Top 10 Type Blogs According to Eye Magazine

Golden age of type blogs?
A whistle-stop tour through the top ten typographic weblogs
Published on Tuesday, 14 April, 2009 9:31 am Here, at last, is our Easter week type special: the top ten type blogs, chosen by an anonymous panel of industry experts using strictly scientific principles (honest).
1. ilovetypography.com
Japan-based designer John D. Boardley created his blog in order to make people more aware of the typography that’s around them. It’s updated regularly and is very active on Twitter and Flickr.
2. typeneu.com
A huge repository for all things to do with contemporary design with a strong typographic bias.
3. swisslegacy.com
Swiss designer Xavier Encinas with his very Swiss blog focused on typography, graphic design and inspiritional matters.
4. typography.com
The blog of Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones.
5. blog.typoretum.co.uk
A blog about typography, letterpress and printing history by ex-Central Saint Martins student Justin Knopp.
6. typophile.com
A forum / blog system with discussion boards dedicated to all areas of type design, from identifying fonts to interviews with typographic designers.
7. slanted.de
A weblog published by MAGMA Brand Design from Karlsruhe, Germany about typography and layout. It complements their printed quarterly magazine.
8. ministryoftype.co.uk
Brighton-based designer Aegir Hallmundur’s blog about type, typography, lettering, calligraphy and other related things.
9. spiekermann.com
Erik Spiekermann, self-confessed sufferer of ‘Typomania’, gives his typographic perspective on a variety of things in his Spiekerblog.
10. typetheory.com
Another aggregator that pulls together all manner of posts on contemporary typography, created by US designer Ty Wilkins.

World of Logotypes

Highlights from a mid-seventies edition of The World of Logotypes. Eric Carl has graciously posted a large portion of his own copy of this out-of-print book on flickr.
via Aqua Velvet

You can buy a copy of World of Logotypes at Alibris.
a.

Portfolio and Magazine Publishing

You want to get your portfolio or mag published? Check out these links:

• BLURB
• LULU (quality is not always good)
• BOOKSURGE/Createspace (through Amazon)
• MAGCLOUD

For online publishing check out:

• ISSUU (New York Times "T" Magazine uses it)

a.

One Good Kern Deserves Another

Evening out the spaces between characters is a matter of finding the right rhythm, then going with the flow.

Written by James Felici on October 12, 2009

The old saw that "it's the little things that count" was surely coined by a typographer, and few things are littler than kerning adjustments. Consider this: A 1/100 em kerning adjustment applied in 24-point type results in a movement equal to the width of a human hair.

Kerning addresses a basic problem with our alphabet: The shapes of certain character pairs create spacing problems, making them appear either more loosely or more tightly spaced than the neighboring characters around them. To create the even and consistent spacing between characters that makes for pleasant reading, you should iron out these spacing anomalies.

The term kern comes from the French word meaning the corner of a block of type. When type was set by hand, each character was cast on its own little metal block, and these were arranged in rows to create lines of type.

In the following illustration, l represents the point size of the type, k its cap height.

Gutenberg's solution to the problem of conflicting character shapes was to create lots of printing blocks that had two or more characters on them. This allowed, for example, one character to nuzzle into the negative space that flanked another, something that was impossible when each character was on its own block. When Gutenberg printed his famous Bibles, he used scores of these twinned characters. It was an expensive solution.

Eventually this gave way to a casting technique that allowed parts of certain characters to extend beyond the edges of their blocks, where they could lean on the shoulders of the blocks next to them. These so-called kerning characters were clever, fragile, and still expensive.

Kerning characters exist in computer fonts as well. Here, the view from within a font-editing program shows how this italic f extends beyond its side bearings -- the digital equivalent of a metal type block -- allowing it to overlap characters set next to it.

Only with the advent of electronic typesetting could wholesale kerning get underway, as it allowed the images of characters to be positioned anywhere, even overlapped.

Kerning Tables
Built into every digital font is a list of character pairs that present spacing problems. For each of these pairs, a kerning adjustment is prescribed, either a negative value to tighten the spacing or a positive one to open it up. These lists are called kerning tables, and their adjustments are calibrated in thousandths of an em.

Part of the kerning table from the Adobe Garamond font. It's a straightforward assignment of spacing adjustments to specific character pairs.

When your typesetting or word-processing program fills lines with type, it constantly refers to these kerning tables and adjusts inter-character spacing as it goes.

