My [Design] Manifesto

My Manifesto

I sat in my room the other night feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders. However, at first my thoughts were selfish until I came to the realization that I, Nicole Leah Ware am not the person in this world. The fact is that there are 6,989,799,191 people on the planet as of January 24, 2012, 12:22 am (census.gov). And after that epiphany my next thought immediately went to; Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? And what am I supposed to do with the rest of it? Questions that only a few days ago I was laughing at and mockingly saying that my significance is too insignificant to answer those questions. An answer that a failure would give, and I was reminded of a quote I chose the other day to base my “design manifesto” off of. The quote is by Chris Alexander, “Architects are supposed to be good visualizers, and we are, but still, most of the time we’re wrong. Even when you build the things yourself and you’re doing good, you’re still making 9 mistakes for every success.” Although this seems somewhat cynical it’s true… but it’s what you do with those failures and mistakes that define you as a person. Do you give up or do you bounce right back and fix what you have done? After all my rambling and the insane thought process that happened to be swimming in my head at 12 in the morning, this is my manifesto. Which not only applies to design but also my life. From this moment on every mistake and failure I encounter, I plan on working twice as diligently to mend it. Design is a marriage of failures and successes and for every success there was 9 mistakes, 48 hours of lost sleep, 10 microwavable dinners, 7 calls to Jimmy John’s at 2am, 1 pillow and 1 blanket under your studio desk, and finally one hell of a (tired) designer. But hey who’s counting?

One more thought before I finish, I went back and looked at the quote and there was a part that I left out unknowingly: “Architects are supposed to be good visualizers, and we are, but still, most of the time we’re wrong. Even when you build the things yourself and you’re doing good, you’re still making 9 mistakes for every success. So you take the time to correct them.” –Chris Alexander