Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.
I’m a sucker for process; even more so when it’s documented well. I came across this video a while back but as of late it has served as a reminder of the importance of process. It was put together by Peter Belanger, a San Francisco based photographer whose portfolio includes more than a few prevalent photos for Apple. My goodness! It is so easy to take for granted the time, energy and talent is invested in crafting something as simple (a gross understatement) as a magazine cover or the landing page of Apple. Ironically, the only reason I appreciate the effort behind this cover is because Belanger took the time and energy to show us how much time and energy it took. ha!
I chose a time lapse format to convey lots of information in a small amount of time. The only drawback of time lapse is that since half a day goes by in 30 seconds, the whole process seam so easy! Lots of details were left out of the design process (like the cover meetings and rounds of layout options). I began to photograph the design process after the layouts had already been narrowed down to just three cover designs. – PB
I find Belanger’s process documentation completely enthralling. It’s about integrity, it’s about craft, and it’s about a deep respect for the process. Life as we know it would crumble without process; it’s the foundation on which empires, cultures, traditions, habits, innovations and hobbies turned industry are built. Process demands respect and, when conditions are right, it demands to be shared.
In the video above, Jason Fried (founder of 37 Signals) addressed this issue at a past Chicago Convergence. Summary: Fried shares his experience of falling in love with cooking. While sifting through an onslaught of purchases (pots, pans and cookbooks) he overlooked corporations who had invested in state of the art point of purchase displays and choose to buy products that were endorsed by chefs who had taught him something. Not Calphalon or Cuisinart…but Emeril and Batali. Fried instilled a level of trust on the chefs who had shared their secrets and helped his life taste better.
All of this makes for a challenging proposition: fall in love with processes, not products.
- Processes are enjoyed; products are consumed.
- Processes breed understanding; products breed dependance.
- Processes build community; products only do so when they’re a part of a larger process.
Love whatever process you find yourself in. Getting over something? Starting a business? Making a kick-a$$ poster? Document it like mad and make it honest! Take pictures, video and page after page of notes. Synthesize it. Refine it. Finish* it and move on. Then, in a moment of awe inspiring humility and courage, share what you’ve learned (both good and bad) with the world. We were all newbies at one point in time, and even if you’re a seasoned vet sometimes browsing other people’s work can send you back to that place of feeling totally inadequate.
Throughout this whole process of growing up I’ve been most encouraged when encountering someone’s honest reflections on success and failure. We need more of it! Just yesterday I came across a series of gatherings where people share lessons learned called FAILFaire; it’s a kind of open-source-worst-practice-show-and-tell where the goal is to celebrate what we’ve learned through failure. This attitude needs to be whole-heartily embraced; its acceptance would foster a more healthy, beautiful and permanent culture in the educational system and beyond. Sure, it’s humbling, risky and tough to quantify on a test (see previous entry on education and automatons) but I’d rather grow up in and participate with a world where play, exploration, trial and failure (paired with critical analysis) were encouraged instead of checked in red and pushed to the margins for being outside the norm. You?
* Is anything ever really finished?
