I picked up Michael Bierut’s Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design and have been perusing through it over the last week or so. It’s a good compendium of many of the essays Bierut has written over the years for DesignObserver.com, Communication Arts and other design editorials. Witty and thoughtful, Bierut’s musings on design and culture are good reading for anyone in any sort of creative field.
In the essay “Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content”, Bierut writes:
“Over the years, I came to realize that my best work has always involved subjects that interested me, or – even better – subjects about which I’ve become interested, even passionate about, through the very process of doing design work. I believe I am still passionate about graphic design. But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can’t get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you’re interested in, the better your work will be.”
I think it’s fine to assert that this thinking can, and should, be applied to any creative field. It is so important to constantly broaden your intellectual and creative horizons. Such thinking has caused me to search out new fields to read up on – astronomy, polar conservation, jazz, whatever. The more I know, the more creatively I can solve a problem. By being more knowledgeable, I can innovate better.
