A gem from 2014 that illustrates the difference between:

"Design" is a tall ivory tower.

versus

Ideas are cheap; execution and results are everything.

Props to Julie Zhuo.

Some helpful links for living small:

Inspiration

• Less stuff, more happiness — 5-minute TED talk by Graham Hill
• Shoebox Dwelling — One of my favorite blogs: "finding comfort, style & dignity in small spaces." Mostly products, but some spaces.
• Tiny House Swoon — Small space inspiration.

Furniture

• Milano Smart Living — purchased a wall bed from here
• Resource Furniture — where Graham Hill sourced furniture for his Life-Edited apartment

Spaces

• Space-saving studio in Milan
• LifeEdited2

Last month, my evening bicycle commute up 8th avenue was interrupted by the face of Pope Francis emerging from the whitewashed side of a building. I pulled to the curb, snapped a picture with my iPhone, and continued home. I repeated this ritual four times the following week, thus documenting the painting of a wall mural advertising the Pope's visit to the USA.

Why did I stop and take notice? Years ago, before living in New York, I watched the short film Up There, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at the rare individuals who hand paint walls for a living. It fascinated me. The opportunity to see many hand-painted walls – and their progress – first-hand is one of the unique joys of living in New York.

Before this week, I had assumed that the Nelson Marshmallow Sofa and the Nelson Ball Clock were designed by their eponym, George Nelson.^[1] This is untrue, as I learned in an epitaph written by Michael Bierut this week:

RIP Irving Harper, quiet designer behind George Nelson's iconic products

Irving Harper, the designer responsible for these objects, passed away last week at the age of 99. An obituary in the New York Times describes his role working with Nelson:

Mr. Harper was famously obscure, working as an industrial designer from 1947 to 1963 for George Nelson, who was often credited with the company's creations for the Herman Miller furniture line.

Researching Harper's career reveals a body of work that is as diverse as it is inspiring. For example, he designed the iconic Herman Miller "M" logo, without necessarily intending to do so. DWR's profile of Harper describes the circumstances:

One of his early projects for Nelson was Herman Miller's first-ever ad. There was not yet any photography of the furniture, so Harper instead rendered a large "M" – for "Miller" – which is essentially the same logo design that the company uses today. "There was no project to do a logo," he says. "It was probably the cheapest logo campaign in advertising history."

Harper described himself as a generalist and executed an impressive body of graphic design work in addition to his industrial design work. Perhaps even more astounding is the world of sculptures Harper created within his home over the span of 40 years. These works are incredible and prompted both a gallery exhibition and a book. However, this was never Harper's intention. His sculptures were private works created as an antidote to the stressful projects he worked on during the day. He initially considered knitting, but the medium of paper proved a more natural fit for his hands. In a video made for the exhibition, he describes the effects of his work:

Many of the things I do require repetitive behavior, and then they build up to something else. The reason I like the repetition is that I found it relieves stress, and it was very soothing. (5:12)

He didn't think of himself as an artist:

I never thought in terms of being an artist. I never envisioned myself as an artist. I just made them as they occurred to me and then I went on to the next after it was all done until I ran out of space and I stopped. (6:12)

And he never stopped to think of the commercial value of his creations, as quoted in Herman Miller's WHY:

"I never sold any of my pieces," Harper says today. "I had all the money I wanted. Then I would have lost my sculptures and just had more money. I just wanted to have them around."

If Harper was born of this generation, I can't imagine him ever tweeting or Instagramming his work. I don't think it would have occurred to him. In a world where over-sharing is the norm and every creative act is seemingly purposed to exhibit, sell, or self-promote, not only is Harper's incredible body of work inspiring, but his quiet approach is a fresh breath of air.

Also, be sure to read Sam Grawe's personal remembrances of Harper in the last years of his life. Taken together with Herman Miller's video, it offers a heartwarming glimpse into Harper's home and life.

Some friends recently purchased a Chemex coffee maker, prompting me to remember that it was created in the 1940s (1941 to be exact). Details from the story of the design and its designer, Dr. Peter Schlumbohm, are fascinating and include:

• Its design was influenced by Bauhaus principles: "A table must be a table; a chair must be a chair; a bed must be a bed. … A coffee maker must make coffee."
• Ironically, Macy's initially rejected it because it did not look like a coffee maker.
• President Roosevelt played a hand in the success of the Chemex. He granted access to production materials during wartime, after being personally persuaded by a Latin pun written by Schlumbohm.

These details are not to be found on the History page of Chemex's website. Instead, they're found in One Hundred Great Product Designs (1970) by Jay Doblin. Doblin corresponded with Schlumbohm to get the full story. As the book is out of print, I scanned the relevant pages. View the PDF.

Here's a simple, well-designed app that I've found myself using recently: Moment: Overcome Procrastination With The Pomodoro Timer.

It's based on the Pomodoro Technique, and I've found it to be surprisingly effective in helping me to focus and make good use of my time.

Though a fruitful exercise, it is difficult to examine one’s failures. The process begins unpleasantly enough, with the admission that success has not been achieved. The thing that was intended has been left undone. The fault lies close to home.

Delving deeper, patterns of failure and contributing behavior emerge. The temptation is to despair and give up. However, lack of success is not the same as utter defeat. Failure often leads to more insight than success.

An insight from my own failure: frequency is a powerful tool that I underutilize. In Manage Your Day-to-Day, Gretchen Wilson lists seven benefits of frequency. Two in particular stand out:

• Frequency keeps ideas fresh.
• Frequency keeps the pressure off.