When dedicated electronic typesetting systems became widespread in the 1960s, a typical font contained perhaps 100 kerning pairs. When the technology shifted to formats used on desktop computers, that number didn't change much. There are still millions of older PostScript fonts in circulation containing only 100 or so kerning pairs.

To put this figure in perspective, if you wanted a comprehensive list of all the possible character combinations in one of these old fonts, your kerning tables would contain more than 50,000 pairs.

These days, with much more powerful computers, a well-built text font typically contains kerning tables with 500 to 1,000 pairs. But it's hard to know how extensive the kerning table for a specific font is. QuarkXPress' Kerning Table Edit utility can display the list (which you can add to) and its adjustments (which you can alter). A font-editing program can do the same thing. In general, though, fonts' kerning tables are hidden from view.

A Second Kind of Automatic Kerning
Adobe InDesign offers an alternative to table-based kerning, using software that analyzes the shapes of adjoining characters and assigns kerning adjustments on the fly. Adobe calls this optical kerning. Here's an illustration of how it works.

The following samples are all set using Bitstream's Bodoni Book, a font containing 668 kerning pairs. In the top sample, automatic kerning is turned off, and the spacing between characters is determined solely by their side bearings, as defined in the font. The kerning in the second sample is based on the font's kerning tables; most pairs get no adjustment, as the numbers below each pair indicate. The third setting uses Adobe InDesign's "optical" kerning scheme, and every pair gets some adjustment. The bottom setting was kerned manually by me; it benefits from both human vision and character-by-character adjustments.

Clearly, neither table-based nor algorithmic kerning is perfect (nor am I, for that matter). The tables can't be complete enough, and algorithms have no eyes. Best would be a system that uses a font's kerning tables first but applies algorithmic kerning for pairs that aren't listed in the font. I don't know of any such system available at the moment.

When Automatic Kerning Isn't Good Enough
Considering how much we admire printed books from before the electronic typesetting era, it's easy to argue that fussing about kerning is much ado about nothing. And in text type, this is often the case. Display type is another matter. Because spacing problems become more apparent as type size increases, the larger the type, the more important it becomes to pay attention to kerning problems.

In text, proofreaders and copy editors should keep an eye peeled for character sequences that need kerning. But generally speaking, manual kerning is most important in display type.

In headline type, book titles, large ad type, and so on, you can spend a lot of time tweaking the spacing between characters. It's a worthwhile pursuit, but you can also make yourself crazy.

One way to avoid insanity is not to use kerning increments that are too fine. You may have noticed that all the adjustments I made in the previous sample were multiples to 10/1000 em. Spacing changes smaller than this are very nearly undetectable at large sizes, and ineffective at small sizes. For example, a 1/1000 em spacing change in 28-point type can't even be registered on a typical imagesetter because it doesn't add up to the width of a single pixel.

I use the Preferences settings in my programs to define a minimum kerning adjustment using the keyboard to be 10/1000 em. Rarely if ever do I use anything smaller.

Manual Kerning Strategies
It's tempting to zoom in very close when you manually kern your type. The increased size helps compensate for the low resolution of the screen. But it also exaggerates the impact of the white space, because making the type bigger makes it look looser. It's best to adjust the tracking of the type at a modest magnification, and then zoom in to balance the spacing of the troublesome pairs. Accept that the zoomed type is going to look much looser than it will when printed.

Printed proofs are also important. Screen resolution is very deceptive, and even high-resolution desktop inkjet printers may create aliasing errors, in which the printer is forced to round off an image to the nearest pixel, which can distort spacing at smaller point sizes.

The goal of tweaking kerning is to achieve even, consistent spacing. The first rule of kerning, then, is to find the worst, nastiest, most difficult character pair in the passage and let that set the spacing feel for the rest. In the following example, then, the kerning needed to even out the spacing has to be keyed by the loosest pair. To ignore this and tighten all the rest will just make the bad pair stand out even more.

In the following illustration, the top sample is over-kerned. While most of the character pairs can be tightened up snugly, the TY combination can't. That loose pair pokes a hole in the line. In the bottom sample, the spacing of the entire line has been adjusted to match as well as possible that of the TY, with better overall results.

On the following CD cover, I think the designer had too much faith in the font's kerning tables. The rhythm of the spacing clearly loosens as the character shapes go from round to round (Bee) to a series of less-compatible shapes, especially in hove, where the shapes go from flat to round to angled and back to round.

