I wanted to commit to doing creative work regularly again. I had been attending afternoon art classes since I was kid until the age of 20 – expressing myself visually has always been part of me. After finishing art classes, I had bursts of creativity, but with time they almost vanished. 365 ideas project was a way to defeat my growing fear of starting something new. The rules were simple – create one collage every day, don’t spend too much time on it, publish it.

Even though creating the first few images was painful, 365 ideas became a habit. During my days I collected and sketched ideas I could use in the evenings. This went well for around three months, then I started to feel exhausted and had to slow down a bit. Having a day job as a front-end developer and doing this in the evenings, I had a lot on my mind and schedule.

With summer 2010 approaching I started to notice my stomach doesn’t feel right and examination in the hospital revealed I am very close to developing stomach ulcers. It was clear that 365 ideas was too big to continue with. But I am a tough person, I still wanted to carry on with it, so again I lowered the frequency of creating my collages.

I was gradually getting further and further from a daily project. Also my aproach to the images started to feel different – I was already thinking about smaller series and didn’t even feel the need to create them that often.

At the moment I create approx. one image per month and I am already doing something different than what I (vaguely) defined in the beginning.

It’s time to stop.

I feel like I need to go on with different approach and 365 ideas starts to feel like a burden.

I’ve learned a lot by doing this: I have my own creative process, I collect my ideas, I know that personal projects are worth it.
The mistakes are also clear: I wasn’t specific enough about what I want to do in 365 ideas project, I should have defined more rules and think about my time more carefully – I might write a separate blog post about this later.

There were a lot of mistakes in 365 ideas project, but it was a much needed kick and it was the best badly planned project I’ve ever made.

365 ideas project: #029 – taa taa

Blogs are great platform for reflecting yours and other peoples thoughts. Also advanced discussions happen between articles on different blogs. They are often sparks for greater things, like shifts in thinking about web/creating web.

Formulating your thoughts is also very good for you. Writing down what you’re thinking about shapes your ideas and opinions, makes you verify your points and be consistent. At least ideally, in the world of rainbows and unicorns where some people think I live.

In first text Simon Collison touches a topic that I am trying to sort out for myself at the moment – how to choose well what to be interested in even though one likes a lot of things. But trying to nourish all interests just seems to lead to mediocre skills and knowledge. Simon Collison suggests we should determine our strengths and values, which should help to point us in the right direction when choosing what to do. Next step would be following the attitude of a craftsman. If you are interested in web design as a craftsmanship, watch this talk Simon Collison gave at Build conference last year.

In “The Space between You & Me” Frank Chimero looks at the web as a reflection of peoples needs and desires, as our mirror. “It’s people all the way down,” he says.

“We shape technology and it shapes us.”

source: http://alwaysreadthemanual.com/

Also Jon Tan looks at the web as something that is alive, comparing websites to places rather that postcards. With this analogy he criticizes most website galleries as being “link farms” displaying just screenshots and ignoring web design as a process.*
* Free idea: a web design gallery that also includes description of the creative process and decisions taken.

Another strong idea Jon Tan comes with is thinking about web designers as “80 percenters”. These are people who master 80% of different disciplines which adds up to 100% needed to create a website. I personally like this idea, being person that creates design and front-end, whatever disciplines that includes. There is one thing I don’t understand though – why do most job postings from digital agencies pretend that everyone is specialized in one technical field and that’s it. Being Jack of all trades isn’t good for everyone, but a blend of reasonable amount of disciplines in one person could have great added value. I asked about this on Quora.

Dan Rubin reminds us of how much is the web still influenced by concepts originating in print. He says this connection isn’t usually well considered and causes lots of misconceptions, eg. concept of “the page”. He calls this situation identity crisis in which we still struggle naming and defining things specifically for the web (like our job titles).

Liz Danzico talks about how is the public changed by social media, people having many little identities on their social media. She says we now define ourselves and talk to each other more than ever.

source: http://alwaysreadthemanual.com/

The last text of this truly thought-provoking book is written by The Standardistas and it is about something that probably should be said again and again – creating for the web isn’t just about how tos and functions, we need to put our work into much wider context. They suggest doing three things: Reading, Conversation and Writing.
Reading is meant to broaden our perspective so they recommend books from the fields of psychology, semiotics*, ethnology, anthropology and design thinking in general.
* eg. Mythologies by Roland Barthes, great and interesting reading about the meaning of language. I especially enjoyed the first half of the book with short essays on very real life topics from the semiotics point of view.

Conversation is something that helps shape ones opinions and understanding of the subject and it leads to new ideas. But I guess it would be worth it to mention that such conversation needs to be done with an open mind on both sides. Writing is described as being able to “explain, convince and inspire”.

As a huge bonus every text is followed by a lesson, something each of these fine folks learnt in real life. Essentially it seems like a push to have your eyes open and search for these lessons in your own experience. I think these lessons are often hard to identify because each person can learn something completely different from a very similar situation.

Needless to say, I loved this book. It’s a beautiful object with great content.

You can get The Manual 1 & 2 here.

The first thing is an article by David Tate – The Dangerous Effects of Reading. I think more appropriate name would be “The Dangerous Effects of Reading ALL THE TIME”.

If the world overwhelms you with its constant production of useless crap which you filter more and more to things that only interest you can I calmly suggest that you just create things that you like and cut out the rest of the world as a middle-man to your happiness?

On the other hand Kate Bingaman Burt talks about how automated directives and rule systems help her with personal projects. She is totally inspirational, amazing and makes me want to do a lot, watch her Portland Creative Mornings talk: