Flirting with the Ridiculous
The imperatives of creativity and never growing up
A MANIFESTO OF FIVE PERSONAL VALUES
version_01.2
Flirting with the Ridiculous
The imperatives of creativity and never growing up
A MANIFESTO OF FIVE PERSONAL VALUES
version_01.2
Flirting with the Ridiculous
The imperatives of creativity and never growing up
version_01.2
VALUE 1: SEEKING AND ADVENTURING – CURIOSITY
Understanding the importance of curiosity by venturing into uncharted territory, placing oneself serendipitously in the pathway of new opportunities.
Will I have the opportunity to creatively and independently explore more personal and meaningful trajectories of making?
Is the ability to ask questions and creatively challenge the status quo part of the process?
Maintain a wealth of active personal interests: ongoing, curious engagement with the surrounding world safeguards this activity as a form of civic participation. [1]
Create at all times: every question, issue, and realization contributes towards the making of art.
The combination of disparate, seemingly oppositional ideas and ingredients will produce new, novel, and unexpected formal outcomes.
Observe everything: everything depends on everything else.
Live without a job more often. Sabbaticals are the richest of times: take uncomfortable risks, explore new ground, acquire new skills, and test new ideas. [2]
Improving my life can be scary because it requires change: relocation and the alteration of scenery can be healthy and refreshing. [3]
New challenges may at first seem insurmountable. Remain humble: anything may be possible thereafter.
Jump on opportunities with energy: every step, even in failure, professional dead ends, or regressive experiments produce unexpected insight and exciting new gains in knowledge.
At times doing anything may feel impossible. Don’t give up: embrace the struggle. Personal transformation is progress.
The world is in constant motion, changing at every moment: be willing to take the ride. [4]
Participate: in culture, activism, teaching—anything to move the needle. [5]
Consider implications from all angles: left/right, progressive/conservative, analog/digital—old card-carrying adherence isn’t optimal for transformation.
VALUE 2: THE ETERNAL LEARNER – PERSONAL GROWTH
Continuous personal growth at every opportunity is vital.
Will I be in an environment that promotes and supports learning?
The chosen subject and form of new personal knowledge acquisition is never up for debate.
Ask questions and remain open to new ideas: learning from others improves the quality of life more quickly.
Learn on a daily basis: listen to feedback and be prepared to attempt everything differently.
Fail gracefully and learn humbly: disappointment and unexpected insight are part of the creative process. [6]
Circumstances change. Keep learning, moving forward, and intermittently look back at the person you once were for added perspective. [7]
Destinations often seem further away than they are. Always push further, leaving behind the people we were yesterday.
Growth occurs with energy and nutrition: it requires focus and personal devotion. This struggle will produce positive results, so don’t fear it or lose momentum.
Put lifelong learning to use. Self-acquired skills help maintain autonomy in both daily life and design: freedom and control over generative and productive processes safeguard conceptual strength and craft.
VALUE 3: CREATIVITY
A critical practice comprising a focused attempt to develop new ideas, images, and objects.
Creativity is central and crucial within all future personal and professional ventures. Is this value validated here?
Does creative making meaningfully contribute to both the offering and the culture?
Are creative individuals involved in the process of decision-making?
Diversify interests: days divided into numerous creative processes are both memorable and enjoyable, providing opportunities to strengthen multiple skill sets.
It is possible to have opposing feelings at the same time: try to understand why.
Every endeavour is creative: daily tasks reframed through the perspective of design increase the enjoyment of making something new.
Try before deciding. Plan thoroughly, commit as needed. [8]
Find the good in mistakes: they often lead to the most interesting and unexpected results.
Good work can be made quickly: many discoveries occur by accident—the important thing is to acknowledge when this process has happened. [9]
It is easy to mistake revision as drudgery rather than improve- ment: rethinking from time to time is crucial for enhancing craft and creativity. [10]
Ideas arrive in the shower or while out hiking and camping. All editing and production occurs at the computer.
Great design is never reliant on the market: the abundance of uncreative people affecting outcomes within market-driven forms of design foster mediocrity and lack of creative vision.
Find ways around impediments: if old tools fail, make new ones. [11] [12]
Design is best driven by designers: freedom of time and movement made possible by the removal of desk chains and manager-led meetings increase the potential for making great work.
A daily practice of journalling, writing, drawing, and hiking is meditative and productive: a creative and design-centric practice of making fulfills all personal and professional pursuits.
Forget about making art. Make whatever you make. Maximize time developing the craft, achieving excellence, refining constantly. Open the territory of possibility. Let others define what it is.
VALUE 4: MEANINGFUL WORK
Meaningful work challenges the mind, activates the imagination, and fulfills the soul.
Will my participation in this work be personally fulfilling?
Will my contributions add value?
Does the work provide opportunities for creative problem-solving and making?
Comparisons to other people’s lives and work are counter- productive: my time and energy need be focused on delivering excellence in every venture pursued. [13]
Being confident in who I am and what I have acquired is not bold or arrogant: the hard work, good intention, and the resulting creative output supports these assertions.
