February 1, 2016
Nearly five years after it first launched on Kickstarter, I read Frank Chimero’s excellent design handbook, The Shape of Design. The Kickstarter hardcover edition looks to be beautifully crafted, so if you can get your hands on that it would be the recommended way to go. If not, do as I did and grab the free ebook from Frank’s site.
I’d recommend The Shape of Design to any designer, and to anyone curious about design. It isn’t a practical how-to; it’s a short, philosophical read about why we make things, delivered through witty, metaphorical meditation. A few sections tip into the self-indulgent, but it’s a quick read that’s guaranteed to make you think deeper about the work.
A few highlights that stuck with me:
To be human is to tinker, to envision a better condition, and decide to work toward it by shaping the world around us.
The Shakers have a proverb that says, “Do not make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both, do not hesitate to make it beautiful.”
The world shapes us, and we get to shape the world.
That last line is the one I keep coming back to. It’s a big part of why I’ve spent my career building tools for other creators: the things we make don’t just solve a problem in front of us, they change what the people using them can imagine next. Chimero frames design not as a field of artifacts but of outcomes and consequences, a reframe that has quietly shaped how I think about the products I work on.
Get it free at The Shape of Design.