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Episode 2 - Creativity, Inspiration, & Avoidance
2k Plays9 months ago
Where do you look for INSPIRATION when you're in a creative rut? Why do so many people AVOID original design? Let's hurt some feelings today as we discuss these extremely important issues.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Woodworking is Bullshit'
00:00:16
Speaker
Oh well. Look what the cat dragged in today. We have a couple of us together in the same location. This is
00:00:24
Speaker
Woodworking is bullshit, the podcast. I'm your host, Paul Jasper, and I'm joined by my two thirst trap co-hosts, Eric Curtis and Mary Tsai, professional thirst traps. Eric is a professional furniture maker, and Mary is a product designer by day and part-time woodworker by night. Myself, I'm a scientist by day, woodworker by night.
00:00:47
Speaker
This podcast, as I may have said in the last time, is a
Why Avoid Creativity in Woodworking?
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Speaker
bit different. We're not going to tell you how to make things, but we're going to explore why we make things, where we draw our creativity, how we figure out design. So this podcast is all about creativity, art, and design. For those of you who are looking to learn how to cut better dovetails, you probably want to tune out now.
00:01:11
Speaker
With that being said, we won't cover it, but stay tuned anyway. Oh, yeah. I suppose you can listen if you really want to. So today what we have, we're going to start with a question like we do every week. And today's question is, where do you derive your creativity from? This is a tough one because
00:01:35
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There's so many places where we derive our creativity from and a lot of us are scared to do it in the first place.
00:01:43
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So I would like to start by poking the bear and listing five reasons why I think woodworkers avoid creativity and original design. So let's start by hurting some feelings. Number one, I think we avoid original design because woodworking execution is so difficult.
00:02:08
Speaker
We could spend decades just learning the how. And so you get 10, 20 years into the how and you realize you've ignored the why or the what you've been just copying because the design was just a means to an end. Number two, I think there's a healthy fear of failure and a lot of ego we have to get beyond.
00:02:32
Speaker
That's definitely going to poke the bear. Number three, we'd love to prioritize learning technical things like mortise and tenon and dovetail, like how to cut better dovetails. And, you know, I was joking about that at the front of the show. How many times have you seen an article about that? Right. How many times have you seen an article about how to design well?
00:02:54
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I mean, it's like non-existent. So that's my third reason. We don't prioritize how to learn it. The fourth is we immediately disqualify ourselves so often we say, well, I'm not an artist.
00:03:06
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like the artists are like these real talented motherfuckers out like somewhere in the in the, you know, somewhere out there. It's not me. I'm not I'm not so we disqualify ourselves and we have imposter
Embracing Creativity in Design
00:03:19
Speaker
syndrome. So we don't even give ourselves a chance. And the last reason the fifth is this feeling of hopelessness. It's all been done before I can't I can't make a unique contribution. It's all been done before.
00:03:33
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And I think that sort of discouragement and hopelessness, again, we're betraying ourselves. It's almost like self-sabotage, why we don't. I think it has all been done before. And I think that's all right. I think it's fine that it's all been done before. I think, in fact, that that gives you the encouragement and the freedom that you need, this is speaking uniquely from my perspective, that nothing you do fucking matters. So get over yourself.
00:04:02
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and just make a thing and take a chance because it may fail but you may learn a thing and i think like the best way that this was ever summed up for me is my teacher ala louis said he spent you know thirty years of his career trying to create an original piece of furniture and
00:04:19
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Finally, he made this thing. He was like, this is it. Nobody's ever made this before. It's perfectly contemporary. It's beautifully executed. This is the thing. And not a month later, he was flipping through fine woodworking and they had a historical section and he looked upon the thing and he was like, that's my fucking piece. And this was from like 1750. And so there's nothing new. Well, all right, I'm gonna disagree with you a little bit.
00:04:44
Speaker
I think simple elements, like there's simple building blocks, they've all been done before. And while Mary coughs, I'll make an analogy with music. Every note has been played, but there are still unique combinations and melodies that haven't been played.
Balancing Ego and Client Expectations in Design
00:05:04
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the combinations are novel, right? From a technical perspective, you're mathematically not wrong. However, okay, all right, fine. All right. Okay. We did talk about this in the last episode. Okay, but we're going to talk about it again because that's what we're talking about.
00:05:25
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So a drawer might not be unique, a door might not be unique, but some arrangement of drawers and doors and shapes and curves and textures, that particular arrangement may very well be unique. It's almost impossible to know. So I still think it's possible, but it's more about combinations being unique, not the individual elements.
00:05:47
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Yeah, I would agree. I think I'm maybe leaning more towards Paul on this because I'm so sorry. No, I'm not. Eric's wrong. Yeah, get over it, Eric. No, I agree. I think that people learn specific techniques because they want to be able to put them together and form their own idea. And like, obviously, there's going to be
00:06:08
Speaker
inspiration, maybe subconscious, maybe some, some not some conscious. But I think, yeah, people want to learn skills and they practice technical skills so that they can apply it in some larger context. And I think that the more you make things and where you design things more practice and try to use that goal of
00:06:31
Speaker
designing something, the more you can potentially achieve it. But I don't know, there's not really a repertoire of all furniture that's ever been made. So does anyone actually know? I think I think the music analogy is a helpful one, though, because like the
00:06:48
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There is, to Paul's point and to Mary's point, who probably has the most understanding of musicality and music theory among us. However, there is mathematically a combination of notes that hasn't been played before, almost guaranteed.
00:07:05
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And yet we exist within a culture and a framework that prefers certain combinations of notes over others. And so if you start playing a chromatic descending scale in a pop song, people are going to be like, why are you playing jazz? You know, like there are things that belong in certain pockets. And so in furniture, you can take
00:07:30
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your dovetails, your mortise and tenons, and create arts and crafts. You have the vernacular to create a certain aesthetic of work. And so you work within that frame, and it may not be new, but it may be new to you, right? Like this is the problem in comedy too, right? Like you watch a kids movie, you're like, holy Jesus, how do these children think this is funny?
