to your team, to your culture. Put a lot of effort into it, at least as much as you expect them to do for their clients.

Design Does change, improvement, value, good. Design Does an exhibition also. To demonstrate it’s power, to establish it’s true role in people’s life. And it looks good, too. Designdoes.es

B=MAT Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Trigger (B.J. Fogg)Want to improve your behaviour? Check on those three.