Everything is an experiment
In my lifetime I have witnessed the creation of the greatest accumulation of wealth in history. More than we need to feed the hungry, house the homeless, cure the sick throughout the world. In pursuit of this wealth we have already endangered most of our environment. Consumption is a treatable disease. Consumer culture is an oxymoron. Wealth is poverty. Religion works better for corporations than for people. Most media, architecture, design and art exist for the sole purpose of creating wealth.
Your children will smash your understanding, knowledge and reality. You will be better off. Then they will leave. You will miss them forever. But I'm not pessimistic. Future generations not burdened by the egotism of having created wealth will be able to create a righteous society, I live in harmony with nature and germinate culture from the few grains not yet destroyed.
Rules are good. Break them. Good designers (and writers and artists) make trouble. Eventually you'll forget all this but there will be plenty of new ideas to choose from. And I believe that they'll be better.
Everything is an experiment.
The perfect state of creative bliss is having power (you are 50) and knowing nothing (you are 9). This assures an interesting and successful outcome. As soon as you learn move on. You'll see it better if you look upside down. Success = boredom. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and mis-comprehensions provide fresh ideas.
New ideas exist in high art (often called art) and low art (sometimes called vernacular). I have never found much in between. Good clients are smarter than you. Bad clients are dumber than you. Graphic design is a means, not an end. A language, not content. I am ever in search of the simple elegant seductive maybe even obvious IDEA. With this in my pocket I cannot fail. This must be true because I am writing it in the middle of the night.
-Tibor Kalman
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