From a student:
I have jumped between many different styles (federal interpretation, contemporary, krenovian – if that’s a style) in the past year, I feel myself being drawn more and more towards the work of the mid-century modernists -the Scandanavians in particular. The simplicity, functionalism, craftsmanship, and the reverence for materials are all things with which I agree. While I think the designs from this period can feel a bit dated in today’s home, I think there is a firm base from which to begin.

Anyway, I guess my question to you is how do you go about coaching students to develop their own voice? Do you coach them through distinct steps, or do they just naturally gravitate towards it during their development? I know this is sort of like asking the magician to reveal his secrets, but I was hoping that you could share some advice with me that would help me begin this process. Woodworking is something to which I have made a serious dedication and I feel that the development of a voice is lagging behind the development of skills.

A,
Good to hear from you. It’s a large subject you want me to comment on. Let me just say this about design. Bad design copies shamelessly from its sources. Good design is reverent theft. Designers learn to soak up ideas, forms, shapes, motifs and develop their own vocabulary from these varied and various sources. How you do this is up to you but I use architecture, nature, jewelry, pottery, glasswork, and oh yes furniture to inspire my designs. Then I start sketching like a madman and see what pops up.

Design is not like building, you see. It uses a completely different side of your brain than the left brain. The left brain is march step, do one thing and then do the next logical thing until you come to the end and then start over. It’s that kind of approach. The right brain is the wacky let’s run through the sprinkler with our clothes on side of your brain, the inventive side, the creative side that we don’t use often enough. We mostly use the left side to be precise and rational and not make mistakes on the table saw. Don’t get me wrong, this side is good and important. It keeps us clothed and fed, but to design things, to be “artistic”, to be creative requires that you use that underused right side of your brain. That’s the side that synthesizes well, that likes to spit out wacky possibilities and the key here is to let it do its thing without the left side shutting it down or shouting it down constantly saying: Well that’s a stupid idea.

Of course! Many creative ideas are surrounded by a field of stupid ones. It takes that many tries to come up with something good or something great. It doesn’t happen just at once. It takes time and practice and mistake after mistake. If you’re not throwing away design ideas, you’re not designing, you’re copying someone else’s work. To be creative means to be unafraid. It means that you have to be fearless in the face of your worst critic: yourself. That voice that usually shuts us down and shuts us down so quickly because it’s easy to convince ourselves that we cannot design. And then it’s even easier not to design and not create and not develop your own style if you listen to that inner critic.

So, you want to design in your own style? Learn to be foolish. Practice inner freedom. Let your ideas spill out without filters and then learn to fine tune them. Learn the vocabulary of design that appeals to your senses and sensibilities. What about Scandinavian design appeals to you? Is it the simple lines, [which can be incredibly complex] or the lack of decoration? Is it the blond wood or the sculpted hard lines on an edge? Figure out exactly what you like and don’t like about a style. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Only then will you start to create work that is truly and uniquely your own. Design must be learned just like sharpening. They use different sides of the brain, but both require practice. Keep a design notebook. Open your eyes to the designed universe that surrounds you and start to pick out the ideas, the themes, the patterns that appeal to you. Then learn how to use them all mixed up in that mind of yours. Expect that some ideas will be clunkers. That’s part of the game.

Our Mastery Programs try to instill this sense of design but it’s really up to you as to how much you’re willing to be fearless and willing to make mistakes. But design is not a switch you can just turn on and off. It has to be practiced, like drawing or singing. It needs work to get better at and time to develop your skills in it. But I know you can do this. Okay. Have fun. Do good work. Gary