Mind Frog

It only occurred to me the other day that not everyone has an opinion on everything that look at. Having only ever lived in my own head I'm comfortable with the fact that absolutely everything I look at I make a snapshot judgement of;

Door knob, way too 80's
Hair, would look better shorter
Iron, looks to aerodynamic, round it off
Pencil, really like the way the rubber tones in with the wood
V5C Form, Nice use of salmon against the blue
Repositioning Spray Tin, badly typeset, boring palette

This list could go on and on, I literally never stop and to be honest, it's really annoying. I wish I could turn it off because I think it's wearing my brain out unnecessarily, I mean I've never been that bright, I've always managed to get by on a limited brain capacity and I don't want what I have to be wasted on making pointless judgements about the colour of a rubber in contrast to it's pencil.

Although I have to admit however that sometimes it's helpful, sometimes in the panic of a brief one of these seeming useless bits of information will slip back in to my head and inspire me, it's impossible to use this information logically to categorise it and pull it up resourcefully, it's just a massive jumble of crap that occasionally drops a sprinkle of gold dust onto something I'm working on.

Most of the time I'd say it was a burden, it's exhausting but I think it's something that all designers do. Once in an interview I told the candidate; "when I go out, I look at everything, I make judgements on design everywhere, and criticise everything graphic I look at, it gives me a headache, do you do this...?"

Their answer was a specular 'No'. at which point I wrapped the interview up and said we'd be in touch. Of course, we never got in touch. Seriously, at least present you're interested in design!

Maybe this is the way designers minds work, perhaps this is why I can never remember a shopping list longer than 3 items, but I'll be able to tell you intricate details about the design of ten labels of Tomato Purée, and it's definitely the reason Karen never send me shopping on my own.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

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