Milton Glaser: Ten Things I Have Learned | Hacker News Reader

Milton Glaser: Ten Things I Have Learned

miltonglaser.com

194 pointsivankirigin33 comments

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

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?

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

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

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.

I also highly doubt he designed his own site. More than likely, he told someone he knows in the publishing world that he wants a web site, they made one and showed it to him in their browser, and he put the stamp of approval on it. I doubt I see Glaser sitting next to a computer designing web sites...

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

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.

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!

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.

Time to drop out.

Some kinds of schooling are beneficial in the long term. I know plenty of folks that thought getting their PhD was painful, and were glad they did it.

Me, for one. My PhD was a lot of work, and the material itself is of very little value, but the things I learned on the way are absolutely invaluable.

I've learned how tell if I'm too tired to work, and techniques for getting me through that. I've learned how to find the most useful things to work on, and how to leverage them into getting the other stuff done as well. I've learning how to organise my time, estimate work to do and how to fit it in. I've learned how to communicate complex technical issues clearly, precisely and for multiple audiences.

The PhD was definitely painful, but equally definitely worth it.

Other exercises teach you similar things. Running a small company, saving a dying company, coaching sports for 10 year olds, and so on. If you use it right, though, school is a great place to learn from your mistakes without it mattering too much.

Possibly even more important, learn from other peoples' mistakes.

>>Possibly even more important, learn from other peoples' mistakes.

A very difficult skill to master.

It's "follow your bliss" not "follow the sparkles". It's not about avoiding sacrifice -- Americans especially believe that suffering can be avoided and we tend to live our lives on a junk food high -- but finding what makes you happy in the long-term and generally focusing on that. You will sacrifice and suffer a lot in your life, no matter what you do. Running away from it is not the solution. The bliss he's talking about, if you can find it, winds its way like a ribbon through the average day.

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.

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

This tripped my sarcasm detector...

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

#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...

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.

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.

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.

Yeah. At my first summer job, I would routinely stay at the office after my boss left just to work on the product, because I believed in it, and because he supported me, and because I admired and respected him. When I returned to work for the guy the next summer, his company had evolved/expanded and I got a lot less "face time". I was pretty much working under a COO, who believed in telling me "keep plugging away" as his version of moral support (I couldn't do more important work because I was simply "too young and inexperienced"). Anyway, I hated that second job, and I came into work late/left early whenever possible... I'll never work in a situation like that ever again.

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.

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).

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

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.

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

I like: 6. style is not to be trusted

A real eye opener?

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.

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?

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

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