00:07:50
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Like what was what was the like the dog movie with George Lopez that came out like 10 years ago. I always think of that one specifically like this is the stupidest movie ever. And yet children loved it because it's the first time they saw that that skin.
00:08:03
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You know, so I think, I think maybe we may be a little too self congratulatory in our own exploratory processes, and not give people the benefit of the doubt that when they take a plan from the internet, and they, they make it a through mortise intended to expose a wedged tenant on the outside, like that is a design choice that they're making. It may not be designed from whole cloth, but that is a design choice.
00:08:29
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Yeah, okay.
Freedom and Challenges of Personal Projects
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So are we talking about something that's just never been created before? Because like, sure, I can, there can be stuff that's never been created for but it looks terrible for a reason. Like there's a reason that people have good design and it is subjective by people and preferences and like styles, etc. But like, for the most part,
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I don't know if you can make something and if it's ugly as shit, still original, but, uh, I don't know. Maybe that's like the point you just kind of start from that. And like, that's your original first design. And then you start, you know, improving off of that, but it gives you a sense of like what it means to design something that you haven't seen before. So if I could summarize what you're saying is don't let that discourage you pursue your own versions of design. Don't feel that hopelessness and discouragement.
00:09:21
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Yeah, I think people are afraid. Like you had mentioned, people are afraid to design because they're like, Oh, it's gonna look really bad. I should rely on like my index. Let's go right to that one. Fear of failure ego. Let's talk about ego. You guys have a healthy ego around your designs. I mean, I think I have a healthy ego in life.
00:09:45
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No, I think it is hard though. So from my perspective as a full-time professional, the goal is to make an object that the client will like. And I have a weird, unique process where I don't allow that much input from the
Design Education in Woodworking
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client. I give them an idea. I give them a rough guide of where it's going to go. And then sometimes it's a roll of the dice.
00:10:10
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And so there is the question of how far can I push the client and they'll be happy. And how far can I push myself without alienating the client, right? Because that's, that's a real thing that you have to contend with. As far as my own like play pieces, I don't give a shit if they're bad.
00:10:29
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Like I will do dumb shit just to see what happens because those there is built in acceptance of failure or the risk of failure in those moments. But those, you know, those are boxes and tiny sculptures and things I can do in a weekend or a few days. You know, it's different from spending a month or two months or if you're a hobbyist in your garage, six months on a piece and risk failure. That's devastating. Hey, Mary, how do you deal with your your ego?
00:10:58
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I think it actually takes me a little bit of time for my ego to come through. I definitely have one. But as you guys probably, I mean, so I mean, you guys probably know that I, I definitely self doubt a lot. And I tried to and I overthink can definitely be insecure. So for me, like, a lot of times, it's just the stock design is not good. It's not good. It's not good.
00:11:24
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And then once I see it, once I start making it, I think I see it visualizing and it's easier for me to see something in person in like physical form. And then like, yeah, I think this is like actually gonna be really good. And then at the end, I'm like, this is the most amazing thing in the world. Do you think about as you're making it, do you think about whether other people will like it or just whether you like it?
00:11:46
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I definitely think about both. I think whether I like, okay, so I will not design something unless I like it at least a little bit or not even a little bit, like a good amount. I don't even wanna start something because I, we were talking about this before, like I am able to make things so slowly. I wanna make sure that since I'm so slow, I have the time to kind of get to a design that I'm happy with. I won't just like,
00:12:13
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and be like, oh, that's good enough. I'm not totally happy, but I'm just going to make it. So that's my process, I guess. I want to be happy with the design, at least for the most part before I start.
00:12:24
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So you've minimized your chance of failure up front. Uh, yeah,
Technology's Role in Evolving Crafts
00:12:30
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I guess so. But you know, things happen and things change and mistakes are made. So sometimes the design has to change and that's my failure. How much of that do you think though is your personality versus your training as an architect? What do you mean?
00:12:45
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that planning process and the aversion to the risk of failure. Because I imagine an architect doesn't have the luxury of risk of failure. Definitely not. Right. So how much of that has played into it versus how much of that is just Mary's side? I don't know. It's probably a mix of both. I'm definitely someone who enjoys planning things in general. And like, yes, as an architect, you have to make sure everything is structurally sound, everything works, otherwise people will die.
00:13:10
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But yeah, I don't know. I can't really tell. I don't know. There's like a divide, but there's a reason why I was drawn to architecture and there's a reason why I like to plan things out. I like to model things and I, you see, and I do way too many sketches and yeah, I don't know. I don't have a good answer for that. It's probably good.
00:13:29
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So while we're hammering on Mary, let's, uh, let's hammer on another point. So Mary, you said to us at one point in our group chat on Instagram, which is private, by the way, thank you. You were one of the people who's like, I don't think I'm an artist now that I think about it. I think I'm a designer and you said that. And I sort of, I, I've been sort of wondering why you said that.
00:13:57
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Because I focus more, well, one, I am a product designer for my first job. So my life revolves so much around design in general, and that is for a client. You have to be aware of what are you contributing, and that brings value to someone else. It's not just a one-way road, kind of like
00:14:20
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here's something that I've created. And this is my like way of getting this out of my head, etc. And design, for me, is more product focused, like I'm solving a problem in these areas, especially as opposed to Eric, who doesn't even welcome the customer's input have
00:14:37
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the time. Zero. I will give them I will give them minimal feedback as possible. I make them feel like they have input. That's my job is I'm just joking. He does. Yes, like I will. This is what my my process with a client is tell
Sources and Philosophies of Creativity
00:14:55
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me what are the must haves, right? What are the dimensions that you want me to hit specific dimensions? If there are some tell me if you have a preference of what species
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and tell me if there are pieces, whether in my portfolio or in another place of inspiration that you prefer that I can work off of. That's about all of the input that they have on the piece. And then it's, you have to believe me that I'm gonna make the best piece I can in the time I'm making it. Because if you don't trust me, then like go to somebody else who's just gonna make what you want. And they do trust you, Eric.
