Love = Heart

I was thinking recently about this blog. I know the purpose of it, I know who reads it (me) and I know what I want to say. But I wanted something to sum up these things, a motto if you will. Well it came to me a couple days ago.

I’m a fan of image memes, of pretty much any kind. There is group of memes which are “Love is over.” Well I don’t like being negative about life, and that’s not how I feel anyways, so actually “Love is not over” sums up more of what I wanted to say. So I renamed the blog and and bought the domain.

The message is one of perseverance, as the little side headline states: “Not until every last bit of energy, patience and skill is exhausted.” I have worked on a lot of projects that I did not like, and the trick is always finding something that makes you happy inside that project. Although I can say that my intro into the web design/development world was pretty smooth, you still need to find joy somewhere in copying from Word and pasting into Dreamweaver 150 pages of content.

So when I get those projects that just lack any particular fun or creativity, I say to myself “Love is not over.” I love web design, and I love front end programming, and I wish I knew everything about it. I find myself working late on building out a template for a new site, adjusting the margins and paddings down to the pixel. Or designing out a comp and adding detail after detail after detail, even though the user may or may not notice these things. After all another maxim of mine is “Design is in the details”, and I believe that wholeheartedl, but I’ll leave that to another post at a later date.

So, “Love is not over” is a call to action, to persevere with love for the craft regardless of situation or circumstances. To find that love where you can, to latch onto it and make it happen, to stay positive in the face of adversity. That leads me to the catalyst for me posting my thoughts on this.

I read the 37signals blog, I’ve mentioned it before, they always seem to find cool things to post and this post is no exception. It’s an excerpt from Hillman Curtis’ book “Creating Short Films for the Web”:

I once gave a talk called “Putting Your Heart into Design” at a design school in Connecticut, and one of the students asked me what advice I had for people who, just starting out, will no doubt be doing the same things all the time, just churning out banner ads — or like me, when I started at Macromedia years ago, building executive presentations over and over. “How do you put your heart into that?” he asked.

I told him about my first year at Macromedia, about the corporate presentations that consisted mainly of bullet points, pie graphs, and dull charts. I told him that I decided to focus on the exactitude of each design, and made each pixel as perfect as I could. I got deep into exploring the Swiss designer Josef Muller-Brockmann and grids. I focused on typography and consistency in design. And through all of the repetition I became aware of the power of restraint and simplicity. On the few occasions that I incorporated motion, I was always very conservative and moved elements in ways that reflected the theme of the presentation. They were not simply gratuitous.

I came to believe that even though a viewer might not be able to point to the screen and indicate exactly where an element had move two pixels from page to page in a presentation or Web site, he or she could sense it, and too many of those mistakes could leave the viewer with a feeling of imbalance. I explained all of this to the student. When I was finished he replied, “So, rather than just taking on jobs you can put your heart into, you should find a way to put your heart into everything you do.” Which was a wonderful way to put it.

I think that mirrors exactly what I’m talking about here, love is not over until every last bit energy, patience and skill is exhausted. Until that moment, you can find something to love in everything you do, and if you do that, you will always look forward to going to work in the morning and be somewhat suprised when payday comes around and they actually paid you for what you lovingly crafted.

Chin up.

Can’t get enough? You may be interested in these posts as well:

Ignorance is Freedom

On Risk

On Purpose

Moving on up, to the North side

Our Greatest Fear