Preface

The title uses indefinite modal particles to represent Agee and is not sure whether you can gain from these revelations or wake up suddenly, or perhaps you have already understood these principles and memorized them by heart. In short, in any case, I hope this article can help those in need.

Heart disease

I haven't written for nearly two months. In the past, I was a bit muddled and felt careless in doing anything. I don't know if you have any similar experience, when your work is at the same stage or level for a long time, there will be psychological bottlenecks. All of a sudden you find that you can no longer get any psychological pleasure and gain under the current working mode. At the same time, the various opportunities around you keep you at a loss as to how to choose. It seems like a villain standing at a fork in the road. The more dazzling the light ahead, the more long the shadow behind him.

The Wonder of Fragment Time

I realized the mistake and horror of this state and tried my best to get out of it. So I pinned my hopes on a recent trip to Hong Kong. The total travel time is only four days. Since I am a freelancer, the travel process does not consume less physical strength and energy. However, I have to say that changing the environment and forcibly extracting myself from the original life state really relaxed my body and mind. People seem to have a new life as if the computer has pressed the restart key. But what I want to say is that the biggest gain of this Hong Kong tour is not what you bought or what you played. But in the process of my trip, I used all kinds of fragmented time to read Sato Da's book-"Looking at the World from Inside to Outside".

Reading sounds like a very simple thing. But it is not easy for most people to really let you calm down and read a book after the complicated work and life. It is often after reading for a while that you start to be busy with other things, or your mind has already flown out of the sky.

The same is true for me, whenever I make up my mind on the first night to spend the next day reading a book that I haven't finished. The next day things often backfire, reading and reading began to busy other things. As a result, the day passed so aimlessly.

I conclude that the main reason for this is that all kinds of emergencies in daily life interfere with people too much, and it is difficult for you to calm down and read in the state of surrounding information explosion. Those long hours that seem to be suitable for reading may be more suitable in your subconscious to do some of the more pressing things of the moment. So at this time, the use of fragment time can see the gap between people. For example, this time I was on a plane to Hong Kong. Since there is no network and no computer, there are no other factors around that can interfere with my reading. Subconsciously, reading is the top priority. So even with the roar of the airplane engine, I was able to concentrate on reading a 220-page book for more than 2 hours. I think this situation can probably also be applied to subways and buses.

I have seen a study before. Some people sleep, work, and study in the state of white noise (sound waves that continue to sound at the same frequency) will improve efficiency. For example, cricket calls in summer, white snowflakes on TV sets, low-frequency running sounds of air conditioners, etc. Some of these sounds are not low in decibels. But miraculously, people will not be affected in any way. I speculate that it may be white noise that makes the noisy ambient sound simple and unified on some levels.

Some design philosophy that may be useful to you.

In recent years, more and more design works and articles have been published. Many college students, fresh graduates, and even old designers who have worked for many years add me WeChat to ask me about my design problems and tell me the bottlenecks and puzzles I encountered. In fact, sometimes I think carefully, how can I explain so many problems and enlighten so many people? After all, I am also a newcomer myself, and I will encounter a lot of confusion and helplessness after 4 or 5 years in the industry! Perhaps I have a little more time and energy to stop and think and summarize than others, just as I am writing this article now. Therefore, I would like to share some recent thoughts and insights with you based on the contents of Sato's book.

Sponge spitting

What impressed me most about the whole book was that Sato praised everyone to learn to "empty" and "absorb" their brains like sponges ". Students who have used a sponge to bathe or wipe things must know that if they want the sponge to absorb enough water, they must first push out the original water completely. This process can also be applied to explain how the human brain works.

Several times I was asked by friends, "won't you run out of ideas". My personal explanation is that the ideas that the human brain can think of at the same time are limited. When you don't "discharge" these ideas for a long time, they will in turn block your brain. Therefore, it is a good habit to show your ideas through sketches and three-dimensional renderings in time and upload them to the Internet to share with other designers. This process will help you empty your brain. When an idea is executed (the complete package is posted online), you can forget it completely, and then the "blank" brain absorbs new "water" from the surrounding space ". This responds to my suggestion that a designer who is confused about the future should publish his original works on the Internet. However, he asked me in confusion, "won't my creativity be taken away by others?" The question. Remember, a sponge that absorbs water can never absorb more water.

Take notes with your mobile phone

Perhaps for most people, the ideal lifestyle of taking a notebook with you while walking and drawing is not very practical. Then, it should be a simple and practical thing to record one's thoughts or inspiration with a mobile phone note. The recording method can be either text or sketch, in short, as long as it can help you recall the moment of flashes in the future. After all, this is a designer's most precious wealth! This kind of thing of inspiration does not mean that it must be produced today.

