I finally moved on to the second chapter of "Steal Like an Artist" and there were some points that really resonated with me and my experiences. The first being that no one knows what they're really doing. While I know this now, I really wish that I could tell the younger me that. I was raised under the impression that all adults knew exactly what they were doing and never made mistakes. If they did, then they would be fired from their job. That way of thinking made me extremely fearful of doing something new, or even getting a part time job as a teenager because I was afraid of making mistakes and failing. While it's great if someone actually knows what they're doing, it's not the end of the world if you don't and it's part of the process of growing up and discovering yourself.
This kind of brings me to the next point the book makes which is "Fake it until you make it". A lot of times, the difference between whether the glass is half empty or half full, is what mind set you are in. If you are in area that you don't have much confidence in, sometimes you just need to pretend that you are damn good at something you are not and that will get you in the mind set of actually becoming good at it. A great point of view of this is a segment from a longer TED talk by Amy Cuddy.
The final point Kleon makes is that you want to emulate the person you look up to, rather than imitate, because when you are imitated, you stop developing who you are as an individual because you are only focused on another person. When you emulate someone however, it means to you take the ideas or actions that have made the successful and put your own variation on it. By doing this, you are creating something that is truly your own. The more people you decide to emulate, the more it becomes something completely new and unique.
On page 20, Kleon states "Don't steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style". I feel like this can be most applied to current project my graphic design class is doing of creating a branding campaign for a local science and technology group. In my previous post, I looked at a few books in the library and checked out one of them called, "Logo Designs That Works: Secrets for Successful Logo Design" by Lisa Silver. In the book, they have a bunch of logos, some popular, some not, and it explains what the designers were thinking and aiming for when designing for the client. Some of the logos are a bit dated, but the way the designer thought about it is still applicable for today. Getting that designer thinking process was extremely valuable for this project and I know I would have struggled with coming up with concepts if I were to just look at inspirational logos without any of the insight of what went into it. So when emulating inspirational works, you cannot just copy what they did. You have understand the thinking process the designer went through so that you can use that same thinking process to not only create something new, but also so you can apply it to your future work.
Going back on the idea of imitating vs emulating, Kleon provides a list of the differences between the two in a "good theft" and "bad theft" chart. Prior to this post, I had stated that I wanted to use Chipp Kidd as a mentor, but even though he is an amazing designer, I think I'm going to change it to Massimo Vignelli. I find that when I do projects that are more open ended, I tend to emulate swiss style design. I just love how simple and clean the style is and how it reduces images to the most basic forms. I plan on using the chart to study Vignelli's work by making sure I study as many pieces I can by him and try to keep his style in mind when designing my next "open ended" project. One of his most iconic works is his rendition of the New York City subway system:
Yes, I included Pluto because Pluto will always be a planet to me :) and yes, the spacing is (to the best of my ability) to scale based on the perihelion values (except for Pluto).
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