Leaving the paper boat in the garage might not have been the best thing that happened to the boat, but it created a great work I would like to call the paper shipwreck. I could tell the story behind it, but the following photo will suffice I think.
For this assignment I had to make something easy, difficult. and of course this is easier said than done, I set off to the local Hema and bought three rolls of transparent tape and 500 sheets of paper. The idea was to fold a paper boat out of 225 sheets of paper, it resulted in having to spend the entire afternoon a the better part of the evening pasting paper together with tape.
Although it was dull as hell, the pasting was the easy part, with the 225 sheets of paper now attached (it measured 3,1 * 4,4 m) the giant piece of paper had to be folded into a boat.
Contrary to my previous post about sticking to what you know, yesterday thought me that doing something you have always done, will eventually only lead to making more of the same thing. Sometimes you have to radically change the direction you are going in and do something completely different. Only then you could create something that is different, that stands out in the crowd and is desirable.
The fist example that comes to mind is the Nokia vs Iphone thing. Nokia has been making great phones for many, many years, but recently they became dull, they created models that were more or less the same as the models that preceded them and had/have features with minor improvements (better camera, bigger display, more colours, etc). When Apple introduced the Iphone it didn’t look like any other phone, it didn’t do anything like the phones, in fact the Iphone isn’t about the specs of the device, its about the apps you can put on it (or develop for it) Apple for doing something different turned the phone industry upside down (or at least rattled it a bit).
So what did Nokia do? They simply did something different and created a netbook and it looks really cool.
Being a generalist used to be a desired thing, especially during the renaissance. Artists like Michelangelo didn’t stick to one form of art. Michelangelo for example created murals, paintings, sculptures and even poems. Although it is admirable to have more trades to choose from, but since you can’t be great in all of them it is not desirable if you are looking to create something great. You might think it is strange to use Michelangelo as an example, but ask yourself ‘how many poems by Michelangelo do you know?’
The bottom line is ” Michelangelo pulled it of and you my friend are not him!’
Try to invest in being a meaningful specialist, stick to what you know and love most and invest in this talent, it will pay off in the end.
simplicity
Simplicity is great, even if the motivation for keeping it simple is lack of time, inspiration or talent (or all). Personally I like simple things for they are easy to understand and create. It would even better if you can make something extremely complicated really simple. And interesting if you can make something simple difficult.
like this (sort of):