Looking for the gap between peace of mind and uneasiness

Sato mentions a very interesting story in the book. Once he asked the students to design the products they imagined at will. As a result, the works submitted by the students were too unconstrained and completely unrealistic. This disappointed him a little. He sighed, how difficult it is to design a perfect product in the "safe zone" of people's hearts.

I think the "safe zone" mentioned here actually refers to people's acceptance of a completely new thing. If you often pay attention to the market, you will notice that those "pioneering" products that people have never seen before are often praised but not popular, and the sales volume will not be particularly good. However, those products that only make additional "20%" progress will sell in an instant. This all stems from the uneasiness and rejection of strange things in the human subconscious. People are more inclined to accept a product that they seem to be familiar with but not so familiar. Such products often give people a sense of security while giving fresh excitement. Therefore, for our product designers, it is really a headache to find the gap between peace of mind and anxiety!

The commonalities and differences between Sato and Naoto Fukasawa

It may not be appropriate to open this title directly. Because not only have I not seen them in person, but I have never worked with them. The only judgment I can make comes from reading their books and appreciating their design works.

First talk about commonalities. Both of them are talented Japanese designers, and their design styles are mainly simple and capable. Pay attention to observing all kinds of special points and details in life, find pain points and solve them skillfully through design very intuitively. The two designers are also very good at design integration, such as the printer designed by Mr. Fukasawa for EPSON (the printer and the wastebasket are skillfully combined to discard the paper that fails to print at any time when it is convenient to use), and the wall-mounted CD player (the combination of the concept of CD player and cable desk lamp). Sato University's antler socket (a antler-shaped storage space is designed on the socket for mobile phones) and so on.

To some extent, the two are very different. I think it is most appropriate to describe them as moving and quiet.

In his early years, Sato University graduated with the first place in the Department of Architecture of Waseda University (Xueba). The background of architectural education makes him have high attainments in the light perception, material texture, and the relationship between three-dimensional modeling in space presented by products under different angles of light and shade. Designing a product may be more like carving an exquisite architectural miniature model for him, and there is a strong correlation and similarity between the two. Compared with Naoto Fukasawa, I think his products have a greater breakthrough in creativity and modeling, and their visual impact is often very strong. This can also be seen in his very personal manuscripts. His works often make you admire "Wow, how can this idea be so cool" at the first sight. To sum up, he is a talented designer who is constantly restless in my eyes.

Naoto Fukasawa is an orthodox product design professional background. What impresses him most is his extremely high attainments in the field of unconscious design. Unconscious design means that the product is naturally integrated into the use environment, without picking or abrupt. It makes people feel as if it was born to be there. I think his perception of life and careful observation are better than Sato. Compared with the publicity and personality of Sato's products, Naoto Fukasawa's products are more stable, low-key and practical. Can let you send out "wow, this is really a reliable product" and so on. Therefore, Naoto Fukasawa is the representative of "quiet" in my heart.

The Meaning of Taking a Step Back

Sato mentioned in the book that product designers should learn to take a step back and think about problems. The "step back" here has two meanings. First of all, from the perspective of design, we strive to reflect the original appearance of the product. I understand that it is simplified. Remove all unnecessary elements from the product, leaving only the parts that are helpful to the function. It's like a person shedding back naked from his whole body. In terms of physical function, there is no difference between the two. But the latter has become purer and closer to the state at birth. In my opinion, in today's high-speed and complex social environment, people hope that the pace of life can become slower and simpler after returning home every day. This may be the reason why the simple life school represented by MUJI has become popular in recent years.

The second level means to re-examine things from the perspective of taking a step back. He gave an example in the book. Suppose I need to drain the water in the water cup quickly, most people will want to design one or more holes in the bottom of the cup to drain the water. But from the perspective of taking a step back, assuming that the cup itself is submerged in water, can it be said that there is no water in the cup from beginning to end?

scribbling is the best

There is a chapter in the book that mentions softening design. The softening design brainstormed in a short period of time and recorded the results with the simplest graffiti on paper. These graffiti need to maintain soft edges to facilitate alteration at any time. No extra modifications like perspective, highlights, shadows, etc. Just record the key creative and functional points.

I believe that most people have the experience of scribbling on paper when they are young. At that time, we were unconstrained and unrestrained. Basically, you can draw something immediately. But now when we have to start designing, we often hesitate to write. I remember reading an article not long ago. The painter's father copied all kinds of monsters painted by his son again, repaired the proportional lines, and added details, which suddenly turned into a masterpiece. When everyone was amazed by his father's skills, his father said to the media: "Without my son's unconstrained creativity as the basis, I would never have been able to complete these paintings".

