If Inspiration Comes from Anywhere, So Does Knowledge
It’s an old adage repeated by generations of designers: inspiration can come from anywhere. Good designers and artists draw inspiration from things seemingly very different from their core medium — graphic designers look at print design, print designers look at architecture, architects look at fabric patterns, fabric artists look at nature, and mentioning nature artists makes this a religious discussion. To limit your inspiration to your own craft is to get yourself stuck in a cycle of mediocrity, according to this view.
Yet it seems, based on some discussions I’ve had lately, that designers don’t always come to the same conclusions about useful knowledge. Some designers I know, even a few well-respected ones, read the same blogs, by the same people, writing the same books, talking at the same conferences, and scoff at the notion that a different perspective could be useful.
Thankfully, they must have started designing for the web after the whole standards thing picked up, else they would probably be dismissing standards-advocates as being useless diversions from their world of Dreamweaver, tables, and Flash.
Any web designer worth her paycheck should be able to take something valuable away from a conversation with an experienced print designer. That should be obvious, even if the print designer isn’t able to tell the web designer anything about CSS, and doesn’t realize the constraints inherent in web typography or having to use floats and negative margins to achieve layouts. The print designer has his own constraints, and solutions to one problem may help yield solutions to a very different problem — we never know where innovation will spark.
Getting Caught in the Homogeneity
But even more importantly, great designers should realize that they are able to get something out of a good conversation (or even a good lecture) with an articulate person from any field. No, you’re likely not going to have a discussion with a psychologist and then go and change the way you write CSS the following day, but you might realize that the way she spoke about perception really does have something to do with the way users are reacting to your design weeks later. No, that geologist may literally have never opened a web browser, but he likely knows a lot more than you about recognizing patterns and creating a taxonomy, and that might be useful to you down the line when you’re considering how to organize your site.
If you’re paying $1000 for a ticket to a conference featuring the same speakers whose blogs you’ve been reading for three years, I can understand that. If you pay to see them give roughly the same talks after that, I start to think that you might be the type of designer who will be producing the same level of design five years from now.
Branching Out
People who recognize this probably absorb things like TED Talks like a Shamwow. Even though maybe only one or two in ten talk about the web, they all have something to do with the web in some way, even if you have to reach for it. The latest CSS hackery may be great today, but it likely won’t matter a year or two from now when some other technique has rendered it obsolete. Learning about Gestalt’s theories of perception, though, will apply to interface design for as long as there are interfaces.
Patrick and I have had a couple of conversations lately about making a concerted effort to go to conferences, lectures, and other events that have absolutely nothing to do with our own fields. Again, you never know where innovation will spark.
For those concerned, no, I’m not going to be scheduling a geologist to give a Rocks for Jocks session at Refresh DC, but if someone happened to put together a regular local event which had interesting speakers from varied disciplines, I’d show up. :)
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about some of the things mentioned in this post (good post by the way!).
I wonder, is it that many of us (including yourself) are just getting older and more experienced, perhaps faster than we anticipated? I remember, when I first started attending conference and was hanging on to every word of every speaker, trying to learn and digest as much as possible — like a sponge for knowledge. But, now many of the panels and sessions bore me and I find myself questioning the speakers logic and point of view. The conferences, speakers and topics haven’t changed though — I have. I go to more conferences than before, hear more people speak than before and am a bit more experienced and knowledgeable than before.
From early beginnings of a career it is easier to find inspiration and knowledge. But at some point, most of us get to a place where we are the ones inspiring and educating others.
I think ultimately the reason for going to conferences changes. You ask why go to a conference full of speakers you’ve heard speak on the same topic before or who blog on that topic. Well, I believe once you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve gone from student to teacher of sorts, you go for different reasons — but you still go (if you find a new value). It could be to network, to meet new people in the field (or new young talent), to support friends and colleagues who are now the speakers or to just be around people who love doing what you love doing to get a bit of that fuel back that powers your love for this industry and profession.
I used to take notes at conferences and I went for knowledge. Now, I go to to be inspired … the best speaker is one who has my itching to jump out of my seat during the presentation to go work on something RIGHT NOW!
But, I agree, inspiration and knowledge can come from anywhere. At different stages in life and career, we need different things and I think it is for us to adjust accordingly and realize that.
I’m a little late to the party on this one, but excellent post, Jackson. Thank you for tackling a matter that has been bugging me for a while now.