In my adjusted, "after" version, I used the spacing of the th combination to set the leitmotif for the rest. This meant relaxing the spacing between the round characters and tightening most of the rest.

Before:

After:

Perhaps the most common kerning error is overdoing things, taking out space just because it's there. I used to buy a brand of mayonnaise with a label designed by someone who seemed to have an obsession with squeezing out every space possible. As a result, the brand logo looked like this:

It's no longer available at my local market, and since it was pretty good mayonnaise, I am left to wonder whether it was bad kerning that drove it from the shelves.

The Final Word
Kerning is not a matter of measuring, it's a matter of how the type looks. There are times when the sequence of characters makes it impossible to establish that perfect spacing rhythm. All you can do is try your best, and remember that tightening is not always the way to go. Sometimes making spacing a bit more slack -- to accommodate that pesky pair -- is the way to go.

via creativepro.com

Type on a Curve

TypeTalk is a regular blog on typography. Post your questions and comments by clicking on the Comments icon above. If Ilene answers your question in the blog, you'll receive one Official Creativepro.com T-Shirt!

Q. Are there guidelines for setting type on a curve?

A. There are indeed, as even if your type looks perfect on a horizontal baseline, curving type can alter the balance and relationships between characters in unpredictable ways.

Here’s how to set type that's on a curve:

1. Start by setting the type on a straight, horizontal baseline. Make sure the overall spacing looks even. Kern any uneven combinations.

2. Place the type on the desired curve. Depending on which direction it's going (curving up or down), it will become either more open or tighter. Use tracking as necessary to achieve desired overall spacing.

3. Examine the individual letter pairs and use kerning to fix any uneven combinations.

4. Check the angle of each character. Sometimes a character looks crooked next to its surrounding characters; in that case, you can rotate the character individually. You might even want to set that character separately to rotate and position it so it looks even with the rest of the type.

5. Be sure the word spacing is even and not too open.

6. Once you're satisfied with the character and word spacing, check to see if the line of type looks centered in its rotational position. It can be technically centered but look off-center depending on the beginning and ending characters. Rotate as necessary to make it look visually centered.

The example type below is correctly spaced, and it looks good as long as it stays on a straight horizontal baseline:

When the same type is placed on a curve, the spacing becomes uneven and too open in some places:

Reducing the tracking slightly improves the overall spacing, but there are still some uneven letter combinations:

Consistent spacing is finally achieved by adjusting the kerning between problematic letter pairs, as well as evening out the word spacing:

And finally, the type is rotated clockwise until it visually aligns on both ends:

I set my examples in Maiandra Pro. But if you're using a connecting script, be prepared for special challenges. They might require lots of individual kerning to maintain the integrity of the connections without creating bumps and breaks.

Love type? Want to know more? Ilene Strizver conducts her acclaimed Gourmet Typography workshops internationally. For more information on attending one or bringing it to your company, organization, or school, go to her site, call The Type Studio at 203-227-5929, or email Ilene at info@thetypestudio.com. Sign up for her e-newsletter at www.thetypestudio.com.

Assignment #4

Our last assignment is Personal Identity/Self Branding.

Design form of the project we are looking for:

1. Business card (2"x3.5" is a standard but you can definitely go wild with it!)

2. Web presence (can be a website that you've designed that contains all your work or just clean up your blogs for now).

3. Leave behind (an item that can vary in form but has to represent your personal design style, outlook on the design world).

4. PDF (has to have your work from this class presented in a well put together manner).


Useful links to personal identity projects/self branding:

steveattardo.com
youngjerks.com
muccadesign.com
pentagram.com
mothernewyork.com
buchanansmith.com
bestmadeco.com
paulsahre.com
basedesign.com
2x4.org


HAVE FUN!

New York Mag Infographics

Infographics - Visualize This by John Grimwade

Visualize this: Is it information or is it art?

An old infographic chestnut. It’s always been a tricky balance between getting the story across, and making a great image. But thanks to some serious computing power, we’ve arrived at a crunch point. In one corner of the ring is information, and in the other is art, and they’ve been slugging it out.

Big revelation: The biggest trend in infographics right now is data visualization. Taking complex data sets, crunching them through some expensive software, and seeing what comes out the other end. It’s exciting stuff. Dreary spreadsheets can be transformed into beautiful artwork. Spirals, circles, piles of dots and other assorted shapes. Lots of overlapping info in brilliant colors. Population trends turned into a wheel of interconnecting dots. I love it, but to be honest, I often have no idea what’s going on.