Spend little time wishing and ever more time making: if it feels right, do it without worry, and with abandon.
Losing oneself within the creative process of exploration and personal research is fulfilling, crowding out all distractions of little interest, meaning, or value. [14]
Every detail of one’s work has significance. [15]
Concerns dissolve on epic, early, creative mornings: when time is on one’s side, it need be used to its fullest extent—this is both an ethical and moral imperative.
VALUE 5: INNER HARMONY – CONFIDENCE
The trust, acceptance, and growth acquired by remaining true to personal values.
Can I be honest with myself, continue to pursue my interests, and stay true to my values?
What strategies might I employ in any given situation to maintain self-awareness and inner balance?
Simplicity is usually better. Living simply buys time. Simplicity in design typically strengthens the form and clarifies the intended message. [16]
Knowing my limit prevents me picking up any more than I know I can carry.
The present circumstances will not be permanent: this too will more than likely change.
I can only move so fast: I have to walk through it all at my own pace.
Pay attention to influences seeking control: it is always preferential I make my own decisions than allowing others to make them on my behalf.
Taking time making decisions yield results with which I am more confident. [17]
How do I want to spend my time now focused more on my personal goals? [18]
The time is always now. Nothing else exists. [19]
People will often surprise me: maintaining contact with people who both interest and inspire me is healthy.
While it is alright to feel low, situations are never as bad as they seem. Don’t despair: the energy consumed from worry can always be used more wisely.
Some days will come with insight, some will not. [20]
Walking off stress is imperative: when mental space is clear it affects the perception of everything else.
Define the unmet need before it defines you. As it is more than likely the ugly result of other people, you owe it to yourself to solve it.
References
1. “Wandering around wondering”
Perry, Mike. Wandering Around Wondering: Works So Far. (Rizzoli, New York, 2012).
2. “There may be benefit in taking breaks, in stepping away and returning at a later point. This cycle of practice and adaptation creates multi-faceted growth.”
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (Penguin Press, New York, 2023), p. 328.
3. “I find it difficult to work on anything new while exposed to regular day-to-day pressure... I have found unscheduled experimental sessions are easily crowded out by deadline-driven projects.”
Sagmeister, Stefan. Things I have Learned In My Life So Far - updated edition. (Abrams, New York, 2008).
4. “Living in discovery is at all times preferable to living through assumptions.”
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (Penguin Press, New York, 2023), p. 275.
5. “There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.”
First Things First Manifesto, 2000.
6. “Failure is the information you need to get where you’re going.”
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (Penguin Press, New York, 2023), p. 155.
7. Burning bridges isn’t so bad. Sometimes it’s necessary for growth.
8. “Unrealized ideas in my sketchbook don’t have much value to me; they gain their worth only when out in the world helping or delighting or annoying people.”
Sagmeister, Stefan. Things I have Learned In My Life So Far - updated edition. (Abrams, New York, 2008).
9. “All shots must be handheld. Movement, immobility, and stability must be attained by hand.”
von Trier, Lars. Dogma 95 The Vow of Chastity.
10. “Editing is a demonstration of taste.”
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (Penguin Press, New York, 2023), p. 386.
11. Tools are imperative. Make your own. “Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.”
Mau, Bruce. An Incomplete Manifesto For Growth. (Bruce Mau Studio, 1998), https:// www.brucemaustudio.com/projects/an-incomplete-manifesto-for-growth/
12. “A broken Spirograph toy created unexpected drawings. The nervous results record the tension of trying to play correctly with an instrument that is painfully out of tune.”
Venezky, Martin. It is Beautiful............... Then Gone. (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2005), p. 82.
13. “Good is dead.”
Kidd, Chip. The Cheese Monkeys - A Novel in Two Semesters. (Scribner, New York, 2001).
14. “The outcome is not the outcome.”
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (Penguin Press, New York, 2023), p. 226.
15. “Living on a mountaintop. This is the essence of great art. We make it for no other purpose than creating our version of the beautiful, bringing all of ourself to every project, whatever its parameters and constraints.”
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (Penguin Press, New York, 2023), p. 215.
16. “Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better—because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.”
Rams, Dieter. 10 Principles of Good Design.
17. “Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.”
Mau, Bruce. An Incomplete Manifesto For Growth. (Bruce Mau Studio, 1998), https://www.brucemaustudio.com/ projects/an-incomplete-manifes- to-for-growth/
18. “Intention is all there is. The work is just a reminder.”
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (Penguin Press, New York, 2023), p. 96.
19. “If not now, when?”
Goldstein, Jonathan. (Host). (2016, September). Buzz [Audio podcast episode]. In Heavyweight. Gimlet Media. https://www.gimletmedia.com/amp/ shows/heavyweight/94hwad
20. “Vary your inspiration.” Break habits. Look for differences. Notice connections.
Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (Penguin Press, New York, 2023), p. 129.
The final article Mapping the making of a personal manifesto can be read on Medium.