How many of you have had this experience? You’ve just typed something up in either some word processor or PhotoShop, you’re comfortable with your copy, but now you want to find the right font. You know the one – the font that says, “I’m a professional graphic designer, but I’m totally down-to-Earth, and I have a laid-back sense of humor.” That font. No. It’s not Helvetica. And HELL no. It’s not Curlz, Papyrus, Comic Sans, or Ransom. The only problem is, you have a typeface library of 15,000. You select Arial and start taping the down arrow, allowing your eyes to glaze over just enough to catch the aura of the font when it flashes by. Somewhere around Chaucer New, you start to question the spleling spelling of your own name. By the time you approach the end of your library, Zapf makes as much sense as any other. (It’s kind of like Wingdings – all pictograms)
The realization here is that sometimes the more I look at something, regardless of how familiar I am with that thing/situation/problem/whatever, the less able I am (sometimes) to figure that thing out. If I leave it unchecked long enough, it’s going to devolve into the font search. I’m going to question the splleeelllig of mine own name. Dangit.
…Anyway…
If you’ve read the two preceding posts in this series, you may be asking, “Why bother thinking about this stuff? I mean everything we do is weird if you break it down into the most basic components,” and you’ve got a real point there. The real purpose for this exercise has been to demonstrate that very point. Every day we do things (such as drink coffee and drive in cars) that are rather bizarre if you think about them. Does their bizarre nature make them bad? I’ve already said that it doesn’t. Does it mean we can incorporate any behavior into our daily routine based on the premise that a little more weirdness won’t hurt? Not necessarily.
What I am saying is this: there are a great many things out there that seem outlandish at first, but can really be quite beneficial if only given a chance. The same goes for people. You may have picked up on the strain in my stream-of-consciousness writing that I’m not given to what some call “normalcy.” It has been my experience though that an ability to break a process (or problem) down to its most basic components and analyze it from different perspectives leads to improvement to the system (or a solution to the problem) in ways that traditional problem solvers might not get to right away. Think of it as solving a jigsaw puzzle by looking at it while standing on your head. When you’re upside-down, things just look a bit different.
What if our approach to finding the right font took a similar twist? When I worked as a graphic designer for a local sign shop, I would simply use the Wheel of Fortune letters (RSTLNE,rstlne) to find my font, then paste in the pre-written copy once I’d found it. I found it easiest to solve the problem by removing the conventions. In other words, the things that made sense to me (eg English phonetics and spelling) distracted me from finding the solution I needed. I needed to look at the pieces of the problem (In this example, the letter shapes themselves) without the complete problem getting in the way. What if we approached our problems like this? Start with the most basic components. Does this solution work? What if we add in a layer of complexity? It still works? Let’s add some more. By the time you arrive at the big picture again, your solution may be something elegant and simple, or something utterly bizarre. Or both?
I would love to hear stories from you about unconventional solutions you’ve found to situations or problems by looking at the pieces of the problem instead of the whole thing. Feel free to contact me or simply comment below.
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