This weekend I did a quick Q&A session at LessConf via video. Thanks to Allan from Less Everything for making it all work out.
One of the last questions went something like this: “What sort of things outside of design can make you a better designer? What else can inspire you to be a better designer?”
I’m glad someone asked because I’ve been meaning to talk/write about this for a while.
The answer: Nature. Spend some time outside. Take a walk in the woods. Stroll through a prairie. Visit the desert (especially the Sonoran). Climb a hill. Get down on your knees and look at the grass. Plant a garden. No space? Get some plants or flowers and put them on your desk. And if you’re lucky enough to live near botanical gardens, visit a few times a year during peak seasons.
What you’ll experience are ridiculously good designs. Millions of iterations are folded into what you see. Everything is the product of a million successful tries. The colors and shapes and structures and textures are manifestations of survival. If it’s alive it’s good design.
Then look closer. Check out the subtleties. It’s not just green, it’s a dozen shades of green. That red may be orange from a different angle. Then flip it over. There’s a whole new design lesson on the underside.
Explore the seasons. Spring is especially enlightening for designers. It’s redesign season. From brown and dead and woody to green and alive and soft. Colors burst through, new textures emerge. And it’s not just visual. It’s temporal too. Different things popping at different times and in different ways. Each design is an idea. And each one slightly better than last year.
How does this make you a better designer? For one, just spending time around so many things that work will positively influence your design thinking. Some people like surrounding themselves with beautiful objects, furniture, and art. A walk outside is a better value.
You’ll also begin building a deeper understanding and appreciation for subtlety. Nature can be loud, but it usually whispers. You’ll also sharpen your observational skills. Great designers are great observers. You’ll learn more about color than any color wheel or book can teach you. Lastly, you’ll clear your mind and fill it back up at the same time. Very few things can achieve a simultaneous refresh and refill.
Take a walk outside and look around.
Lar Van Der Jagt
on 19 Oct 09Really enjoy this post. Being around & inspired by nature is a large part of why I’m currently working from an isolated Panamanian island. There is a co-working/sustainable living facility here called Coco Vivo that I have been living & working from for the last month. Highly recommended for any designers looking for a change in context.
Sebastian
on 19 Oct 09This is not useful advice.
Chris Free
on 19 Oct 09That was deep and inspiring. Thanks for the wake up call on this beautiful Monday morning in Chicago. I know what I’m doing during lunch.
Ian Labardee
on 19 Oct 09Really enjoyed this refreshing reminder. I love spending time in the woods for this very reason. Watching how things react to weather and seasonal changes is a particularly fascinating example of design in nature. Thanks for this.
Mark
on 19 Oct 09Biomimicry
TrendyGreen
on 19 Oct 09I have spent many productive hours discussing good design with the trees and plants in my backyard.
jonias
on 19 Oct 09Great post! I find that it really helps to enhance all that you’ve just said when one partakes a small amount of cannabis first. Not too much, because then you’ll spend too much time on details and forget what you were doing in the first place..and may even get too hungry to finish your adventure. great advice and great article. thanks!
bakeshow
on 19 Oct 09the big room always wins.
Proper
on 19 Oct 09Totally agree. Staying indoors, staring at your own design in photoshop, or clicking through other websites does not always lead to creative inspiration.
One thing I particularly like about nature as inspiration for design is fractals. There’s clearly mathematical elegance to fractals, but there also seems to be some connection to the human definition of beauty. Consider it in your next design.
Adam
on 19 Oct 09I learned more about composing from listening in the woods than from four years of music school.
Alejandro Moreno
on 19 Oct 09Colin Winslow, a 76 year old English Theatre Designer (incidentally, one of my favourite people in the world) liked to have students paint a tree from memory. When most of them invariably painted a brown trunk, he would take them outside and ask them to really see the tree trunks and make sure that they were, indeed, brown.
Of course they weren’t.
Senne
on 19 Oct 09That’s exactly what I’m planning to do in New Zealand in a few months. Who knows one day I’ll be setting up a little office in the woods there, for a year or so. That would be great…
Mark
on 19 Oct 09So it seems I recall you writing sometime ago about the benefits of having an office in an industrial setting being mote “real” to who you are and who your audience is. Given this post, do you still feel this way, or would your ideal location be more in a natural environment setting?
Eric
on 19 Oct 09Great post. Truthful and inspiring. I hope anyone that has the opportunity to follow your advice does just that. Nature is wonderfully intricate yet utterly inspiring in it’s simplicity, something every designer should be able to appreciate and learn from.