A worrying aside: My students keep bringing stunning examples they have found on the Internet. But they are rarely able to tell me what the graphic shows.

Yes, in many cases, you really do have to be a rocket scientist to know what’s going on. In my nightmares, turbo-charged Spirographs are on a rampage.

All of this is not a problem at all, until… wild visualizations start masquerading as infographics.

All Streets by Ben Fry.

Wheat and Wages chart by William Playfair, 1821. Probably the original data viz guy!

Regulation/Innovation by Jer Thorp.

Let’s not lose sight of the end user in this. Unless we’re creating pieces for a gallery, everything in a graphic should work to help people make sense of complex information. Especially now, when we’re being bombarded with info from all sides. All kinds of alarmist “information overload” statements are being made at conferences by people like me. But us infographic folk are uniquely positioned to help. We know how to create some order by applying design principles to information. So let’s do that, and not add to the chaos.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great data visualizations around, and I applaud them. But it’s a new form, and we’re still learning what to do with it.

In my little world, I like infographics that have been carefully edited and ordered to tell a story clearly. Graphics that turn the light on, not turn it off. Information first, art second. Follow that mantra, and data visualization is part of an exciting future.

Want to visualize? Click here…

• Visual Complexity: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
• Information Aesthetics: http://infosthetics.com/
• John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity: http://weblogs.media.mit.edu/SIMPLICITY/
• Ben Fry: http://benfry.com/
• Chris Harrison: http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/visualization.html
• Jer Thorp: http://blog.blprnt.com/
• Jonathan Harris: http://number27.org
• Christian Nold: http://www.christiannold.com/
• Lust: http// www.lust.nl

John Grimwade is information graphics director at Condé Nast Traveler and a long time supporter, teacher, mentor for SND infographics.

a.

Personal identity/self promotion

Hey guys,
here's some personal identity/self promotional swipe I put together.
These are just couple of direction you guys can take your next project into.
Just some food for thought... we'll talk more about the specs next class.

