What even is a photo anymore?

Or video or text? Prompts can generate stock images that look about as good as what you find on Freepik. Many people's photo app can generate a fake hat or change a face or swap backgrounds. Everything entirely manufactured from data sets.

There is no new thing under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Everything is a remix (Kirby Ferguson).

I don't think you should be afraid to use the direct influence of someone else's work, even though we've been taught that it's wrong to take something without permission (Jeff Tweedy). What we call originality relies on a good deal of imitation, and even a bit of theft (James Polchin).

Lego is more than child's play, it's a metaphor for life. We are not simply consumers of experience, we can be makers of our own experience.

The user transforms from consumer to co-creator. Opting-in to build from an instruction set or choosing to explore your own ideas. Within the design for customizability is the design for tinkerability.

Think of the best meals you've ever had. Were they five-course tasting menus with dozens of choices? Or were they simple, intentional dishes where each bite demanded attention? It's the second one, isn't it?

What apps on your phone do you use the most? Not overloaded ones that do a thousand different things. The best ones are honed to do only a few tasks really well.

It's tempting to spend excessive time strategizing for a project. There are so many routes to go down and there’s always more information to gain to improve the project outcome.

The bulk of the work should always be following the plan, not drawing it up.

Design is always a collaborative process.

When designers work solo, ideas still stem from previous breakthroughs and experience gained through others. Sharing or publishing work will always lead to conversations and feedback.

A designer juggles 5,000 things per project.

User experiences, human factors, engineering, manufacturing, stakeholders, market trends, market niches, and touchpoints in-between all go into designing a blender.

When work gets challenging, some people become visibly stressed. Others seem to remain composed, continuing on with their day as usual.

Stressful situations reveal how we cope with pressure. It's not just the event itself, but how we are able to respond to it.

Those "quick renders" sometimes don't go according to plan.

However long you estimate 3D modelling will take, double it. Especially if you're still learning specific elements of the software.

Solidworks and Keyshot always take longer than you like to think. Pad your deadlines, you'll thank yourself later.

Many people believe that you are either good at sketching or you are not.

It's a skill, the more you work at it the better you get. It's rarely a talent, it's hundreds of hours of work. Beautiful Instagram drawings take too long to typically be used in the workplace. But if you're in a meeting and you can doodle on a napkin well enough to get everyone in the room to understand it, your sketching skills are likely good enough for a job in Industrial Design.

"This is better than I expected, it's perfect."

It feels great to hear, but it's not really feedback. It's praise.

Praise and gratitude are always good to have, but they aren't so useful for growth.

It's hard to tell who was first to invent the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell or Elisha Gray. Thomas Edison wasn't the first to make light glow in a glass bulb. James Kirby had the idea for a bagless vacuum long before James Dyson.

It's always possible that someone did steal an idea and the winner wrote the history book. It’s also possible that the “first” person's work was unknown to the public eye or that their idea wasn't developed enough.

It's been a long time since anyone's had Blackberry thumb.

Smartphones aren't more ergonomic than they used to be, gesture interactions use less effort than physical keyboards. People have evolved using gestures to communicate, it's natural. It makes sense that phones and XR devices continue evolving towards more gesture-based interactions.

Anthony Bourdain's choice knife was the Global Chef's Knife.

"As a starter chef knife, The Global is pretty good for a first timer."

He said every home chef should swap out their big blocks of miscellaneous knives for this one. You don't need that many knives for preparing food, just one good chef's knife.

My favorite aspect of design is that a good one feels like brushing paths with someone thoughtful.

Last year I visited my grandma's public housing apartment. This is located in a tiny village out in nowhere Illinois where cell reception is sparce and the nearest Walmart or hospital is a 45 minute country road drive. Despite being far from a Town Hall, the apartment met ADA standards.

There are thousands of blank journals with artistic covers sold on Amazon.

Anyone who can navigate through Canva can design and sell one, but yours might not sell as well as some clickbaity Youtubers make you believe.

A mentor can help you learn to draw, use software, present and think critically.

But there are daily decisions you make where mentors can only extend so much help with: persistence and attitude.

When someone mistreats you, exploits your insecurities or is generally disrespectful, does it bleed into your other conversations?

Passing on other’s negativity never helps anyone.