New Liberal Arts

“How do you make things?

You could lay out the process as a line. You start at one end with a bundle of goals and plans. As you work hard—designing, writing, rehearsing, or doing whatever else is required—you progress along the line. At some point, you get to the end, with a product, a novel, a performance. You’re finished!

You could lay out the process that way. But you’d be doing it wrong.”

These words are taken from a chapter entitled ‘Iteration’, from New Liberal Arts. If you want to read the rest, you can download a free digital copy of the book here. I’d recommend you do. I have only read a small part of the book myself (so far), but it’s free, it’s thought provoking, and it’s concise (three qualities I love in a book).

In fact, one of the proposed courses is on brevity.

If you want to own a hardcopy, too bad. There were only 200 and they sold out in 8 hours.

1 comment July 9th, 2009