Posts Tagged ‘Book’
Massimo Vignelli is one of our greatest living designers. One of the core tenants of his design philosophy is: if you can design one thing, you can design everything. He is referring to the discipline of design, but what he is really talking about is process.
What Vignelli speaks to is the power of process, a solid thought process, to solve a variety of problems. Design tools—line, curve, color, type, image, sketching, modeling, proportion, the grid, the layout—are employed in various ways throughout the process. A solid process helps the thinker understand the problem or challenge at hand in its uniqueness, investigate its history, and play with ways of addressing it. A solid process does is not a stock way of creating design, business, political, or any other kind of solution; a solid process helps you see the unique situation at hand, work through and identify a solution, and make that solution real.
Understanding Vignelli is essential for designers, but also valuable for anyone interested in better thinking and a living example of the power of process.
Vignelli Interview with Debbie Millman @ Design Observer
Vignelli’s design principles are summarized in the book, The Vignelli Canon, available as a free PDF.
Jeff Hawkins is better known for giving us Palm Computing, but he is also pushing the boundaries of neuroscience. His book, On Intelligence
Many visual thinking techniques focus on revealing patterns and tapping into our innate pattern completion systems. I’m looking to neuroscience to develop and validate visual thinking tools. Reducing the time and effort individuals and organizations need to see patterns, means they are able to tackle tougher problems in less time.
Finding a solution to a problem is literally finding a pattern in the world or a stored pattern in your cortex that is analogous to the problem you are working on. If you are stuck on a problem, the memory-prediction model suggests that you should find different ways to look at it to increase the likelihood of seeing an analogy with past experience. p.189
Hawkins’ work, though not directly related to visual thinking, suggests that creativity and problem solving involves working with analogies to patterns we have learned or are experiencing. Visual thinking tools can make patterns easier to reveal and experiment with.
Seeing, solving and acting are the essential components of everything you do.
Better thinking improves and accelerates how you see, solve and act. Learn more.