Color theory stuff

Excellent example of a smart info graphic

IDENTITY GUIDELINES

An open letter on the value of Design

July 15th, 2010
By Kris Viesselman and Stephen Komives
Like many of our colleagues, we read with concern this week’s announcement of Gannett’s plans for regional hubs to build pages for many of their newspapers. This plan is similar to others that have sought to template publications and centralize parts of the creative and production process, or, in some extreme cases, eliminate design and graphics departments.
We all are looking for ways to eliminate inefficiencies to ensure a future for newspapers. However, as leaders of the Society for News Design, we would like to challenge some assumptions at the core of this (and similar) plans, as well as offer some ideas to consider at this critical time — a time when there is a need for relevancy, re-invention and creative solutions.
Beyond layout: Design thinking
This is not merely an aesthetic consideration — but also one of product value and usefulness. If one considers the sole value of design to be making pieces fit on pages, an “assembly line” solution may seem attractive. However, architecting publications to meet reader needs is something more complicated, nuanced and essential.
We see design as identifying and understanding user needs and business requirements, conceptualizing solutions and crafting products that directly address those needs.
Good designers are really visual editors who have a mastery of information graphics, storytelling and story layering forms, illustration, photo editing, typography, use of color as a navigational tool, which are used to achieve these goals. If designers are used solely as decorators or mechanical paginators, their publications are not leveraging their full value.
This is an industry that has been change-resistant and fiercely protective of the status quo. We are at a critical moment. Now is the time to embrace innovators in all roles – not abandon them in favor of homogenization. We would caution our colleagues against promoting a creative “brain drain” in our industry at a time when innovation is so critical to our survival.
Effective designers make the complex easier to understand. We organize and prioritize information and make it accessible. We are early adopters of technology and therefore valuable teachers, developers and inventors. We have been at the forefront of newspapers’ major innovations in printing and new platform development. It is our responsibility to be relevant – and valuable – in our newsrooms, but we need to retain a place at the table.
We are vital in story design. The danger of excessive templating is that it eliminates the conversation about what is the most appropriate form for the story to take, in terms of serving the reader with as much information as possible in the clearest, most memorable way. This is what alternative storytelling achieves, and media companies that have embraced this approach have seen proven gains with readers in terms of how they are received. There is enormous potential here, but it requires intelligent design.
Therefore, creativity should be a driver – not a casualty – of the publication evolution. News designers are uniquely qualified to fulfill the promise of collaboration and innovation needed in this environment. Tim Brown, the CEO and president of IDEO, often talks about the relationship between business strategy and design: In order to do a better job of developing, communicating and pursuing a strategy, you need to learn to think like a designer.
The value of proximity and local-ness
Certainly, there is a place for templating and streamlining. In that context, for pure production, Gannett’s moves may make some sense. Yes, newspapers could centralize or semi-automate some routine functions to drive down those costs. If done correctly, this could free resources to concentrate on content creation and more challenging design issues. While some parts of the paper should be done more quickly, others need to be architected more carefully to maximize impact and understanding.
This is where we see a potential gap.
First, the capacity for front-end design thinking appears to be absent in this equation. At our best, reporters, photographers, graphics reporters, editors and designers collaborate to create effective, cohesive stories. We know from industry research that readers are drawn to stories with visual components and spend more time with them. If we separate the collaborative parties, the planning and reporting at the core of visual journalism will be hampered. Front-end collaboration and shaping becomes much more difficult with this remote communication paradigm.
Second, there’s a high danger of detachment from the needs of readers, who look to us to prioritize and curate information for them. Without a firm understanding of the communities we serve, it seems inevitable that these publications will be compromised. If our information is not seen as authoritative and unique, we lose our diminishing competitive advantage in the crowded information marketplace, where many things are free.
And, we fear for the survival of the “magic” – the surprises that delight readers. When it’s working correctly, design takes our best offerings and tunes them into a final outcome worth more than the sum of the parts. Imagine for a moment how different last week’s much-celebrated Cleveland Plain Dealer front page about LeBron James’ departure might have been were it produced hundreds or thousands of miles away, by a staff tasked with deadlining dozens of other publications — simultaneously.
Multi-platform publishing
While we agree that simplifying the assembly of the newspaper can be part of a smart strategy, if we want to work in many media, we need smart ways to direct content to many platforms. We look at it this way: The media is the message; the design is the messenger.
Newspapers at last have begun to learn: A print report posted online does not make for a very successful website. And yet, don’t newspapers’ multimedia strategies ultimately depend on scaling content from one set of reporters across platforms?
In a Web-first world, reporters need to be focused on efficient, economical information delivery. As their partners, they need print designers who can shape, augment, elevate and craft their material to create rich, vibrant newspapers. That’s a collaborative process, not simple assembly. It frees reporting resources to focus on time-sensitive, template-driven formats like the phone and the Web, while allowing their newspapers to deliver analysis and design in print.
Achieving the efficiencies of a single content center probably requires more, not fewer, designers. As we continue to compete for our readers’ attention with multiple channels, it is easy to make the case that our essential roles as information architects and shepherds of user experiences have never been more important.
And, while we are concerned about corporate decision making, we also know the onus is on designers to broaden their skill sets, to embrace digital and to prove their own worth as journalists. Coupled with the centralization trend have been drastic cuts in training. We urge Gannett and all media companies to restore training as a vital component of newsroom culture, so that forward-thinking organizations such as SND can help create a robust future of journalistic innovation.
Sincerely,
Kris Viesselman
President, Society for News DesignManaging Editor and Creative Director, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Stephen Komives
Executive Director, Society for News Design
UPDATE (July 16): Gannett responds:
Kate Marymont, vice president/news in the community publishing division of the Gannett Co. Inc. responded directly to me regarding the open letter I penned with Stephen Komives, SND’s executive director, following Gannett’s announcement of the formation of centralized design centers. Ms. Marymont is charged with guiding the plan.
She provided some insight on Gannett’s strategy and also extended an invitation to SND.
“I think that your goals and our goals are not so far apart” and “I hope that SND will work with us,” she wrote.
Ms. Marymont and I had a brief telephone call and agreed to propel the conversation. Next week, we will begin that dialogue.
Additionally, you’ll find a Q and A between Jonathon Berlin and Ms. Marymont on SND.org in the next few days.
We are encouraged that Gannett is seeking input from SND leadership – as advocates for quality visual journalism – as they shape their company’s future. Obviously, their actions will have a significant impact on our industry and newspaper readers.
We will provide updates on our progress. — Kris Viesselman

ASSIGNMENT #3

We are making an info. graphic.
In order to create one you should follow these steps:
1. Pick a subject (can be anything that comes to your head).
2. Do a research on the selected topic, gather data that you can later lay out.
Ex. you can send out a survey via surveymonkey.com which is completely anonymous. You can ask up to 10 questions and get Yes and No answers or you can have people answer in complete sentences, up to you).
3. Develop a set of icons that would represent your data.
4. Pick your colors.
5. Pick your layout, set up, organization of data.