00:15:25
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I think they do. But I think that is different for you from working with clients who have very specific demands of what you're putting in front of them. Yeah. And like I think I like to try to bridge the gap more because because I focus more on design and client work in general, like in woodworking.
00:15:43
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When I work with a client, I try to do more of what you do and input my own voice. I have a certain aesthetic and style, so I want to make sure that comes through. But I also will always send a sketch and a rendering or something to the client and be like, this is what I like. This is what I want to do. What do you think? What are your inputs? And that way, it's very much a collaboration. It's very much like 50-50.
00:16:07
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See, I know a lot of people work like that and I think there's a lot of value in that. The issue I've run into in that process and for any clients, past or future, I'm not disparaging you. I love you. I appreciate everything that you allow me to do in this life. However, I found that many clients most of the time don't know what they want.
00:16:29
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And so they have they have a feeling of what they want. Yes, they don't have the vocabulary or the visual library to kind of understand and articulate what they want. And so they're just kind of relying on you to be like, give me that feeling of this other piece. And it's your job as the artist or as the designer to dissect the design elements and principles in there and recreate that in a different piece.
00:16:55
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Yeah, I don't disagree. I think I definitely, I do that, but I also still send it over to them. Do you like it? Yeah, Eric. I don't do that. What do you do, Paul? Well, me, I used to sort of like Eric, that I would ask what are the must haves and I'd work my own vision within those confines. And funny enough, sometimes having some confines actually stimulates creativity.
00:17:22
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weird, because a blank piece of paper is just a bit too much. But actually having a few rules, and you come up with all these cool things that can fit in those rules. So that's sort of a counterintuitive point about design that having some limitations actually may stimulate design. For sure.
00:17:38
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And lately i got a little worn out of that after five years or so so i basically stop taking commissions for a small time and i've just been making whatever the hell i want so i'm back to the blank paper and i'll tell you it's a blessing and occurs because it's really your own voice but i go through these real peaks and valleys of motivation.
00:17:57
Speaker
Like I won't go in the shop for a week because I'm just like, uh, you know, I don't feel like it. And then I'll be so hot to trot about what I'm working on. It's weird, you know, whereas having client deadlines keeps you more regular. Um, so each, each way I work at it seems to have their own unique challenges. Um, I do want to put it back to Mary though. There was another point.
00:18:18
Speaker
that I think, Mary, you can actually uniquely contribute to, which is, look, there's a million books on how to cut dovetails and how to flatten boards and how to glue ups. Where is the education around design? I mean, it must exist. It must be in art schools. It's certainly not in the woodworking community. And I guess I'm asking, where is that education? Is it easily available to get to? And why isn't it part of the woodworking community?
00:18:44
Speaker
That's a very loaded question.
00:18:51
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I'm afraid I'm gonna sound so bougie. Do it. Sound bougie. Being elitist. Dude, bougie the shit out. Yeah, I mean, I can only speak from personal experience. I don't know if this is the case. But I, in my opinion, or in my experience, I have found the best way and easiest way to go to school for it. And maybe
00:19:18
Speaker
you don't have to go to school but having mentors and people who have been in the field really help you and guide you and but it's really important that you find the right people like the right people whose explorations and research are things that resonate with you and for me I went to design school and I went for it was called master of design which is extremely generic but it was generic for a purpose like bougie all right
00:19:57
Speaker
That's why we're friends.
Overcoming Creative Blocks
00:20:00
Speaker
But for me, I went to school. They kept it generic because they want people to be able to branch out. So it was people from all different kinds of backgrounds. I was an architect. There were product designers, former toy designers, and people who had never done design before. So the idea is to stimulate your design thinking. And it's not just confined to what you were before. If you are interested in product designer,
00:20:15
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Please master continue master. Please continue
00:20:28
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UX design, they gave us a way to do that through multiple projects. There was just like a large range of exploration. So then you can figure out, you know, what this is what I'm interested in. This is like, okay, a path that I really wanted to, like dive deep. So I think
00:20:44
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do that anyway like not going to school it's just you have to be able to spend the time and like do the projects and also talk to other people who could give you like let's think about like who who's in the woodworking field or like who might be listening to this what percentage of them are going to be able to go to school for design like zero percent
Human Preferences and Design Decisions
00:21:04
Speaker
yeah like tiny right so what what are we left with
00:21:08
Speaker
What can we do? Like I've looked for continuing education classes online about design and I can't seem to find the right thing. Yeah. It's really difficult. The, the thing is, I think I come, well, I don't know what kind of classes have you been looking for? I mean, like generalized design, like is there a way to learn the, just like the basic rules of wood movement and joinery, is there like a similar thing or you know, an analogous thing in design?
