We love to collect stuff, don’t we. I know it’s stating the blindingly obvious, and of course, lots of people who aren’t designers collect stuff, but there does seem to be a trait in our sphere marked by accumulating things.
It’s usually (normally?) visual and physical. Matchbooks, Bicycle head badges. Instant noodle packets. The more esoteric the better. This is stuff you want others to define you by, so of course it’s going to be particular, and hopeful to mark you out as the one with the great (or discerning, or unusual) eye.
Blogs, books and bookshelves are filled with this ocular clutter (me included) but what struck me was that a fair number of the things which have drawn my attention recently I’ve heard - more specifically, unusual words - rather than seen.
And it’s these little collections of syllables that I want to sing (or speak) the praises of.
Unusual words (and combinations of them) are more interesting, at least to me, as they set you off thinking - as opposed to looking (at things) for inspiration; which can often lead to slavish copying. Paying homage, I mean. - in all kinds of directions and towards ideas that you might not have stumbled on otherwise.
Back when I was at college I suffered (and made my peers suffer) from intellectual pretensions and often tried to shoe-horn-in writer’s ideas to my projects. One thing that fascinated me was (‘there he goes again…') T.S. Elliot’s suggestion of an ‘auditory imagination’ - his notion that the poem he wrote would be very different to one a reader ‘heard’ in their head. I like that idea. Of words as a spur rather than simply sloganeering.
Everyone (well, at least tacitly) will admit that’s it’s important to listen. But listening out for words is something usually planners and writers start projects with. I think designers should embrace the skill as well. It’ll take you to all kinds of other previously unimagined places.
And just to show how this works, what do you imagine was a Word Of The Year in 1987 (when I graduated)?
Emoticon.
Amazing where words can travel.
