Milton Glaser: Ten Things I Have Learned

http://www.miltonglaser.com/pages/milton/essays/es3.html

by ivankirigin • 17 years ago

194 33 17 years ago

ivankirigin3• 17 years ago

Don't let the title fool you. This isn't a shitty top 10 list.

sketerpot• 17 years ago

It's a good article, but man the design of that site is lousy. The home page (miltonglaser.com) actually resizes my browser window to be a little rectangle (!), with complete lack of consideration for the ten other tabs I have open. All the content is scrunched up in a little ribbon on the left with absolutely no left margin. The text is too small, and the contrast is just barely enough. It's pretty, I guess, if you ignore all the whitespace on the right, but the usability is lacking.

This guy is a graphic designer. So what the hell is up with his site's graphic design?

raquo• 17 years ago

At least the site looks great on the iPhone! :)

access_denied• 17 years ago

What you are complaining about is not the graphic design part of the site but the web design part.

jcromartie• 17 years ago

He's not a web designer, at all. He does things like "I <3 NY" and Time magazine covers. His work is way older than the web... so I can't blame him.

andyn• 17 years ago

Thanks for pointing that out. I've become used to ignoring "50 style sheets for your web site!" type submissions.

sven• 17 years ago

I like: 6. style is not to be trusted

pstinnett• 17 years ago

While a lot of these lists seem rehashed and boring, this list contains some great outlook on life that I really agree with. Favorites are definitely #8, #1, and #10.

zackattack2• 17 years ago

Yeah, it's damn near impossible to work for (or with!) people you don't like. I have limited life experience, but what I've learned definitely fits with #1.

UncleOxidant• 17 years ago

Indeed. I've had managers that I liked and I pulled all-nighters for them (when I was younger) because they seemed to take a genuine interest in their employees. And I've had managers that seemed to have little interest in their employees other than as means to an end - those managers are tough to like and usually don't get nearly as much good work out of their people.

erlanger• 17 years ago

It doesn't matter...if your boss looks at you cockeyed or your boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you cockeyed, if you are cockeyed.

I thought that was a funny bit.

anthropocentric• 17 years ago

Is there a web app that makes it easy to comment on single lines of text (or, say, a paragraph) on a web page. When you visit a page you can see all of the little in-line notes and comments that others left behind?

Kind of like leaving a Comment in a Word doc?

mildweed• 17 years ago

http://annotify.com/ Born of a start-up weekend a week ago. Going live soon.

edw519• 17 years ago

From #3:

"If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life."

I will. This explains so much. Not just with other people, but with everything. May even shed some insight to a little "procrastination" problem a few of us here share.

And as a hacker, I really appreciate a binary rule to evaluate something so complex. Thank you!

ivankirigin3• 17 years ago

I think you need to have a running average or debouncing of this kind of feedback. No relationship is so consistent that you'll get the same feeling after a meeting every time.

I agree it's a solid rule - that could be applied to activities not just people. Good videogames, for example, might be judged by this rubric.

jmtame• 17 years ago

Time to drop out.

chime• 17 years ago

I have a very similar rule in my life. People can either give you energy or drain it. True friendships of course involve both good and bad over time but it is the net that counts. If someone in your life is constantly leaving you feeling drained, it is better to let go of them politely, regardless of how wonderful the relationship once was. Once you figure out a person as a source or drain of energy, it's very easy to manage the relationship from that point on. Most people just don't feel comfortable coming to such conclusions.

Oxryly2• 17 years ago

> And as a hacker, I really appreciate a binary rule to evaluate something so complex. Thank you!

This tripped my sarcasm detector...

pageman• 17 years ago

sent this exact quote via SMS (after typing it ...hahaha) and it was greatly appreciated! :) great advice! :)

jf• 17 years ago

As somebody who spends most of his day reading articles written on very specific technical topics, it is a delight to run across articles like this: written for a different audience almost ~7 years ago, and it still has useful advice for us! Funny how that works.

duncanj• 17 years ago

I'm not sure what he was going for in the discussion of #10. Why do people want to license designers?

alex_c• 17 years ago

This is why I love HN: even if something has a boring (or linkbait) title, if it has 100 votes, chances are it's worth reading.

#3 alone is worth the read, I've never quite thought of relationships that way.

sid• 17 years ago

Numbers 1,3,4,7 and 8 are some of the things over time I have also learnt. Sometimes you wonder whether your just over thinking things and that is why its good to once in a while validate it against other peoples who have actually written about their own thoughts that may in some cases be in line with yours.

Oxryly2• 17 years ago

#8 is a variant of the Buddhist notion of keeping a "beginner mind". Perhaps another approach is savoring your humility.

Oddly, its the only idea where the more seriously you take it the less you believe it. Or something...

aita• 17 years ago

A real eye opener?

vorador• 17 years ago

I found #9 liberating. Perfectionism could really be a problem.

byrneseyeview• 17 years ago

Everyone interested in licensing our field might note that the reason licensing has been invented is to protect the public not designers or clients.

That might be the original goal. But the long-term effect is that they'll use licenses to keep new designers out, and to make the licensed designers rich. And the best way to do that is to make sure the 'right' way is the old way (and the expensive way).

Milton Glaser: Ten Things I Have Learned

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