00:21:37
Speaker
I think you have to be more specific, though, because if I'm thinking about my UX and product design world, which is all digital, that's not as applicable. But if you're talking about industrial design, I think that is probably my biggest influence. You really focus on what are like, it gets so granular. What is the kind of curve? There's so many different numbers and letters for like, this is the radius of these specific curves. Apple has the same curve, I forget what it's called, for all of their products. And it's very, you know,
00:22:05
Speaker
continuous and makes their brand what it is. So I really like industrial design as an inspiration. Architecture, I think, is also related. It's always like physical design projects. And I think that's where the best inspiration comes from to translate into woodworking because it hasn't been done before. It's something unique where you can take inspiration from, for me, it's usually architecture. It's like large sweeping monuments and simple forms and making that into
00:22:33
Speaker
something from wood, at least for me, I don't know, maybe Eric is different idea that because you want to see. So also bougie. It is bougie. Listen, I've never denied it. It is bougie. I do think that there are places to learn design. I do think it is more on the industrial scale. I
00:22:54
Speaker
I don't know that there are like continuing education classes around that because people, well, I think this comes back to like the history of this craft that we love and how it's evolved into the modern age, right? Because you think of artists and designers and you think the media that those people inhabit are painting, sculpture, right? Music to a large extent. And these are,
00:23:23
Speaker
processes. These are crafts that have been
00:23:27
Speaker
seriously altered by the advent of technology in the last hundred years. Let's take the painter for example, right? The painter for the history of the ability to put images on a wall has been a craft, right? It's been the craft of storytelling and it's been the craft of actually painting. Renaissance painters were not considered artists. They were considered craftsmen.
Nature's Influence on Design
00:23:47
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Renaissance sculptors were considered craftsmen. They were workmen, they were blue collar. And then you have the advent of photography and all of a sudden you don't need
00:23:56
Speaker
craftsmen to paint a painting of these people anymore because you can snap an image. And now you want to hire artists who are capable of creating these images with their hands and their imaginations that stir emotion and stir experience. And I wonder if because there hasn't until recently in the last 20 years or so been this thing in furniture and woodworking, our craft has largely been the same since the advent of the table saw.
00:24:24
Speaker
And even then, that's just an advancement of hand tools. But now with the advent of CNCs, 3D printing, computer technology, I wonder if the same isn't gonna happen to woodworking over the next hundred years. So I think it's just the way that we view and the general public views what we do as a craft rather than as an art, which may change over time. But in this present day, there aren't really places that teach
00:24:52
Speaker
continuing education in design, because nobody's really interested in learning it. Well, like what? What? Why? Why would you said is true. And it's horrible. It's horrifying. Like it's also it's also a matter of contentment, right? So it's like, let's, let's be real, the vast majority of people who are hobbyist woodworkers are like, white doctors and lawyers.
00:25:22
Speaker
Right? There's old white males who are in their garage. Some white bearded men. Some white bearded men. I am the stereotype. You are the stereotype? I am the stereotype. Okay? We are what we are. But these are people who do this as a hobby, who do this for fun and find contentment in making a thing with their hands. They have other avenues of intellectual engagement.
00:25:47
Speaker
And I think that part of their brain is engaged in their work and they need a thing to engage their hands to feel some kind of completion, right? And so I don't know that the spiritual and intellectual energy it takes to design an object and care how its place in the universe fits. I don't know that that's what they're looking for. So it's hard to sell a class to nobody. I don't know.
00:26:18
Speaker
understand what you're saying but i do think that there are classes that do that
Collaborative Creativity and Economic Influences
00:26:24
Speaker
teach you know i don't know i still think like industrial design is what i come back to because i think that industrial design is really similar to woodworking but it fills that question of how do we try to create new things because like when you're a student in industrial design you first i think you first start out with uh
00:26:42
Speaker
you know creating prompts like working for a company or I think the students at my school they worked with like a lawn care product which seems really boring and mundane but it immerses them first into what are the businesses in this in this field it's not just like you being able to create whatever you want you have to stick to guidelines etc that gives them like limitations and then the next project would be something more interesting like maybe it's a car and like automotive sort of thing and then like once they have those limitations they can start developing their own
00:27:12
Speaker
design thinking and then I think from there they can be a little bit more original. So I feel strongly about industrial design being a really good way to woodworking I think.
00:27:24
Speaker
Okay, so two points now. The first is that I have a personal mission to convince people that they should care about design. It's like all I talk about. It's why we started this podcast. It's like, right? I mean, I don't think it's okay that we punt on that. And I think it's lame. And I think it is way more fulfilling when you pursue both.
00:27:49
Speaker
the making with your hands and the design at the same time. So it's really all I want to talk about. I want to inspire myself to do it better. I want to inspire others to do it better. I want to be inspired to do it. So I think that's a hugely important topic.
00:28:05
Speaker
The second point is that you've already sort of transitioned us to our next big topic, which is not why do we avoid it, but where do we go for our creativity? Mary, you've already given an answer, industrial design. That's a major source of your creativity. And you've also answered architecture. Yeah. And Eric, what are your major sources of creativity when you reach into the design pouch? I think
00:28:34
Speaker
There's kind of two avenues that I take. It depends on the piece. One of them is how do I make a functional object as simple and elegant as possible so that it's not a practice in ego. Like your latest YouTube video?
00:28:52
Speaker
big practice and ego. Absolutely. But it is it is a hope to make an understated thing that functions and makes people happy in that that requires drawing inspiration visually from other artists who have done similar work and then artists that's your answer. It's it's the
00:29:15
Speaker
This is what I call like the George Lucas effect, right? So people give George Lucas this all this credit for being this creative genius. And I'm like, first of all, he retold like the same story over and over. This is the story he pulled all of I can't remember the name of the film. Maybe you do the samurai film that he pulled all the visuals from.
00:29:33
Speaker
So I don't know, but I know he pulled a lot of inspiration from Dune. For the story. Yeah, but there's a specific samurai film that he basically, like there are clips in Star Wars that are shot for shot remakes of that film. And then if you look at the characters he invented on all the other planets, everybody's like, Oh my God, these aliens are so original. I'm like, he took an elephant head and he put it on a cat body. Like that's all it's just an amalgamation
Conclusion and Aftershow Tease
00:29:58
Speaker
of elements, right?
