Wednesday, April 18, 2007


Needed to write this down.

After a particularly bad presentation the other day, my mentor came upto me and said:

" You had many sketches, perhaps too many. you see, if you imagine that there is a target in front of you, what you have done is shoot many many arrows in the periphery, i want you to shoot fewer arrows, but as close to the target as possible"

I felt bad, but it got me thinking.

In design, can/ do we ever 'aim and fire'? i mean, unlike the board exams, or a sales number, a new design is not a perceivable target, so one has to shoot blind. We shoot many arrows hoping one may accidentaly hit the right target. The target sometimes, if we are lucky, appears before us in the form of a mirage or 'inspiration' and we can only hope to catch that glipse of the mirage for long enough to be able to aim and fire!
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3 comments:

with feathers said...

if you hone the art of shooting blind are there chances of eventually shooting better?

Jadedism said...

i guess ^ said wat i had to say :(

Sahil said...

Is a detective, detecting, shooting blind? I wonder...

After all, he doesn't know the eventual answer either, does he? He doesn't have a copy of 'Detecting for Dummies: The Art of Spotting Clues and Unearthing Connections Made Easy'. Does he?

All he really has is a set of vaguely defined 'procedures' that he knows he must follow in the knowledge that somewhere, in all the 'doing', a pattern will emerge that will begin to make sense. And, of course, a mind honed, with experience, to make exactly the kind of connections he needs to make.

So, I wonder...

BTW, its a pity I never realised you wrote so well, earlier :)