kill yr babies

on monday night, i saw Iconologic's Matt Rollens and Elise Thomason give a presentation on design and their work for the Torino Olympics hosted by SCAD's AIGA student group. Once i got over how beautiful the bathrooms were (framed artwork with labels!), i focused on the lecture.

to design for the Games, they had six years, but had to incorporate another person's logo. they showed some initial ideas and sketchbook images.

Matt talked about the design process in general, the following notes are from his speech:

A. Find a story
1. Dump preconcepti0ns
2. Ask dumb questions and listen closely to answers
3. Be naive
4. Collect every piece of evidence
5. Obsessively categorize, chart, list and display the evidence
--just hang out and get some coffee
6. What's the story?
7. Write the story in words.
8. ask, "What's the point of the story?"
9. Make a koan* of your answer.
10. Put all this on paper and call it the "Creative Brief"

B. Design the story
1. Spout ideas, judge them later
2. Steal, cross-polinate and sleep around.
--turn bad ideas into genius
3. Coddle your ideas like beautiful, perfect babies.
4. Kill your babies and try again.
5. There are infinite options and a lot of them suck
6. Don't avoid the obvious; make it new.
7. Think symbolically, metaphorically, and historically.
8. Don't think at all.
9. Say it aloud.
10. Tell the truth.

C. Tell the story
1. It doesn't have to be linear or complete/consistant
2. Stories have to be interesting--they ask you to make connections to the core idea.
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*(koan: a paradox to be meditated upon that is used to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon ultimate dependence on reason and to force them into gaining sudden intuitive enlightenment
--merriam-webster.com)