00:29:58
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George is going to be pissed when he listens to a podcast by the way. It's fine. I will never get out of the abyss after that one. I live next to Luca Studios. I literally live next to it. Tell George I said hi. He'll know what it means. It's an amalgamation of things. You're pulling visual elements from different sources and you're smashing them together in a way that
00:30:26
Speaker
maybe somebody's done it in the past, but it's unique to you because you only are just discovering that combination of things. What are your favorite sources? Oh, they can come from anywhere. It depends on the object, right? So for the table I just made, it's
00:30:42
Speaker
very clearly in the Nakashima vocabulary. And so I think they've already made the perfect trestle table. And so my goal was I wanted to make a trestle table because I had this lab that fit the space that I needed it to be in. And how do I make a trestle table that's beautiful and elegant without just ripping off that specific table that they've already made? Because I think that one in and of itself, I was like, they've done it. There's no reason to do it again. They've done it.
00:31:11
Speaker
But I want to do it again. So how do I do this in a way that is my own slightly different and not plagiarizing? I think it bears noting that you both were at Nakashima today. We were both at Nakashima today. It was fantastic.
00:31:30
Speaker
But the other avenue that I go down for a piece is, and this one's a bit more ethereal, but I think it's just as much fun, is I have a philosophical concept that I want to relay. And then it's a question of,
00:31:45
Speaker
how do I get the viewer of the object to engage with this piece or engage with the concept almost subconsciously in the way that I want them to, right? So like this desk that we're sitting at right now, it's got this, it's not a philosophical concept, but it was early on in my design.
00:32:07
Speaker
explorations and I wanted to make an object in a table specifically that invited the viewer to walk around at 360 degrees. And so this thing has these running lines. It's moving up in this kind of spiraling fashion. I took this inspiration from a tree that I saw out on campus and it just kind of gnarled and bent over. And so the day that I finished it, I hadn't yet put finish on it, but it was up on an assembly bench. I was up at CFC doing a fellowship in 2018, I think it was.
00:32:35
Speaker
And it's an open campus. So some guy just walked in to the studio. I didn't know him. He didn't know me. We didn't really acknowledge one another. He was just by himself walking around, looking around. And he walked up to the table and he stopped and he paused. And he slowly walked 360 degrees around the table.
00:32:55
Speaker
And then himself and smiled and walked off. Didn't say a word to me. And I was like, I won. I did the thing. I did the thing worked the way that I wanted it to work. So a philosophical concept was the starting point. Yeah. It was this idea of like, how do I, how do I get somebody to engage with this piece, uh, in all dimensions, right? Not just like a normal table where you go front view, side view, three quarter view. Great. Um, you know, or, or.
00:33:25
Speaker
like this liquor cabinet that I made over COVID, where it has these ripples on the front of the cabinet and the idea was try to express visually this idea of the reverberations of the physical interactions we have with one another, obviously, because we were all so isolated during COVID. But an unintended consequence of that was I made what ended up being like a very
00:33:54
Speaker
clear handle for a door that doesn't have a knob or a handle on it. And so it's always so interesting to me to watch people walk up to that and handle it in the exact same spot. You can open that door along the entire length of the door, but everybody grabs it right there. And it's just one of those intuitive human things where you're like, why do people do that? And how can I get them to do that in some other way on some other piece?
00:34:18
Speaker
It must it must have been I don't think I don't know where I pulled that that ripple from I was just really into texture at the moment, but I think yeah, it could have definitely been like in an extension of Esherick I've been a fan of Esherick's work for a decade. Well, what I what I love that you said Eric is how you were using philosophical either ideas or questions or
00:34:47
Speaker
You were using ideas to guide the design.
00:34:51
Speaker
Ideas that are much bigger than furniture. It wasn't an idea about furniture. It was like, oh, it's COVID and reverberation or togetherness or whatever you had as your idea. Like you were using that to fuel your furniture design. Like that to me is super cool because when people see or hear that that is what guided it, it just, you understand it in a whole new sense. And I think many painters do that. You always hear about like, you know, contemporary artists. Like what were they going for with this piece?
00:35:20
Speaker
There's always a psychological underpinning. I think that comes back to the that feeling I was talking about with clients before is they want a feeling. And my job is to provide them that feeling. I don't think it's dissimilar is like I had this feeling I had this thought and then the next question is, how do I express that visually with so cool, right? It's true.
00:35:42
Speaker
bringing bringing back to to music like it's the same thing is like you have a feeling and emotion a moment how do you express that sonically without the use of words and we built in western society this this vocabulary of musical notes and combinations that allow like the moment you hear that half tone dissonance you're like some shit's about to happen
00:36:04
Speaker
I don't know what, but it makes me anxious. And that's purposeful. And you use that in those moments. And I think there are certain design tools and principles that allow you to accomplish that same thing. The question is, how do I get Paul Jasper to feel that same thing that I'm trying to get Mary Sci to feel that I'm trying to get somebody that I don't know. Good luck. I'm dead inside, so that'd be tough.
00:36:29
Speaker
So as you know, I'm a scientist, right? So one of the things I like to do is ask questions. And that, to me, has been an unexpected source of design inspiration for myself. So there's a lot of questions, I think, that people are afraid to ask because the answer seems obvious. But if you actually ask it anyway,
00:36:55
Speaker
you realize very quickly that the answer is actually not obvious. You might think it's obvious, and it's not. And it has led to extremely interesting avenues of research. So I've learned this lesson to not ask, don't avoid what you think are dumb questions. And so I asked a simple question. This led to a whole design thrust for like five years. The question was,
00:37:20
Speaker
Do humans prefer certain shapes? That was it. Yes. Mary, do they? Yes. How do you know that? There's been a lot of research done on. Yes. Yeah. There's been a lot of research done. Like look at any industrial design or like product design company.