The idea of frequency is this: do a small amount of work in short intervals instead of large amounts of work in long intervals. My modus operandi, unfortunately, is the latter. As a result, I forget where I left off and rework the same parts of a project. My ideas have grown stale. When a deadline comes, much work is left to be done in a condensed period of time. The pressure is high. Stress, and at times incompleteness, results.

Interestingly, frequency also provides the power to move forward. Success doesn’t have to be achieved in one, monumental effort. It can be reached one small, frequent step at a time.

It’s a new year. Though it’s somewhat artificial, I feel the optimism of a fresh start and the possibilities for change. It’s time to simplify and reduce the cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the past year. It’s time to imagine what can be accomplished and reshape my routine. It’s time to say no.

Last year was characterized by massive change – a new city, a new job, a new baby. All of these were very positive but also incredibly disruptive. Now the dust has settled. Now there is space to pick up what was put down. Now is the time to renew failed efforts.

Regular, intentional writing is the first effort to be revived. I intended to write once a week for two years. I wrote consistently for three quarters of one year instead. I failed, yet I also experienced success. Here’s to starting again.

Since last June, I have followed an arbitrary, self-imposed schedule to write four articles each month. I've kept to this schedule and haven't broken from it – until last week.

I didn't even realize I had broken my schedule until it was a day too late. The day following the deadline, it dawned on me for no apparent reason. Being preoccupied with a move to a new city, I completely forgot to write. The streak was over.

Coincidentally, that same week, I read an article on the topic of failure. Specifically, it talked about the benefits of letting kids fail. The opening paragraph summarizes its recommended view of failure:

[…] first, to give ourselves the permission to take on challenges where we might very well fail; second, to pick ourselves up as quickly as possible and move on when things don’t work out. This is, I argue, vital on a personal level, as well as vital for the economy, because that’s where innovation and growth come from.

What would the world look like if we never tried anything unless we knew we would succeed? In short, we would not reach our full potential because we'd never push against its boundaries. This is what the author observes happening to kids in our current culture. One B in high school might doom their chances at the perfect college which will in turn doom their chances to a perfect career and any hope of a good life. Or so the thinking goes.

We need permission to be imperfect. As designers, we need it doubly so. There is no great design that is not preceded by failure. It's a lesson I wish I had learned sooner.

Before learning to embrace failure as part of the design process, the natural inclination is to hide our work. Don't let anyone else see it until it's finished and perfect.

We feel this way because, like it or not, designers are judged by their work. It's not the resume that counts, it's the work. This is how it should be. However, the worth of our work is too easily confused with the worth of our selves. When these two things are confused, critiques on our work feel too close and too personal for comfort. We seek to hide our imperfection.

Ironically, however, imperfection is where the best design comes from. You have to try, fail, and try again. Each time you try, you get closer to a more elegant solution. The term is iteration in design jargon. The sooner you can get something out on paper, the sooner you can begin refining the idea or realizing you need to start with a different idea altogether.

It's the same with writing. First drafts are almost always terrible. But the first draft gets the ideas out. It's a whole lot easier to edit a poorly written text with the seeds of good ideas than it is to edit a blank piece of paper. Getting out those first, scattered thoughts provides a crude outline of what one is actually writing about and trying to say. That's not always apparent at the start.

It's the same for design: the solution only becomes clear through a process of creation and failure. The only way to arrive at a great product is to travel down the path of imperfection.

Have I followed my schedule of four articles a month perfectly? No. Have all the articles I have written been perfect, even good? No again. But am I closer to reaching my potential as a writer? Yes. If I waited to write until I could do it perfectly, I never would. I'm getting better because I'm writing. Not the other way around.

Earlier this week, I purchased a new cable modem. Normally, I would have ordered online. However, not having the time to wait for a shipment, I was forced to find a nearby brick and mortar store. The two choices were Staples and Best Buy. I chose Best Buy, as my wife had received an online coupon for the store. I went to Best Buy, picked up the modem, and handed the cashier the modem and my coupon. There was just one problem: he wouldn't accept it.

You see, after printing it onto a sheet of paper, my wife had cut out the coupon on the dotted lines. And thus, the cashier would not accept it. He wanted the whole sheet of paper, not just the coupon portion. The reason? The rest of the page contained a bar code he needed to scan in order to accept it. This was frustrating.

Never mind that discount amount in question was small. Never mind the corporate policies that prevent retail employees from being empowered to actually help their customers. Never mind the manager at the store who also refused to accept the coupon. Do, however, mind the designer who created the coupon.

Coupons, if you weren't aware, are traditionally printed on paper. They can be contained with an advertisement or printed together with other coupons in a booklet or flyer. Printed coupons use the convention of a dotted border to indicate what part of the paper should be cut out with scissors so that it isn't necessary to take the whole booklet or flyer to a store in order to use it.

My wife's behavior to cut out the coupon on the dotted line was entirely logical and sound. She didn't want to carry a whole sheet of paper around with her, so she cut out just the portion that she would need as indicated by the dotted lines. After all, that's how coupons work.

The designer who created the coupon did not understand (or take the time to think about) the function of the dotted lines. Presumably, the designer used dotted lines simply to make the coupon look more coupon-y. But the designer did not consider the function of those lines. If a barcode is indeed needed to process the coupon, it should have been placed within the dotted lines.

This is design. Seemingly small design decisions impact people's lives. In this case, a decision about dotted lines lead to consumer frustration, an erosion of brand loyalty (not that I had much in the first place), and blame being cast on the wrong person. My wife should not feel blame for having cut out a coupon correctly. The designer should feel the blame for being careless.

Though this example is small and insignificant, the underlying lesson extends to more important contexts. Every detail of a design has the power to affect and influence other people tremendously. It is a large responsibility, and one not to be taken lightly.

Please, design with care.