What is rarely seen are the crossed-out sketches, abandoned layouts, and piles of references. Yet, those things that are never seen are where the most is learned.

Have you looked at your own shelves and wondered what does this show about who I am as a creator? Are you aesthetic to the eye? Or are you chaotic?

These are five things that I’ve been paying attention to lately.

Make Something From One Photograph

After enough projects, enough revisions, enough failed ideas and successful ones, certainty begins to soften. You realize that many of the strongest pieces of design you've admired don't succeed because they followed every principle. They succeed because someone understood exactly when those principles no longer served the work.

There is something different about holding a book that has lived a life. The corners are softened. The pages no longer lie perfectly flat. A coffee stain interrupts the margin. Someone folded the corner of page forty-three because they intended to return but never did. A strip of yellowing tape holds together a spine that refused to give up. None of these marks was part of the original design, yet together they become inseparable from the object itself. They tell us someon

There are moments when a page seems to breathe, like the words and the page they live on are alive in all the ways that matter. A poster catches your eye as you walk past it, with the typography feeling like it’s pushing just beyond the edges of the paper, expanding more than the space allows. A photograph appears frozen in the middle of an action you instinctively finish in your mind. An album cover leans forward with such force that it almost feels impossible for it to r

There is always a temptation to dismiss trends as surface-level. Fast-moving, temporary, and often disposable. In design, trends can feel especially dangerous, something to chase rather than question. But observation asks for something different; it asks us not what is popular, but why.