Writing by Ming

“

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

— r. buckminster fuller

A conversation from the work channel. Mike, my former creative director at ibm, used this classical quote to warn designers that only relying on logic and research doesn't guarantee a good design. The creative process also involves intuition and a gut feeling.

Mike Abbink is the creator of the IBM PLEX typeface. It's fascinating to see how a type designer, with his broad knowledge, conducted the whole digital product design system – Carbon Design System.

“

Inspiration is for amateurs – the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

— chuck close

The episode of Christoph Niemann, from Netflix’s Abstract: The art of design

A great episode of Christoph Niemann, from Netflix’s Abstract: The art of design.

It relieves you of a lot of pressure. It’s not a bout waiting for hours for this moment where inspiration strikes. It’s just showing up and getting started, and then something amazing happens or it doesn’t happen. All that matters is you enable the chance for something to happen. For that you have to sit at your desk and you have to draw and do and make decisions and hope for the best. — CHRISTOPH NIEMANN
Thinking with your hands. — CYRUS HIGHSMITH
Making art is an intuitive process, and you have to learn to trust that intuition. If you knew ahead what you were going to do, you wouldn't be afraid. When I sit down to design, I'm always afraid. I'm not sure what I am gonna do. You probably experienced going to your workplace, and the first thing you do is clean up the workplace. You clean it up because you use all kinds of denial mechanisms to delay starting the creative process because it's scary. You're afraid. And I think that's part of our work. There's this certain amount of fear because you don't know exactly where you're going. And I think that has been comforting to me over the year because I know that if I knew where I was going, I would stop, probably. — FRANK GEHRY
In my experience, authenticity indesign often emerges from moments of uncertainty. Making art and design always begins from the compromised position of not being fully ready. There’s never a perfect time or state of complete preparedness. Instead, authenticity comes from embracing this incompleteness and turning it into an opportunity for genuine improvisation. Improvisation, in turn, quickly closes the gap between uncertainty and creativity. — JOHN MAEDA
I myself, as I’m writing. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose to writing the story. — HARUKI MURAKAMI

“

If you only see one solution to a problem, then you don’t really understand the problem.”

— john maeda

“

By the time you've arrived at the perfect solution, usually the problem has already changed.”

— jessie shefrin

“

A design project is a series of decisions.”

— erika hall

Erika Hall, the author of “Just enough research”, talked at a design conference in 2016.

For me, this statement becomes so true under AI-driven circumstances. The designer's key role is "decision-making." AI expands the possibilities – good or worse. Design education should focus on this role's training. Where do they come from? Are there any shortcuts? Nope. Some of the exercises still need to undergo craftsmanship training by hand, detail-eye training, and design history knowledge.

When it comes to any creative endeavor, the selection of process is often more meaningful than the specific outcome. This is precisely why authenticity matters so much today, especially as technology and artificial intelligence streamline and accelerate creative processes. While AI excels at precise, efficient creation, it can’t replicate the spontaneous, improvisational quality of human decision-making or the emotional depth inherent in our personal narratives. Authenticity, then, becomes our greatest differentiator. — JOHN MAEDA
Designing is when you don't know the answer yet; if you already know the answer, that is production. — PETR VAN BLOCKLAND

Design system vs. Design history

This quote is given by Jesse Reed in a Design system related talk at Google in 2018.

I archived this screenshot in my desktop's folder for years. It is mainly to remind myself to spend time reading design history books. It's also good advice for all my design folks :)

Just like the example from Google's Material Design, it interweaves an array of design disciplines with development and does not approach it from a single disciplinary angle. It inherits the knowledge from design traditions, such as font, shape, colour, typography, etc.

“

Define what you do. Not what you are.”

— petr van blockland

My professor Petr van Blockland presented in a Seminar at the moti museum in Breda, 2015.

There is nowhere else like the digital design field has created so many role titles in the past decade. You may hear the title of UX designer, service designer, product designer, system designer, and so on. In the March of 2025, Duolingo team declared that product experience (PX) is their new name. Maybe one day you will see AI designer, AI-agents designer, etc. 🤯 Is the naming/title important? It's probably because of the high competition in the job market that designers are in a panic if their efforts' scope can't be visible.
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John Maeda, in his Design in Tech Report, distinguishes between three categories: "classical" designers, who create physical objects or products; "design-thinking" designers, who innovate by seeking deep insights into how customers interact with products and services; and "computational" designers, who use programming skills and data to satisfy millions or even billions of users instantaneously.
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“Define what you do, not what you are.” – Focusing on your practice. I think this is a more elegant and simplifying way to identify ourselves.