For reference:
www.visualcomplexity.com (Info. graphics)
www.feltron.com (Website of Nicholas Felton)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodmagazine/sets/72157618896371005/ Good magazine info graphics
www.grundini.com (Peter Grundi info. graphics)
www.alwayswithhonor.com (Info. Graphics)

HAVE FUN!!!

The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People

Isolate and create.

“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for contructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” ~Rollo May

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on twitter or identica.

Creativity is a nebulous, murky topic that fascinates me endlessly — how does it work? What habits to creative people do that makes them so successful at creativity?

I’ve reflected on my own creative habits, but decided I’d look at the habits that others consider important to their creativity. I picked a handful of creatives, almost at random — there are so many that picking the best would be impossible, so I just picked some that I admire, who came to mind when I thought of the word “creative”.

This was going to be a list of their creative habits … but in reviewing their lists, and my own habits, I found one that stood out. And it stands out if you review the habits and quotes from great creative people in history.

It’s the Most Important Habit when it comes to creativity.

After you read the No. 1 habit, please scroll down and read the No. 2 habit — they might seem contradictory but in my experience, you can’t really hit your creative stride until you find a way to balance both habits.

The No. 1 Creativity Habit

In a word: solitude.

Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus.

Of course, there are lots of ways to find this solitude. Let’s listen to a few of the creative people I talked to or researched:

Felicia Day – wonderful actress perhaps best known for her awesome awesome work on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Guild.

I was thrilled when she replied to my email asking about her creative habits. One of the things she said: she makes “sure to be creative first thing in the morning, before doing anything for the outside world, really sets the day up for me. It makes it feel that CREATING is my job, not answering emails.”

Ali Edwards – an author, designer, and leading authority on scrapbooking.

I was honored with a response from Ali as well. One of her top habits wasn’t exactly solitude, but is related: “Do nothing. I have a habit of welcoming time away from my creative work. For me this is serious life-recharging time where my only responsibility is to just be Mom & Wife & Me. Doing nothing has a way of synthesizing what is really important in my life and in my work and inspires me beyond measure. When I come back to work I am better equipped to weed out the non-essential stuff and focus on the things I most want to express creatively.”

Chase Jarvis – an award-winning photographer.

Chase also kindly responded with several of his key creativity habits — see more great ones at the bottom of this post. But here’s one that I loved: “Find Quiet. Creativity sometimes washes over me during times of intense focus and craziness of work, but more often I get whacked by the creative stick when I’ve got time in my schedule. And since my schedule is a crazy one and almost always fills up if I’m just “living”, I tend to carve out little retreats for myself. I get some good thinking and re-charge time during vacations, or on airplanes, but the retreats are more focused on thinking about creative problems that I’m wanting to solve. That’s why I intentionally carve time out. I make room for creativity. Intentionally. The best example of what I mean by a retreat is a weekend at my family’s cabin. It’s a 90 minute drive from my house on the coast. There are few distractions. Just a rocky beach and a cabin from the 60’s with wood paneling and shag carpet. I go for walks, hikes, naps. I read. I did get an internet signal put in there to stay connected if I need it. But the gist is QUIET. Let there be space for creativity to fill your brain.”

Maciej Cegłowski – painter, programmer, excellent writer.

Maciej is one of my favorite bloggers, and responded to my email with a classically short answer that to me, embodies a beautiful way to find solitude.

What habit helps his creativity?

Maciej replied: “Running up hills!”

Leo Babauta: OK, I wasn’t going to talk about myself in this post, but I thought I should share some of my previous thoughts.

The best art is created in solitude, for good reason: it’s only when we are alone that we can reach into ourselves and find truth, beauty, soul. Some of the most famous philosophers took daily walks, and it was on these walks that they found their deepest thoughts.

My best writing, and in fact the best of anything I’ve done, was created in solitude.

Just a few of the benefits I’ve found from solitude:

• time for thought
• in being alone, we get to know ourselves
• we face our demons, and deal with them
• space to create
• space to unwind, and find peace
• time to reflect on what we’ve done, and learn from it
• isolation from the influences of other helps us to find our own voice
• quiet helps us to appreciate the smaller things that get lost in the roar

Read more: the lost art of solitude.

