Friday, March 4, 2011

SNIPPET # 14

The latest excerpt from the "Design Methods" chapter of my set design book Alice Through the Proscineum.  (Why strain your eyes with this glow-y screen?  Buy a paperback at Lulu.com - it's more profitable, um,  restful!):


Start from Scratch -  Sometimes the problem you’re trying to solve isn’t the real problem.  It often isn’t the right problem.  (More of a concern in other types of design perhaps… I mean, there is going to be a show really, isn’t there?)  Naiveté helps: assume nothing, see clearly.  What is really going on?  As when Hewlett-Packard realized they weren’t really in the business of selling printers; the profits were in selling ink cartridges

Step Back -  Stop.  Look at the wall you are beating your head against.  Can you go round it instead?  Over it?  Under it?  Maybe blow it up?

Sleep on it -  Night can bring counsel.  Now and then, a problem that you fell asleep pondering will be solved by morning.  So take a quiet minute before starting the day to check for new-born ideas.  Dreams sometimes lead to something – though you sound like a dork if you admit it out loud.

Can’t Sleep? -  Fretting over stalled design can keep you awake, so practice putting work aside at bedtime.  A hot bath.  Chamomile tea.  Resist the idea that a true artist must live a bohemian life of too much booze and too little sleep.  Fun, yes, but counter-productive.  Monet advised artists to live like the bourgeoisie, with regular hours and excellent French food.  He 4.17 did okay work, by the way.


4.17 Oops.  It was Flaubert: “Be regular in your daily life like a bourgeois, so that you can be violent and original in your work.”  Virginia Woolf also advised dining well, but mainly stressed having a good income and a room of one’s own.

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