I recently came across Virgil Abloh’s lecture at Harvard once again.
In particular, I liked his examination of his own personal design language; he says, “Your brain will tell you when something’s finished. And then post-rationalize. Make up something afterwards, or whatever.” That’s pretty much how he developed his design language:
- Readymade – new idea based on recognizable parts
Human emotion, irony
- “Figures of speech” or the “Quotes”
- 3% approach
- A compromise between 2 district similar or dissimilar notions
- Signs of “Work in process” – again human interaction
- A societal commentary – has a reason to exist now
- Speaking to the tourist & purist simultaneously
His assignment—which students paid good money for!—was for you to identify the tenets of your own design language. In other words, to more deliberately identify your signature.