The Greats on Solitude

Of course, many other creative people have believed in the habit of solitude. I’ve collected a small but influential sample here. There are many more examples.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart: “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer–say, traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during the night when I cannot sleep–it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.”

Albert Einstein – theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential and best known scientists and intellectuals of all time. He is often regarded as the father of modern physics.

Einstein: “On the other hand, although I have a regular work schedule, I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn’t going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination.”

Franz Kafka – one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Novelist and writer of short stories whose works came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of 20th century literature.

Kafka: “You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

Nikola Tesla – inventor, one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity, best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism.

Tesla: “The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone—that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.”

Joseph Haydn: A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Hungarian aristocratic Esterházy family on their remote estate. Isolated from other composers and trends in music until the later part of his long life, he was, as he put it, “forced to become original”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – German writer and polymath. Goethe’s works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, and science.

His magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust.

Goethe: “One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.”

Pablo Picasso – Spanish painter best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him one of the best-known figures in twentieth century art.

Picasso: “Without great solitude no serious work is possible.”

Carl Sandburg – American writer and editor, best known for his poetry.

He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg “indubitably an American in every pulse-beat.”

Sandburg: “One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.”

Thomas Mann – German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual.

Mann: “Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous — to poetry.”

The No. 2 Creative Habit

While it might seem contradictory, the No. 2 habit when it comes to nurturing creativity: participation. This can come in many forms, but it requires connecting with others, being inspired by others, reading others, collaborating with others.

But how can you have both solitude and participation? They obviously have to come at different times. Finding the balance is key, of course, but it takes a conscious effort: this time is for solitude, and this time is for participation.

Why are they both important? We need inspiration from without, but we need creation from within.

A couple of the people I interviewed had habits that relate to this:

Chase Jarvis: “Devour Popular Culture. Consuming the works of others inspires me. And it’s not just museums and the “establishment”. I devour magazines, books, street art, performances, music, etc. All things that make me think critically (and whimsically) about the world. You get the picture. Inspiration can come from anywhere.”

Ali Edwards: “Participate. My creative spirit is interested in documenting the wonderful everyday details of our lives. To really get to the heart of the matter I need to be fully participating in my life, in the interactions with my kids and husband and family and friends. If I am just going through the motions or wishing away the present moment for “the next thing” I am missing the blessing of right now. My creativity requires the habit of active participation and daily attention to detail.”

Other Creative Habits

There are other habits than those top two, of course, that can nourish creativity. Some other good ones:

Felicia Day: “When I am most productive I am the most ruthless with my schedule. I will literally make a daily checklist with, “one hour gym”, “30 minutes of internet research,” and “drink 3 glasses of water” on it. For some reason being that disciplined creates a sense of control that I wouldn’t have otherwise, as a self-employed person, and I get the most out of the scheduled hours that I have for writing.”

Ali Edwards: “Take notes. I am a really good note-taker. It’s essential for me to write down my ideas when they come to mind…otherwise, poof, they disappear way too quickly as I move on to the next task (diaper changes, wiping noses, tending to the stuff of life). I use my phone, my computer, and a moleskine notebook to jot down thoughts and ideas and then I move them into Things every week or so.”

Chase Jarvis had a few more:

• Live a creative life everyday. I very much believe in doing creative stuff everyday. For one, I take photos and videos almost everyday. Doesn’t matter the camera. I use my iPhone everyday. Just taking photos keeps me in a creative headspace. Hell, I play with my food and draw and doodle.
• Moderate Expectations. Make it a habit not to judge yourself on your creative output. Sometimes your creativity is on fire. Great news. Other times, it’s not. It’s hard sometimes when you make art in a professional commercial capacity because you’re paid to be ‘ON’, but you’ll save yourself a lot of greif if you make it a habit to be cool to your psyche when your creative mojo isn’t firing on all pistons.
• Shake Your Tree. When I’m starting to feel stale, I make a habit of getting into adventures. Break molds. Drive home from work a different way. Stir up my routine. I get active and shake my tree.
• Find fun. Doing what you love inspires you to be more creative. Make time and space for having fun. All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl.
• Lastly, being creative means living a creative life. Expect yourself to have one. Believe you are creative. Know that you are. Make that the most important habit of all.