Beautiful concrete and Chipotle nobody asked for
Beautiful concrete and Chipotle nobody asked for
What stuck with me, what you missed, and one question worth asking
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What stuck with me this month
Nobody asked for this
By
I read this recently and immediately thought, “I have to share this one.” Ben Strak articulated something I’ve felt for years as a designer, namely this impulse to care more deeply than perhaps those around me do. Here are his words:
All this is to say is that for design, as for other fields, the road to greatness is often paved with obsession—an immoderate, unjustifiable surplus of care. Doing things that no-one asked for with a love that no-one could reasonably expect…
In the part of the design world that I work in, which rubs along somewhat uneasily with the raw powers of technology and commerce, the way of working and the type of care I’m describing can be hard to explain at the best of times. A well-run business after all is an efficient one. Deploying scarce resources to maximum effect and ensuring that just enough is done to satisfy the market (and no more). The kind of exacting and wasteful care I have been advocating for in this essay will be a case-study in many a business school in how not to do things…
It’s my belief that even as we use the language and operate within the shinily efficient contours of the business world that we should still nurture that wholly unjustifiable and wasteful part of us that just wants to make the thing wonderful for its own sake. Inevitably the thing won’t be quite as wonderful as we maybe wanted, but I can guarantee it will be a whole lot more wonderful than if we had not.
What do you think? Is putting in extra effort worth it to build something excellent? When and when not?
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The beauty of concrete
By Samuel Hughes
If someone were to ask you why we don’t have more ornamentation in our architecture, you might say, “Yeah, that’s because ornamentation is really expensive.”
But according to Samuel Hughes, you would be wrong. He goes to great lengths in this piece to determine that we don’t have more ornamentation because we don’t want it.
I’ve referenced this article almost every week for the last two months. It’s worth a read.
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Want to Get Your Name Out There With Zero Budget? Do What Chipotle Did.
By Kevin Roddy
I don’t know how I stumbled across this one, but I was glad I did. There are two takeaways:
Believe that every interaction with customers, employees, stakeholders, or stockholders, matters.
Spend half your time and effort marketing to your own team.
The point isn’t to copy what they did. The point is to appreciate the examples of how you can apply these two concepts and then go out and put your own distinct spin on it.
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What you missed
How to show that you care
A short story to illustrate how you can show the people you serve that you care about them and their problems
Sometimes you aren’t going to be productive
But that doesn’t mean you can’t be constructive.
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One question worth asking
What can I remove to improve my work and/or the manner in which I work?
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