A few years ago, I spent too much money on plates and bowls crafted by a local Melbourne potter. A potter I’d seen at markets for years, her work getting better and better with every throw. Plates and bowls. Such ordinary objects. Objects that are so easy to acquire for any price, at any time,… Continue reading The importance of investing in everyday things
Author: Matt Shanks
Learning through mimicry
It’s surprising what your fingers will do, automatically, when you’ve spent some time copying the writers you admire, word-for-word.
A team that sits together, ships together
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from building software it’s that the designers and engineers need to sit together. They need to talk together, design together, build together, test together, iterate together. In every software project I’ve ever worked on, when this happens, so does magic. The work is more creative, more efficient, more beautiful… Continue reading A team that sits together, ships together
Work needs Play
The best work comes from Play
Credentials aren’t that important for most things
An uncertified surgeon is illegal but it’s probably true that no one has ever died by looking at artwork produced by an uncredentialed artist.
The problem with pure
Are acrylics or digital any less ‘pure’ than oils? Those in the art world favour tradition over new technology, but everything was new technology once.
Colour palette reference: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
She-Ra’s poppy, but limited colour palette show that you can still go bright without going gaudy.
What are your chances of being discovered?
Is being discovered simpler than we think? All we need is to make the work, then tell people about it.
How does reputation reflect on you?
In what ways do our curated online selves make us who we are?
Lucky breaks are everywhere
Our intuition tells us that good luck is harder to find than bad luck, but what if luck was just about the way you looked at something?