Beginner’s Mind

When does the design process actually start? Well, as our latest crop of stories will tell you, it’s always beginning. Sometimes you can be halfway through a project — or a career! — to realize you need to start again. It turns out this is a very good attitude to have. Especially when the thing for which you are designing is constantly changing, its parameters blurring, its form morphing — you’ve got to be pretty zen in your approach to building a system around it. Forgive my armchair dharma here, but life’s short. Or it’s endless? Flexibility is key …Whatever your perspective, we have some fun, new reads about designers finding their way through the process — from Rachel Garb taking a Choose Your Own Adventure-style approach to her career, to Rachel Been talking about where she’s recently found inspiration as an art director, to Sandra Nam, who walks us through the process of designing an experience that encourages people to learn something new again and again. Read on, you crazy designers.

— Amber