Michael Bierut, Jessica Helfand|Audio
May 25, 2017
Episode 57: Communion and Commerce
With more and more designers are offering advice that sounds like life coaching or therapy. Jessica worries that these paths to happiness, however appealing, are too facile:
The short inspirational quote, the draw on this page of the coloring book, the follow this thing=E2=80=A6 People like to know that there is an enumerated series of things they have to do to get to the next thing.
Alas, life is rarely an enumerated series of things.
And Michael says that making things can be soothing, but the thing itself is the point:
Whether you’re a carpenter or a writer, you paint on canvas or you paint rooms or hang wallpaper, you know shortcuts, you know things that help you achieve that craft. Still there’s a degree of skill that you master along the way that can be a form of therapy, but that’s just a byproduct of the actual work that’s being done.
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By Michael Bierut & Jessica Helfand