Creative Pro Tip: “Take Things Away Until You Cry” »

This is the best thing I read all week.  Great advice to apply to design, creativity and innovation.

Designer Frank Chimero’s advice via 99u:

  • If you can’t draw as well as someone, or use the software as well, or if you do not have as much money to buy supplies, or if you do not have access to the tools they have, beat them by being more thoughtful.
  • Take things away until you cry.
  • Change contexts when you’re stuck. Draw wrong-handed and upside down and backwards. Find a good seat outside.
  • If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life.
  • Start brave and brash: you can always make things more conservative, but it’s hard to make things more radical.
  • Everything is interesting to someone. That thing that you think is bad is probably just not for you.
  • Be suspicious of lists, advice, and lists of advice.

And perhaps the best of them all:

  • Stop trying to be cool: it is stifling.

Here’s a little creative inspiration to carry you into the weekend.  Meet Richard Birkett, Fantasy Clock Maker.  He creates uncommon clocks out of, well, just about anything.

Says Birkett, “The people who like my clocks tend to be the better people on the planet.”  

I guess that puts me in good company!

Richard’s bio via YouTube:

Richard Birkett has been an artist and clockmaker for nearly 30 years. His clocks are wondrous, unique and inspiring creations that record the time accurately, but make you question why you even need to know the time as you look at them.

You can’t help but let your mind wander as you explore the memories and thoughts the clocks give you. Each clock has its own story that the viewer makes up, and each time you look at it the story changes. 

They are functional and irrational at the same time, which is a pretty perfect description of living.

Visit the Fantasy Clocks website at www.fantasyclocks.com

Introducing The Present: An “Annual Clock” 

The Present is a new type of clock that takes a year to make a full rotation and uses color to signify the changing seasons.  By conveying a sense of “real time” the clock’s attempted utility is to help people be more present and appreciate living in the moment.

Check out more on Colossal.  You can buy it here.

rcruzniemiec:

Rael San Fratello Architects SOL Grotto

SOL Grotto is a spartan retreat—a space of solitude and close to nature where one is presented with a mediated experience of water, coolness and light . The SOL Grotto also explores Solyndra’s role as a company Sh*t Out of Luck. 1,368 of the 24 million high tech glass tubes destined to be destroyed as a casualty of their bankruptcy, are used in the installation.

The tube’s original role as a light concentrating element is extended to transmit cool air into the space via the Venturi effect, to amplify sounds from the adjacent waterfall via the vibrations of the tubes cantilevering over the creek, and to create distorted views of the garden.

(via rcruzniemiec-deactivated2013020)