Once I was also infatuated with three-dimensional rendering, learning materials, lighting, animation and other techniques all night. But one day I suddenly realized that in the product design world, hand painting and three-dimensional rendering are always just the medium to express your design ideas. They only need to be able to clearly convey your design thoughts that time is enough. Nowadays, many designers put the cart before the horse and are obsessed with design performance techniques. I have met countless people who have asked me whether to learn whether product design should start with hand-painted or three-dimensional. I think this problem is fundamentally wrong. As a product designer, your personal professional level is ultimately based on the practicality and creativity of your product design. I have seen many product designers with high hand-painted level or extremely realistic three-dimensional rendering, which gives me the feeling of being more like a painter or three-dimensional artist. When you skip these unimportant things and really look at the products they design, you will find that the thoughts they spend on them may not even be hand-painted or rendered 1/3. Then this product is not destined to achieve much success.

Therefore, please leave the hand-painted and three-dimensional techniques behind and spend your time on the creativity and logic of the product instead of painting the same highlights and shades over and over again.

The harder you work, the poorer you get?

Design, brainless mechanical effort is useless. Aesthetic feeling, school teachers also can't teach. The design learned in school is like a penalty kick on a football field. When taking a penalty kick, you only need to concentrate on your feet, control the strength and angle, and kick the football to the dead corner where the goalkeeper can't reach to complete the score. However, in the design projects encountered in the real society, you need to consider various problems such as cost, materials, schedule, production coordination, etc. You are better than a core midfielder with the ball at your feet at this moment. So how to pass the ball to the striker perfectly or get rid of the defense to complete the shot or choose to pass back to find the next more suitable attack opportunity will test your personal ability perfectly and cruelly.

Many designers fall into a cycle of overtime-sleep-overtime-sleep, and proudly regard it as daily, shouting loudly to themselves "I'm trying!". Most people in design companies are required to handle overloaded projects at the same time in a short period of time. Being tortured by a variety of design requirements to the loss of soul, I finally chose to plagiarize online or have no brain to follow the customer's opinions for mechanized design. It seems that I have worked hard for many years. Looking back, most of them find that I have neither made any money nor accumulated useful experience and contacts.

The biggest taboo of designers is to stay in the same environment for too long. This will cause their divergent thinking to be slowly solidified. Gradually, you will find that there will be no other design except the products you often design. Over time, the passion and impulse for career will become comfort and enjoyment. At this point, your career has basically stagnated.

Product designers should work hard, but the focus of their efforts should not be drawing or modeling. Careful observation and thinking of life, exploration and understanding of artistic beauty, and popularization and understanding of knowledge in different fields are the top priorities. To paraphrase a sentence from the BBC documentary "Design Talent", "Is a designer an artist? Is it an engineer? Or is it a servant of the world? The answer is, yes!"

Egg

Fall in love with history

I am ashamed to say that as a Chinese, I have been unable to promote Chinese history since I was a child. It may be that the history lessons given by teachers under the examination-oriented education system are too much. The standard history teaching mode corresponding to XX historical events in XX years makes people sleepy. Over time, the enthusiasm of our generation for history has been erased.

But something magical happened not long ago. The popular X-Jubilee Raiders on TV mentioned my curiosity about the history of the Qing Dynasty. So I found the lecture collection on the 100 pulpit about the story of the Qing Dynasty Qianlong period and began to look with relish. In this way, it was enchanted and out of control. In the next few months, I probably watched 500 collections of 100 forums, involving the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, Sui (Sui Yang Emperor, Sui Wen Emperor), Tang (Li Yuan, Li Shimin, Li Zhi, Wu Zetian), Song (Zhao Kuangyin, Zhao Guangyi), Ming (Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Yunqi, Zhu Di, Zhu Yijun), Qing (Huang Taiji, Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, Jiaqing), etc. I find Chinese history so fascinating. The complexity of historical events and the intricacies of character relationships are even worse than in today's society. The great wisdom and principles contained therein are still thought-provoking.

In short, I found that besides design and games, the third thing that can make me sink is really ecstatic! I have too many topics about history to expand. Maybe I will write an unrelated design biography in my "scratching my head" public account in the future to communicate with you. At the same time, we also encourage everyone not to design all day. Try to find a second or third interest! If you pull your life away from the original mode, you may have unexpected gains. Finally, attach a group of photos of Hong Kong tour!