The Wisdom of Charles Eames

Austin Kleon mentioned Corita Kent's fantastic "Learning by Heart" in a recent blog post. I thoroughly enjoyed the book (thanks, Austin!), and will likely revisit many of her techniques and observations in the future.

One quote that really struck me came when she was describing her admiration for her collaborator, legendary designer, Charles Eames: "Charles said that the first step in designing a lamp (or anything) was NOT to ask how it should look -- but whether it should even be."

I thought that was a beautiful way of describing the purpose of prototyping: determining whether something should be. As we say at Stanford, the first question to be answered is not "can I make it?" but rather, "should I make it?"

This is not an indictment of the frivolous; quite the contrary, the frivolous is often the prelude to the fabulous; rather, it's an indictment on spending resources in the wrong direction. Many times, it's much easier to answer the question "should I..." (ie does performing some envisioned function for another human being accomplish the impact i'm hoping to achieve?), than it is to answer the question "can I..." (which can involve much expense in terms of time, etc).

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