Some folks have been interested in where I find blog ideas and ideas in general.
If some of this type of thing interests you, keep your eyes open for future posts. Today I just want to share a tiny little bit about where I get ideas from.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that a lot of things interest me.
I’m not entriely sure this is a thing that can be taught.
But if it can be, I hope sharing some bits about how much even little things interest me can inspire the behavior in others. Because when folks become interested in many many things, I see awesomeness happen. People listen more. People come up with more ideas. People are more tolerant of the differences in others.
I believe it was when I was about 14 when I was sitting alone, it’s raining outside, and I was manning a golf course pro-shop my dad used to own. I realized I had started making a habit of daydreaming about little details of things. I’d be sitting on a chair, and my thoughts would start to wander. I’d stare at a door. I’d start to think about the hinges on the door. Soon I’d find my focus on the screws that held the hinges to the door. Macroscopically, that’s about as far as my eyes can go looking at this door.
So I’d just sit there thinking about those screws.
There’s a company who manufactured the screws. There were decisions made about what kind of screws to make. What lengths and sizes. What materials. What kind of machines needed to be made to make them. Maybe they were thinking about expanding their business because hopefully there’s such high demand for their product.
There were probably quality assurance people looking over the screws. My particular screw may have even been manually handled by someone randomly looking over the quality of screws after they were machine milled.
The journey of the screw didn’t stop with its creation. That screw got put into a box and sold from somewhere. It traveled on some kind of truck by a guy who might be going deaf in his left ear from having the window open on the highway for so many years. It was probably brought to a True Value Hardware or a place like Home Depot or Menards and sold by someone probably not much older than me working at their cash register waiting eagerly for their shift to end to go out tonight.
It was sold to a guy, who, one day many years before my family got involved, probably sweating profusely from a pretty tough friggin job of putting a golf course pro-shop together, put that screw into that hinge.
All these people. All these processes. Creativity. Struggles. Pain. Sweat. And hopefully a lot of joy. Went into putting a screw into a hinge to help a door open and close at a store I was working in.
I’ll never meet most of the people on that journey. And they’ll never meet me.
It’s pouring outside. There is such a calm around me in this place with absolutely no one around. But I’m surrounded by so many things as simple as that screw, and by the people and creativity that went into creating them.
And I’ll never realize exactly how many stories are truly along that path. I’ll never get to participate in the myriad of jobs that had to exist to get that screw to where it is today.
But the journey inspires me. The journey leads to a million ideas and stories I can learn from. The journey is filled with a million bits and pieces of wisdom to follow and pitfalls to avoid.
When you learn to examine the trivial details of the things around you, you realize that nothing is really trivial. Everything has a beautifully long and winding backstory. When you listen for some of those stories, life gets a whole hell of a lot more interesting.
So when someone asks me where I find ideas?
Where can’t you find ideas?
How I find ideas in trivial details. The guy who stares at screws. by Nathan Kontny
Photograph via jennyleighb on Reddit
Using Lego pieces and PVC piping, a Redditor’s roommate has recreated a portion of the iconic first level of Super Mario Bros. The classic Nintendo game is restored wonderfully in this DIY project, and the detailed backdrop complete with clouds (which are the same as bushes you know…), score and time really brings it all together.
For those concerned about the potential for toxins from the Lego pieces to leak into the water, all of them were sealed with clear enamel to insure they remain waterproof. The gallery below offers a quick snapshot of the progress and the video at the bottom shows off the finished tank. You even get a nice view of the PVC piping running underneath the ‘level’!
To the roommate of jennyleighb, the Sifter salutes you!
Photograph by Edward Burtynsky
The Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange is a stack interchange near the Athens and Watts communities of Los Angeles, California. Though the interchange permits traffic entering the interchange in all directions to exit in all directions (cf. Hollywood Split, East Los Angeles Interchange), the interchange also consists of direct HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) connectors, Metro Green Line tracks, and the Harbor Transitway, all of which contribute to the towering, imposing structure for which the interchange is known.
Opened with Interstate 105 in 1993, the interchange is named for Harry Pregerson, a longtime federal judge who presided over the lawsuit concerning the I-105 freeway’s construction. Shortly before the interchange opened, filmmakers had access to use it for the 1994 motion picture Speed. In one of the movie’s best-known scenes, the bus must jump across an unfinished construction gap in an uncompleted elevated freeway-to-freeway ramp while still under construction.
In 1996, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration recognized the Interstate 105/Interstate 110 interchange with an Award of Merit in the Urban Highways category of its biennial Excellence in Highway Design awards. The award recognized the interchange’s design which sought to improve traffic congestion, safety, and air quality. [Source: Wikipedia]
Type is everywhere. Every print publication, website, movie, advertisement and public message involves the creation or selection of a fitting typeface. Online, a rich and artistic typographical culture exists, where typefaces are created and graphic design seeps in to every image.
In episode 2 of Off Book, typeface designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones outline the importance of selecting the right font to convey a particular feeling. Graphic designer Paula Scher talks about building identity in messaging, while Eddie Opara uses texture to create reaction. Infographic designers Julia Vakser and Deroy Peraza map complicated data sets into digestible imagery, mixing color, graphics and type. http://www.pbs.org/arts
Excerpted from Thou Shall Not Use Comic Sans: 365 Graphic Design Sins and Virtues: A Designer’s Almanac of Dos and Don’ts
by Tony Seddon, Sean Adams, John Foster, Peter Dawson
Copyright © 2012. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Peachpit Press.