Field Study

An Unedited view of design and thought process:

work, experimental and otherwise by Keenan Cummings

The way of the Buddha is a living response to a living question. Yet whenever it has become institutionalized, its vital response has become a well formulated answer. The seemingly important task of preserving a particular set of answers often causes the very questions which gave rise to the answers to be forgotten. Then the lucid answers Buddhism provides are cut off from the stammering voice that asks the questions

—Stephan Bachelor, The Faith to Doubt

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

—Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

👊⌨️😓 Been learning to touch-type and it’s a painful process. I wrote about the pain of learning something new, and the tendency to avoid it → https://www.patreon.com/posts/16105755

👊⌨️😓 Been learning to touch-type and it’s a painful process. I wrote about the pain of learning something new, and the tendency to avoid it → https://www.patreon.com/posts/16105755

Join the Curiosity Club!

I am a bit scared to share this, and that is very much the point.

In 2018, I am dedicating myself to doing new things,  very poorly, and sharing it as I go. I’m inviting you to join me. Welcome to Curiosity Club!

The word “enthusiasm” comes from the Greek word “entheos” which means the God within. And the happiest, most interesting people are those who have found the secret of maintaining their enthusiasm, that God within.

—Earl Nightingale

image

Imagine a river flowing down a hill. Your task is to change the course of that river. But the forces implicit in the relationship between water, an incline, and gravity mean that your job is going to be hard — really really hard. In order to divert the flow, you might start by damming it up. And again, science shows up, this time in the from of fluid dynamics and principles of flow and pressure, to make your work that much harder. Every brick, log, or levee you place only increases the intensity of your task. That river has a direction and destination in mind. And should you manage to change it, the form and flow of that river will become equally entrenched in the new path. Your work becomes a difficult process of displacing one path and forging another.

image

Now imagine a different task. This time, you are confronted by a large resevoir. No direction, no destination. Your task is to expand the pool. You can choose any length along the edge to dig downward and outward. As you dig, the gentle ebb and flow along the shore hardly disturbs your work. As you work the pool gets wider, deeper, and more dynamic — but the work itself never gets harder. The changing shape of the reservoir changes the behavior of the water within it, creating deep and dynamic pools in the center, calm and ever-changing eddies along the shore, and flowing liminal space between. Your task, laboring quietly and constantly at the edges of this fluid body, is an easy one.

Make more space. Add to the reservoir. Let it flow.

image

9 Masks for Introverts : This series is an exploration of introversion as an outsider identity. Many groups that carry outsider status adopt a uniform as a way of owning their outsider status and reflecting it back on the mainstream that, often, imposed that status on them in the first place. Those uniforms are both symbolic and functional. They reinforce and accommodate the identity for the wearer, and signal that identity to the observer. 

I started thinking about masks as a perfectly functional and symbolic uniform of an introvert (I count myself among that “outsider” group), concealing the individual and deflecting the observer. This series of masks explores was of concealing and deflecting.

Been doing some drawing in Sketch, specifically because it is such a terrible tool for drawing. It makes for some weird decisions/results,

When you find yourself branding moments in your team’s process…

When you find yourself branding moments in your team’s process…

When you need to make a 15 minute logo…

When you need to make a 15 minute logo…

Some branding explorations for the newly launched Beme App. Far and away my favorite of all of these is the vomiting eyeball. Conceptually it fits the product, and I’ve always been attracted to metaphor of vomit to describe prolific creativity (as in this poster by Geoff McFetridge). Beme is about unedited, uninhibited expression. Spew what you see.  Get it here! https://beme.com/

(the awesome Green B logo was created by the amazing Tida Tep. My explorations were funny. Her design is right. Hats off!)

Airbnb Product Growth team logo.

Airbnb Product Growth team logo.

Design is easy —
step 1) do it wrong.
step 2) do it right.
step 3) do it perfect.

And then there is the most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.

—Randy Kosimar, The Monk and the Riddle

Thrown out logo for the Experience Architecture team @ Airbnb

Thrown out logo for the Experience Architecture team @ Airbnb