00:37:42
Speaker
Like why do people like the iPhone? And then like once the iPhone was invented, why did so many other companies do exactly the same thing? And this isn't even just physical, like there's trends that happen even in a product new X design too. In the nineties, everything was like super square, 90 degrees. And then we over-corrected in my opinion and went extremely round. And now we're in the middle. We're kind of like still kind of, you know, rectangular, but with like really
00:38:08
Speaker
small corner, pebbles, things like that. So Mary has gone into exactly what, what, so you said there's research on it. There absolutely is. Uh, and I'm not, you know, I'm like, okay, let's find this research. I have a account on PubMed. I searched the research, you know, I searched research papers all the time. Let's find these. And after like about an hour, I found it, I got myself on a line of research that is like human preference for shapes. And I guess the, the no duh is like, why aren't we using this information to guide our designs?
00:38:39
Speaker
If you want people to like what you make so that they buy it, shouldn't you know what the human preferences are at a biological level? Okay, so who's going to do the research though, because I think people rely on lots of things. There are people who are interested in that and they're willing to do the research, but a lot of other people like
00:38:58
Speaker
In fashion, they allow the larger companies or like the experts to do that research. Yeah, let it trickle down to the everyday person. And then that's whatever. I think that's, I think we shouldn't avoid that. I mean, look, it's as simple as going to pubmed.com and searching like search terms. Anyway, I found a whole line of papers. I read them. And the question is, and like, this is so crude. Do we like prefer sharp angles or curves? Correct a linear or curvilinear?
00:39:28
Speaker
Eric, what's the answer? We're the human body. It's curvilinear. Mary, what's your answer? Yeah, I think I would agree. Yeah, yeah, it's 100% curvilinear every time. And the way they test this is very interesting. They'll take for example, two rooms, and they'll deck it out with two chairs and a desk and a window and a light and a plant. And these two rooms will have the exact same elements in the exact same arrangement. But one has all squares and one nothing has a sharp corner in it. It's
00:39:53
Speaker
all curves, but everything else is the same. And they ask people, hey, what do you prefer? And you have to ask people, you know, you can't ask them, you know, do they like rectilinear first or curvilinear second, because the order in which you asked them could be influencing the answer. So you have to sort of, you know, randomize, which you asked them first. Anyway, time and time and time again, through the 70s, through the 1980s, to the 2000s, all these papers of rectilinear versus curvilinear, the answer is
00:40:22
Speaker
undeniably curve linear. And then I look around, and I'm like, why is everything fucking square? Yep.
00:40:31
Speaker
like everything's a fucking square. Why? Because it's easy. Because it's easy. That's it. It's easy to make. And look at our shops. Everything's set up to make everything square. Yeah, flat, square, 90 degrees, everything. Funny enough, though, cars now, there's nothing square on them. They're, they're curved on every surface. I was gonna bring cars out when you were talking about the balance between curve and square because they were
00:40:57
Speaker
they were square. They were 70s 80s. Everything was very angular. And then we got to the 90s. And we were like shit wave of the future. Let's go back to round because it was round in the 50s. And then we got to the early 2000s late 2000s. And we were like, this looks old and dated. And now the
00:41:14
Speaker
Now they're in between, like they're curvilinear forms with these soft peaks because the eye also likes lines. And this is part of the reason why furniture, in my opinion, is not exclusively curvilinear because you have to impart lines for your eye to follow. If a thing is a blob, your eye goes, okay, I don't know what to do with this. If you have a blob with a line that's drawing you around somewhere, your eye has something to do. It moves somewhere around the piece, just like the human body, because everything comes out of that. It sounds very sensual, Eric.
00:41:43
Speaker
But it is sensual, right? Like, everything comes down to how can you replicate the curvilinear form of the human body? This is why we prefer balance as well, because you're a symmetrical person. If you have a simple... The face Mary is making right now is amazing. She's uncomfortable. Listen, she grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is uncomfortable with the acknowledgement that we are sexual beings. Like, it's fine.
00:42:12
Speaker
Eric, you are getting yourself in deeper and deeper. Oh my god, I kill you. Okay, well, you are the person who has the sculpture of a naked lady downstairs in your living room. I have multiple sculptures that are very sexual around this house. I admit it. There's so many things I want to say right now, and I'm not going to say it.
00:42:40
Speaker
So coming back to the topic before we completely degenerate, I decided to do a very non-scientific experiment based on this research. I've been making square boxes. I'm like, let's make a curved box. OK. And I'll see. I'll see if people go crazy. And they did. I made this stupid little. It's not stupid. I don't mean to tell you. It's like a stadium box. And I call it a stadium because it's a stadium shape, which is two half circles connected by lines.
00:43:10
Speaker
Uh, people want nuts for it. The uptake was unbelievable. I was really shocked. Now it's, it's not, it's anecdotal and it's not scientifically controlled and I didn't measure things, but whatever. Um, but to me, it, it was undeniable proof that.
00:43:26
Speaker
Yeah. You know, if you could translate some of these curve shapes into furniture or forms, it definitely stimulates people. Um, and I should be listening to this research and that stadium shape has been, I've been using it again and again and again, you got, you know, Eric, you've seen it a thousand times over, uh, upside down, left, right, horizontal, a whiskey cabinet, big, small in between. So just in terms of when you feel stuck with design.
00:43:55
Speaker
And like, where do I start designing from? This was just literally a question, what shape do humans prefer? And I've been chasing that, the answer, or working with that answer as a design thrust for like five years. And it's still going. I mean, I'm sure I'll use it again and again and again. But that's just one source of inspiration. I think nature, like nature, right? We all love nature.
00:44:21
Speaker
We see it from the shells and the Newport School of, you know, a period furniture to, I mean, literally everywhere. How much art is about nature? We all just love it. We love the way trees looks and animals. And so, except Mary, she just wants to pave the world with her industrial design. You know, if you're feeling, uh, if you're feeling, oh my God.
00:44:50
Speaker
I think nature is a good spot for people to start if they're feeling sort of like stymied. I think collaborations stimulate creativity because you're allowing another human to like influence your point of view and stir that into a pot together. Have you had that happen?
