Solutions

For much of my adult life, my chief function as a professor has been to take complexity and break it into bullet points, a game well understood by students. If something were caged in a bullet point, they must write it down because it will be on the test. If not so contained, they can relax and go back to texting their friends.

The bulleting process came easily to me. Take, for example, my three laws of design. (Three bullet points, three test questions.) They are:

• Law One. All design is solving problems.
• Law Two. All design problems have solutions.
• Law Three. All design solutions create new problems.

To illustrate, if a layout were too cluttered (the problem), then arranging elements into groups and separating the groups would make the layout less busy (the solution) but that might force items into illogical groupings (the new problem). I always ended that particular lecture by asserting that if you substituted the word “life” for “design” you had a pretty workable philosophy of life too.

• All life is solving problems. The garage is too cluttered.
• All life’s problems have solutions. Divide the garage in half, gardening stuff on the left, recycling on the right and anything not fitting those two categories won’t belong in the garage.
• All life’s solutions create new problems. What about the car and the birdseed?
• New solution. Make an exception for the car; move the birdseed to the laundry room.
• New problem. The laundry room is too cluttered….

For years these little maxims worked. They still work for little problems, but I’ve just discovered they are useless for a truly big one.

• The problem. I have a deadly disease
• The solution. There’s nothing they can do.
• The problem. There’s nothing they can do.

My first appointment to begin talking about a transplant is in Cleveland in early December. A good thing I don’t have to teach about this, I’d be bulletless and speechless.

Above, Digital Embroidery, computer drawing. Copyright 2009 ptw.