let's think it through carefully.
What can I do?
Photoshop, Illustrator, 3DMAX? After Effects?
No, not that kind of stuff...
How much can my presence change my surroundings,
and to change my surroundings,
what did I do today, what will I do, what can I do...
Communicating with others, or making it possible for them to do so,
and creating the motivation that can change someone -
making someone who had no thoughts in their head start to think about something -
that's design.
Throw out all those highbrow words like art, fine art, UX, UI, architecture, process.
If you're going to design, or want to design,
it's worth thinking about how I'm changing myself today, and the things around me,
and how I can change them.
For example,
today I changed my usual 7 AM wake-up time and got up at 6:30 instead.
And I posted on Twitter to act as a wake-up call for the people around me.
Today I put on a tasteful amount of cologne so the people brushing past me would have a pleasant start to their day.
Today I ate a so-so breakfast as if it were delicious, for my mother.
For my worn-out everyday self, today instead of a 500-won canned coffee,
I stopped by Stever's Cafe and got a 3,500-won Americano to go.
Today I came in 30 minutes early and cleaned up the office.
For my coworkers worn out by the morning, I put on some music and shouted my morning greetings really loudly.
And before getting into work, I stretched out energetically.
...
This is what I think design is.
Fashion, or graphics, or Western painting and sculpture...
In the end, all of these are nothing more than the various forms in which we - even without realizing it - try to change ourselves and the world around us... no, just to relate, feel, and connect,
expressed somewhere between deeply human worry and instinct.
Do you think I'm sugar-coating this? Or that this is all obvious?
By any chance, do you visit galleries often?
If you do, you'll know.
Whether it's art, fine art, or graphic design... when you look at their works,
they aren't all elegant or beautiful like Renaissance goddesses or statues of gods.
Some look like kindergarten drawings, some look like jokes, some are even disturbing.
In other words, what matters isn't 'pretty art' or how well or poorly you handle the latest Adobe CS5,
or whether you're in your 20s, 30s, or 40s.
It's about how, summoning the courage day after day, you reflect on yourself and how aware you are of what's around you..
you have to think about how many hours of the day you actually live with that kind of awareness.
You've probably had this kind of experience.
At something someone suddenly threw out,
"When did you see that?", "How do you remember that?", "I never said anything - how did you know?"
...
Anyway, let's design.
Even if it's not grand or elegant, let's live noticing things, even just a tiny bit, in every moment.
p.s. Today,
for you who may show up sometime, I gave up my morning cigarette for once and wrote this... ha.
Whatever the result,
of course I'm being generous to my health too, ha ha ha.
This is the kind of design I do.
This is how I'm trying to live. And it's what I'm in the middle of doing..