00:45:12
Speaker
Oh, for sure. I love collaborations for that exact reason. They're stimulating, they're interesting, and for me, in my experience with the people I've collaborated with, there is a great deal of freedom in, hey, we know that this is not going to be either of our specific voices.
00:45:31
Speaker
And so we run the high risk of this being a failure. But that's the fun of it, right? You'll inevitably discover something new by collaborating, even if the piece is an absolute train wreck. Because you're dealing with somebody, not only somebody else's design aesthetic and design experience, but somebody else's experience of making. Their process of crafting the object. And so
00:45:56
Speaker
Like you you learn even if it's not the same medium is you even if they are a ceramicist or a glass blower or whatever it is like. The way that they approach their craft can inform your own practice and a useful.
00:46:13
Speaker
Absolutely. Now, Mary, I was thinking about architecture and design, you know, you, you mentioned designers have like a goal, they have to like fit this design into a specific space, right? You're given a problem to solve. Has is architecture your main form of inspiration for your design?
00:46:36
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I would definitely say so. So I was thinking about this and I realized that, I realized it influences me more than I really ever thought because architecture, I mean, I take inspiration from my favorite architects like, uh, Louis Kahn, Tada Omdo, and these like really large sweeping curves and forms. And I realized that I tend to think about things
00:47:03
Speaker
in large scale like those buildings and then kind of like miniaturize them into a furniture tangible piece and I think that yeah that those elements from architecture what I enjoy the most so I want to incorporate them into my pieces I think I like there's a fun fact is like
00:47:21
Speaker
Whenever I finish a piece, I try to take a macro photograph where it looks like those confusing perspectives that you can't tell if it's a part of a building or if it's part of your furniture. So if you're thinking about a row of columns, I can take a photograph of my last piece I did of I had a bunch of consecutive slats. I like being able to frame that photograph where it looks like, oh, is this with the lighting, with the shadows, with the proportions?
00:47:50
Speaker
Like does this look, is this a building or is it like a small furniture piece? And I do the same thing with like my tiny scale models too. That's why I make my scale models. So I want to make sure that the proportions feel right. So I think, yeah, that's, architecture is definitely my largest inspiration. I think that there's so much brilliance out there in these large forms that people don't, they just kind of take for granted. They just, they don't really notice it, especially in like the simpler ones with, you know, I don't know.
00:48:20
Speaker
Louis Kahn and his concrete. I don't know if people are... I'm not familiar with his name. I think you explained it to him.
00:48:29
Speaker
Yeah, so he's known for really reshaping what concrete can do. He did really interesting large geometric forms with concrete in India and a lot in the US as well. But yeah, I think that there's something to be learned from these monuments that people just kind of walk under and don't notice because they're so much bigger than them and they don't look up that much. And I think that's, yeah, we're missing that.
00:49:00
Speaker
Do you ever find that the creativity well runs dry? For me? Yeah, and you get like the equivalent of what is writer's block.
00:49:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, what do you do? If you saw my sketchbook, it's literally like, if you see my iPad has 1000s of pages of like, this is terrible. But like, I need to just get all of this stuff out there. And like, if I have design block, then I just start sketching. It's just and I start like putting photos on the page. And like, even if I don't like, I just start I forced myself to like start sketching and sometimes three modeling and stuff like that. So drawing gets you out of it.
00:49:38
Speaker
Yeah, I just need to force myself to keep going and something will happen. Sometimes it takes much longer, but that's okay. Eric, how do you get out of your block? I force myself to make something. It doesn't have to be the thing. It could be the thing. It could be like if the thing is low stakes, it could be just make the object and risk failure. But if it is an object for a client or something, I can't
00:50:09
Speaker
It's something I need more time for and I'm not sure where to go with it. I will try to stop thinking about it and I will force myself to get back into the habit of the muscle memory of making a thing. Because something about that, for whatever reason, the way my brain works, like the moment I'm making an object,
00:50:29
Speaker
I'm, it's like this thing of like, Oh yeah, I know how to fucking do this. You know, and, and, and I might do, I might stumble across a thing. I might see a line. I might impart a line on a piece of wood where I go, Oh, that's the idea for this next thing. I just, that's like, that's where it is. That's concludes the problem. Um, so it's, it's both allowing myself the space to not think about it and giving myself enough stimuli where something might spark that idea. And I go, okay, now I'm ready to start.
00:51:00
Speaker
What about you? Yeah, for myself, I usually, I don't push that day, I usually like stop, because I find I just waste a lot of time and get frustrated. So I like I sleep. And then the next day, usually, it just feels a little different just magically. But also looking at other artists, and I don't mean woodworkers, I mean, looking at art outside of woodworking.
00:51:22
Speaker
And I think that's a mistake a lot of us make as woodworkers is we only consume a diet of other people's woodworking. How boring is that? Not that they're woodworking is boring. I don't that that wasn't a shot across the bow. But when you think about how
00:51:40
Speaker
But when you think about how wide the world of art is from painting to sculpture to marble, like, you know, a marble freezer, you name it, what period, you know, periods and contemporary art. If you think about how big that world is,
00:51:57
Speaker
And you just start sampling from that world and looking at objects, like Mary, you were saying, make a note, look around you, right? Suddenly you find those things wanting to creep into your own work, whether it's architecture, or whether it's a painting. So I mean, I feel like at this point, we should
00:52:16
Speaker
we should sort of summarize what we've listed as our sources of design inspiration. Because I think people like, you know, there's a lot of talk. So let's bring it back to, so I've heard architecture, which really is like other fields, other fields of art inspired design, right? I've heard nature.
00:52:40
Speaker
Mm hmm. That's a huge one. We all do that. Yeah, it's so big. You know, it's such a given. I almost don't feel like we need to even talk about it. I've heard. Say it again. Sculpture.