For those in more of a concrete jungle, would you say that they could find just as much inspiration in the man-made buildings and cityscapes? Can the city parks and sporadic areas of nature inspire at the same level as a walk in the woods?
Jay Owen
on 19 Oct 09Very true. There is nothing like a trip to the mountains in the fall to see some incredible design in the world around us.
Drew
on 19 Oct 09While I don’t always go out in nature just to walk around. I’ve found that raking the leaves lately has been a great way for me to relax and clear my mind.
Kevin Holesh
on 19 Oct 09Mark,
I think it is great to get out in nature every once in a while because it will feel fresh. If you’re constantly anywhere, even in nature, it becomes the norm and its positive effect wears off. That doesn’t mean you can’t experience nature every day though, say for a morning walk in the woods. I find taking a hike wakes me up more than coffee or an energy drink ever could.
Love it.Mark
on 19 Oct 09Kevin -
Sure. That’s why vacations and office retreats are so effective. It’s easy to get stuck in a design rut when you have the same thing to look out at day after day. In the not too distant past, Jason has tossed around publicly the idea of getting a new working space. I was just curious, based on this post and the past ones I referenced earlier, what his preferred surroundings would be now.
Allan Branch
on 19 Oct 09Jason, thanks so much for being apart of our event. You continue to inspire me everyday.
indi
on 19 Oct 09And don’t forget to visit a good aquarium. The design on a mandarin goby’s tail can be the alien script you were looking for.
Ryan Heneise
on 19 Oct 09Really nice surprise to see you at LessConf Jason. Prompted by your inspiration I spent this morning working outside – it was fantastic. Thanks for sharing!
Tim Chilcott
on 19 Oct 09I actually think you left out a bold statement which you expressed at the conference that really explained it. It was something to the effect of “when you look at a leaf it’s the best fucking leaf of all time because it’s the product of millions of little iterations”
great great point that you made at the conference, loved it
t
Mike Farnham
on 19 Oct 09As always, thanks for the inspirational words.
I particularly enjoy watching the trees sway in the breeze. Turn off the world, sounds fade into the background and all you feel is the calmness and beauty of the world. I used to climb to the tops of trees and enjoy this activity when i was young.
Helps me regain my balance and refocus.
Wayne
on 19 Oct 09“ridiculously good design” is somewhat shortsighted – the result of an evolutionary process generally doesn’t give much weight to future issues (maintenance, cost of removal), and the ‘elegance’ of an evolutionary response is brittle (can’t re-use that leaf on a different plant!). “Design” is planning – looking forward and optimizing the total life of the product, while nature and evolution are always a trailing response, and a costly one (lots of ‘death’ required to determine what’s “fit”). So go out and be inspired – but come back and design with foreknowledge.
paul
on 19 Oct 09“Great designers are great observers.”
Great quote…
David S
on 19 Oct 09Reminded me of something Edward Tufte said in his little booklet Visual Design of the User Interface:
“What mixture, what palette of colors should appear on computer screens? A good way to avoid colorjunk is to use colors found in nature, particularly toward the lighter side, such as grays, blues, and yellows of sky and shadow. Nature’s colors are familiar and have a widely accepted harmony. Particular, local emphasis to screen information is then given by means of spots of stronger colors against the serene background.” [emphasis in original]
Naturally, you have to get out into nature to see, and periodically be reminded of, what nature has to offer in this regard.
Adam E. Anderson
on 20 Oct 09“We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain.” – Thoreau
Bil Kleb
on 20 Oct 09I’m with Wayne. I feel you should have written “If it’s alive it’s good enough design.” With evolution, a design only has to be good enough to survive not the most elegant etc.
Ken Dial’s Flight Lab raises this subtlety w.r.t. the evolution of bird flight.
Coward
on 20 Oct 09Crazy, this post is coming from someone that lives in visually bland suburban Chicago. I was imagining a tropical rain forest when reading this….
sensei
on 20 Oct 09I find bodies and faces really interesting.
Robin
on 20 Oct 09“Nature can be loud, but it usually whispers.”
Very beautiful!
Brad
on 20 Oct 09Great advice. I plan to put it to use this very afternoon.
Actually, I’d go the other way: If it’s alive, it’s worked millions of times already. It is therefore not just good enough, but very good, as testified by someone who has a lot more credibility than any of us.
Anonymous Coward
on 20 Oct 09Also remember, when walking in the woods, the only thing tweeting should be birds.
Kyle Faber
on 20 Oct 09it truly is amazing the effects the fresh air, deep breathes and a beautiful day can do for a person.
excellent post – a great reminder to people to remember to stop a smell, or in this case, see, the flowers.
Wayne
on 21 Oct 09This discussion is closed.