Look Back to Go Forward

I am ecstatic to finally get Look & Logo out of a sketchbook and into real life. It has been a long time coming and a struggle back and forth conceptualizing what this site should be. Finally I just took the leap and committed to a blog for visual design analysis and inspiration. Just pressing 'publish' on this site gives me a rush of excitement imagining some of the awesome content I have planned ahead.

For the longest time I have been wanting to start a blog. Nothing fancy, just a way to share my thoughts, inspirations, reading, writing with the world. A place to get all these words and ideas out of my cluttered mind and countless sketchbooks. It is worth taking a minute to reflect and look back on how this project came to life, maybe you can apply something to your own inspirations, ideas, or work.  

“Look back to go forward” was a powerful phrase I heard in May and it has stuck with me ever since. Lisa Congdon, an amazing designer and author, said these five words on a stage at the How Design Live conference in Chicago and they continued to echo in my mind as I flew home. The 4 hour flight was filled with contemplation about where I have been and where I wanted to go. It was the best kind of advice: the kind you didn’t know you needed until it was finally said out loud.

For me, it was both a challenge and a reassurance. Tempting me to take a deeper look backwards at where I’ve been before I dive into whatever may lie ahead. As I looked out on the clouds from my window seat, music thumping in my headphones, Lisa's words were ringing in my ears.

A sample of Lisa Congdon's 365 Days of Hand Lettering

I spent hours and eventually days looking back on all the projects I worked on over the last 6 years. Which ones resonated the most vs. which ones failed to even get off the ground. How did I get to this point in my career? What role did my education, my interests, my peers, my travels, my time spent with my friends all play on where I wanted to go in the future? What did I regret not doing? I began to align all the items of my past with a list of my hopes, dreams, and goals. By taking this long look back I was able to get a much clearer sense about what I’ve always wanted rather than just what recent idea had captivated my attention. 

This became even more clear when I got home and began to sift through old college notebooks, journals from when I studied abroad, work from my past jobs, and the countless sketchbooks stacked on my shelf over the years. One thing stood out as I revisited all those memories....An unrelenting desire to start something.

There are countless times I scribbled notes in these pages about starting something and sharing it with the world. Whether it was a new app, a new blog, a new company, a new product to pitch on shark tank the list seemed never-ending. These lofty ideas were all there, half thought out, as if waiting for me to come back to them. What good were they doing just sitting on my bookshelf?

Look & Logo is not going to be a running list of me rehashing of all these half-baked ideas, that would more of a mess than some of these notebooks. But along the way I noticed I was writing more and more about design. Things that enticed me about the profession, questions that clients often needed a little more help understanding, lessons I could learn from the best in the business, and where I saw the industry going. These all seemed like great conversations to start with my peers - but I needed to build a solid foundation.

So I began to read about design. I found new blogs, I purchased books, and I dove straight into the deep end. But it wasn't enough to understand design from someone else's point of view, I needed to establish my own.

So I began to write. I wrote all winter. I missed out on fun trips with friends, seeing family, or a hungover night at the bars and chose to dive deep into researching what the latest design agencies and freelancers were doing and what I could learn from them. Ultimately the 10,000+ words I wrote turned into The Most Influential Redesigns of 2016 which I shared on Medium.com. This was a great place for me to start a conversation about the importance of building a consistent look and logo, but it wasn't enough. So I built this site as a platform to create more and share often. I am happy to finally put this into existence and am excited to see what comes next.

I challenge you to do the same thing. If you’re one of my friends reading this, 1) I appreciate the support and 2) what have you been putting off doing and why didn't you pursue it?... maybe it is worth taking another look at. If you are a creative stranger who found their way to this site, I challenge take a long look back into your sketchbooks, laptop, and mind. Look back and see where the concept development stalled, ask yourself why it stalled, if it still has wings, and how you want to go forward. 

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Big Magic, writes about this idea at length and makes a compelling argument for ideas being an almost magnetic entity that can visit us and form a partnership with us...all we have to do is be willing to say yes to the idea.

“Sometimes – rarely, but magnificently – there comes a day when you’re open and relaxed enough to actually receive something. Your defences might slacken and your anxieties might ease, and then magic can slip through. The idea, sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you...You will start to notice all sorts of signs pointing you towards the idea. Everything you see and touch and do will remind you of the idea. The idea will wake you up in the middle of the night and distract you from your everyday routine. The idea will not leave you alone until it has your fullest attention.

And then, in a quiet moment, it will ask, “Do you want to work with me?”

It’s a little sad to admit, but my sketchbooks filled with these lost ideas. I strongly believe that by bringing this idea to life it will make the next a little smoother, whatever it may be. Even though most of the work had already been done, the articles dreamed of, the writing scribbled in my notebooks, I needed that last push. A little nudge from Lisa Congdon to simply take a “look back to go forward”. When I looked, I discovered all the pieces laying there just waiting for me to put together.

I encourage you to read more about Lisa's journey from sharing her drawings on Instagram to publishing numerous books on design and creativity. It is also worth checking out the book Big Magic if you want to take that next creative step in your life. Or follow simply along here at Look&Logo to keep up with my latest work, writing, and be inspired by the amazing designers I highlight on my Instagram account. Enjoy!