00:52:56
Speaker
sculpture, other forms of art. Specifically for anybody who's like looking for where do I find sculptural inspiration or visual inspiration? There's a series, the 500 series or the 400 series depending on the books, right? 500 tables, 500 chairs.
00:53:12
Speaker
But in that series specifically, and to this point, there are two books, 500 bracelets and 500 paper forms, paper sculptures, something of that. I can't remember exactly. Both of those I think are more helpful than the 500 cabinets, 500 boxes, 500 chairs, because you see these forms that are outside of woodworking and they can form the choices that you make as a woodworker and you create really interesting things that way. Great point.
00:53:38
Speaker
Yeah, so look outside of woodworking. We talked about how questions can motivate design. We've talked about how collaborations can motivate new design. I would also add to it, technology can inspire design. Since I've gotten a CNC, it has definitely affected the designs I will pursue or not pursue because they were literally intractable previously.
00:54:01
Speaker
They were unmakeable until that machine came into my shop. And suddenly a whole new avenue of designs is on the table. So we can put that whole like CNC traditional woodworker bullshit to bed. This is a massive design enabling machine. And I think it's part of every shop from now on.
00:54:22
Speaker
I agree with you, and I do think, and we're not gonna get into this subject right now, because this is an entire episode in and of itself, I think that is where this problem with generative AI is going to go eventually. It is 15 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever it was, when CNCs started to become a major player in this field, everybody was freaking out that it was the end of craft, that there was no longer going to be employed woodworkers in shops, it's all going to be computers,
00:54:52
Speaker
And 20 years later, there's still full-time woodworkers everywhere. So I think this is going to be the same thing. I think it's going to limit some aspects of woodworking, but I also think it's going to open up a huge range of opportunities that could be really interesting and otherwise hitherto have not been possible.
00:55:11
Speaker
Did you just say hitherto? Not the hitherto, because they've been much better elitists. Mary, Mary, he called you bougie earlier. I know, right? Excuse me. How dare you. I'm sorry. Is he tier two four? Is that better?
00:55:30
Speaker
I'll add one more to the list. I think marketing and economics can also inspire design because I'll give you this in 10 seconds. I noticed in the everyday carry field, which is people who like pocket knives and trinkets and flashlights and all this, I realized there was no fine woodworking.
00:55:48
Speaker
And I was like, why not? That's weird. I'll try to make something, you know, find woodworking and see if it has uptick in that community. And sure enough, it did. And so by seeing a marketing opportunity or a niche that was vacant and seeing I could contribute to it, that drove my design towards everyday carry gear, which was like a whole nother thrust that I've been going on for two or three years now.
00:56:10
Speaker
So, you know, everyone's like, it's all been done before. Yeah, I think it's just about your perspective. Are you looking outside yourself? Are you, you know, gobbling up art around you and talking to people and collaborating and looking, you know, for opportunities? I do think there's a lot of possibility here.
00:56:27
Speaker
Yeah, I am glad that you also brought up technology. Because the CNC, I feel like that has a reputation for being a production work tool. And a lot of people just use it, I guess, for batching out mass production. But I think people don't approach these objects as ways of exploration. And I can talk about this forever, because I did my master's thesis on this with 3D printing. But CNC, think of all of the capabilities that you can't do by hand.
00:56:56
Speaker
And you can do utilizing all the different axes and like being able to push that boundary with a new tool is so much more interesting than, or I don't know, in my perspective and like, you know, like replicating something that could probably already be done by hand. Like it would just be slower if you're just cutting out like a simple shape. But I think that I'm glad that you have my CNC because I love it.
00:57:21
Speaker
Mary, I couldn't have a shop without it ever again. I've seen how much it enables creativity. And you're right, everyone uses it to make like stupid jigs and forms, which is fine. But I think it I think it's a design tool. I love it. I just insulted pretty much everyone. The entirety of our listener base. Sorry, everyone.
00:57:42
Speaker
I started out offending old white men, and then you brought it home with offending people. Well, you know how we're going to have a nurse now. Eric, you know how we're going to make it up to him? I have a way that we can make it up to him. We're going to move on to our favorite segment, the slide, where we feature some of the unreal thirst trap DMs that our friend Eric gets.
00:58:17
Speaker
This slide, we're gonna slow things down, draw back, pour some wine, light some candles, cuz we're sliding into Eric's DMs. Eggplant energy. God damn. Why is Mickey unreasonably good at that? Why have I never heard this voice before in my marriage? Because that shit's hot. That's hot, that's hot.
00:58:46
Speaker
So thirsty. Yeah, it's so thirsty. So today we have a message is it let's see it's this time is from a lady Eric last time it was from a man and this time is from a lady. Mary get your thinking cap on for the after show so that we can offer this poor soul some advice. Hey, Eric, your page doesn't indicate that you have a wife. Do you want one?
00:59:17
Speaker
Woo! Very up front, man. Very straightforward. I'm horny. To be clear, that was not the DM. I don't remember. I'm pretty sure that's part of the DM without even saying it.
00:59:38
Speaker
All right. On that note, that's a wrap for this episode of Woodworking is Bullshit. If you'd like to join us for a discussion on offering this soul some advice, Mary's always got some nice girl advice for us. Join us in the after show. You can get access to the after show by subscribing to our Patreon, which you can find in our info somewhere. We'll have to figure out where we post it.
01:00:05
Speaker
Uh, cause we haven't posted it yet, so I don't know what it's saying, but you'll find it. We'll definitely make it available in our intro or rather information. Uh, also in the after show, we are going to be tackling a topic this week called, uh, what is it now? Feature a fail. That's what we call it because too often we talk about our successes. So the three of us have, uh, gathered up some failures from the last.
01:00:32
Speaker
period of time and we're gonna talk about how we fucked it all up. Thanks for joining and we'll talk to you next time. Thanks, Brendan. Bye.