Shooting off rockets and watching the directions they veer…
by Paul Berkbigler
Bennett and Adrian have lit a bit of an Internet campfire and rustled the hedges in the forest around it to call several of us wayward BA authors and writers back to share in the warmth and swap a few more fireside stories together. So, as I trudge out of the many tangled branches of teaching, research, writing, grading and continuing to work as a freelance designer, it’s great to at least briefly brush the leaves and twigs off my jacket and rejoin good friends in conversation.
When last I left BA Design Group and its group of campers, the podcast was continuing its rapid rise to the most regularly scheduled programming on the site, I was in the midst of leading a workshop in Tennessee, and I think we were all still fielding comments in the Gig Poster thread – the hits just keep on coming, right?!
It’s incredible to see how quickly a year passes and to try making some sense of the individual images that make up the blur once you’re standing at the other end of that time span. It kinda makes my brain hurt to realize that my workshop post was almost exactly a year ago this week!
…Time to move on in the writing then, I suppose!
In aiming to make some sense out of the big, crazy, wonderful thing that has been BA Design Group and the many twists and turns that it’s taken along the way, my brain heads towards a phrase that Stefan Bucher used about a week-and-a-half ago while he was visiting the college I teach at:
Launch and learn…
Like a good little obssessive-compulsive faculty member, I tried to do some research to figure out exactly who to credit that turn of phrase to and came up somewhat dry! I’d even heard Stefan mention a name associated with it, but can’t pull it out of the Berkbigler mental hard drives…Feel free to offer the source if you know it!
It’s a phrase that comes out of the land of web authoring and the goal of releasing a web site especially, but targets the idea that it’s probably best to simply get going on a project and iron out kinks once it’s rolling. Rather than trying to predict all of the hurdles and hiccups involved in something in advance, start running, try to keep your eyes peeled for the things that will smack into you within the next 60 feet and keep the momentum going.
Learn as you go – not an earth-shatteringly new idea, but certainly one that has a lot of pertinence in the realm of blogging!
BA, especially for me, has definitely been a process of learning as I’ve gone:
- Gone forward in becoming part of the writing clan here…
- Gone forward in trying to write about things the really intrigue me but also trying to generate some writing that would pique other readers as well…
- Gone forward in putting my voice out in discussions when the discussions hit the right talking “nerve” in me…
It’s been exciting to watch the way BA has grown, expanded, shed legs, grown wings, shed wings, regrown legs and continued to metamorphosize as its participants (readers and writers) have done likewise. It’s been, in that way, an awfully good diary of the learning and launching each one of us have attempted through this medium.
It’s tough, as a fully admittant control-freak about so many things, to always jump off the end of the diving board with a blindfold on and just see what sort of surface you’re going to hit at the end of the dive, but I feel fortunate to have had several mentors and models encourage a healthy launch-and-learn attitude in me. I’ve definitely found that if you wait for the muse to strike before you start moving, you stand still creatively for a really, really, REALLY long time!
Like this blog, it helps to simply put pen to page or fingers to keyboard and start putting some thoughts in action, tending to them and course-correcting the rocket as the trajectory heads upwards and onwards.
I appreciate greatly the invitation that Bennett and Adrian sent, drawing the range of us into this mix to see what happened. It’s really great to see that two friends from college could ask a range of other design chums to simply start talking to each other publicly online, spark new friendships and watch creative launches and nosedives happen in equal portion here.
Thanks as well for being launchers and learners right alongside each of us as writers…Nice to meet other folks and hear what’s percolating in their brains about all this what-not as well.
To wrap back around to Stefan and the pretty killer example he continues to set for artists and designers, you can find a still new mural sitting in the middle of a quaint little town in Nebraska that stands as a monument to the “try it and see what happens” school of thinking. If we can figure out how and when to get the streetlamps dimmed or shut off for a couple evenings, you might even get to see it glow!
In the meantime, keep banging away at your keys and your drawing boards – it’ll be exciting to see when and where your rockets head off as well…
Paul Berkbigler
Assistant Professor of Art
Concordia University – Nebraska
March 24th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Paul, I think you have really hit on something that helped make Be A Design Group a success in the early stages. We weren’t big and we just threw out ideas and thoughts amongst a group of friends. The honesty must have been evident, because we were all getting noticed . . . which snow balled into all kinds of fun things. Then after some time, I think a good deal of us did that Wylie Coyote thing and realized that we had just ran off the edge. The more you thought about creating a great and perfect post, the less likely it was to happen. I think that the apprehension of posting your thoughts in front of such a large audience was a little stifling, and probably hindered more than it helped in the end.
Even if many of us became more timid in our writing, I think we all still jump into design projects with all our force. Here’s to jumping into things that you don’t have a clue as to where they are going.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Paul I’m going to miss your unique perspectives.
You’re right, if I simply wait for inspiration (that “great idea”) to happen, it probably won’t. However, if I start working toward it, via drawing or typing or talking it through with someone, something good usually comes of it. This is the reason so many thumbnail sketches were required in design school! I keep learning that again and again . . .