Now that I’m breathing easier after my final critiques, I’m working on a list of things that I’ve been thinking about over the past few months and have wanted to write about now that I have the time, so here’s what I’ve got so far:
- The idea of trying to connect the dots forward in one’s future in the way that Steve Jobs says is not possible in his Stanford commencement speech.
- I’m wondering what it is about California that makes it such a hotbed for really good ideas and new businesses. It seems like a disproportionate amount of the cutting edge things I hear about are happening right here in my own back yard in sunny California. Is it the weather, the water? I’ve got some ideas that stem from ecology and biodiversity that I think might be related in a theoretical sense
- I’ve got some notes and thoughts from a lecture that Eric Heiman of Volume Design gave at UCD this fall. He’s one of the best design speakers I’ve heard in my short career, and said some things that really resonated with me.
-I’ve been reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, for the last few weeks. Its been an absolutely fascinating read so far and its interesting to see some of the things that I’ve thought about myself as a creative person be validated by a psychological study of other creative people
-As mentioned before, I spent thanksgiving in Copenhagen, and I had the opportunity to appreciate the refinement of danish design while there. I’ve been thinking about why their design has been pushed in the direction that it is, and I want to explore a few ideas about that
-I read a book called West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origin of Belief by Steven Kotler… I hadn’t read a non-design book in a while and I really enjoyed the read. Kotler talks about some interesting topics including syncronicity and the genetic basis for spirituality. There’s something about the way he writes that appeals to part of me that’s interested in the intersection of science and spirituality.
-I read John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicty early on this fall quarter, and found it to be a great set of general guidelines for many things, and I’d like to share some of the things that have been most useful to me.
I’m sure (I hope) this list will keep growing but I think this is a good starting point for the first couple posts.
