Nikki Vijaybhaskar

Hi, I'm Nikki. I'm a tech writer, doodler and design enthusiast. This is where I curate everything that inspires me.

[nikhilav]

“Seeking closure”

[nikhilav]

Coffee 10

Source: http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-a-latte-without-an-espresso-machine-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-211090

[nikhilav]

...because of smartphones and tablets, I have lost the habit of reading. In the last few years, maybe I read ten books a year at the most. But to have a creative output, in my case drawings and illustrations, I need creative input, inspirations, and influences. I need to experience things I don’t experience on my own. So, the new routine I started earlier this year is to, finally, get back into reading; reading really good books that fuel my creativity.

http://mymorningroutine.com/yuko-shimizu/ Yuko Shimizu’s Morning Routine, 

[dictionarystory]

Divorcee

I’ll look up love in the dictionary: ‘A titanic tower of garbage’.

[nikhilav]

Online/Offline

Social Media has changed the way I interact with things I’m excited about. 

When I begin to realize that here’s something I would like to read, my mind immediately jumps to the Tweet that needs to go out sharing the find, mentally stacking up all the hashtags that would go with it. 

When the denim jacket I’ve been waiting for arrives in the mail, I try it on, admire myself in the mirror for two seconds, and start thinking about how I should stage the Instagram picture. 

Then when the awareness of this Social Media preoccupation hits, I start writing this, putting pen on paper, wanting to move away from the digital. As soon as I get in the flow, my mind starts wandering to how I would turn this into a blog post, if I should attach a picture of this write-up to show that I actually wrote it and other such questions. 

The answer (what was the question again?) is not to overthink and try to purge Social Media from the creative process. The answer is to create off-screen, offline, with pen and paper, with fingers moving from left to right, head bent down, spectacles perched on nose, inching down slowly. And then share what I created. Post pictures. Because at the end of the day, pics or it didn’t happen! 

[youmightfindyourself]

[bobulate]

* Rewrite someone else’s writing. Experiment with theft and plagiarism.

* Construct a poem as if the words were three-dimensional objects to be handled in space. Print them on large cards or bricks if necessary.

* Write on a piece of paper where something is already printed or written.

* Dream work: record dreams daily

* The uses of journals. Keep a journal that is restricted to one set of ideas, for instance, a food or dream journal

* Attempt to speak for a day only in questions; write only in questions.

* Create a file of newspaper articles that seem to relate to the chances of writing poetry.

* Write a work that intersperses love with landlords.

* Write household poems — about cooking, shopping, eating and sleeping.

[austinkleon]

Don’t forget to check out the journal ideas, too– a lot of these I try to do with my logbooks.

via bobulate : : youmightfindyourself

[austinkleon]

Jason Segel on being okay with being bad until you’re good:

I’m willing to be bad for as long as it takes, until I’m good….I don’t have a sense of shame. I just don’t. If I’ve hurt someone’s feelings, if I’m mean to somebody, I’ll lament over that for days. I’m that dude. I’ll lose sleep over mundane stuff. But I don’t really have the thing of, “Oh, I’ve embarrassed myself.” I just don’t understand why I would stop trying to play piano even though I’m not good at it. I want to be good at it. So why wouldn’t I keep playing?

Just. Keep. Working.

Remember: ✓ curiosity ✓ kindness ✓stamina ✓ a willingness to look stupid.

[nikhilav]

Diamond Dress

A thousand rips in a diamond dress Languid sweat in a shadow forest. 

[nikhilav]

There are no contemporary themes. The themes have always been love, lack of it, death and its occasional temporary avoidance which we describe as life, the immortality or lack of immortality of the soul, money, honor and politics.

Ernest Hemingway, The Good Life According to Hemingway, A. E. Hotchner

[nikhilav]

I like to start early, before I can be distracted by people and events, and I start by rereading and editing everything I have written to the point I left off. That way I go through a book I'm writing several hundred times. Then I go right on, no pissing around, crumpling up paper, pacing, because I always stop at a point where I know precisely what's going to happen next. So I don't have to crank up every day.

Ernest Hemingway, The Good Life According to Hemingway, A. E. Hotchner

[nikhilav]

I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

Ernest Hemingway, The Good Life According to Hemingway, A. E. Hotchner

[nikhilav]

I like to write standing up to reduce the old belly and because you have more vitality on your feet.

Ernest Hemingway, The Good Life According to Hemingway by A. E. Hotchner

[nikhilav]

[Claude] Garamond is also credited with establishing the first type foundry, as he would make copies of his faces and sell them to other printers. He was also the first typographer to use italic as a complement to roman type, and he designed the first italic face that was intended not to stand alone but to serve as a partner to roman letters.

Graphic Design - A New History by Stephen J. Eskilson

[nikhilav]

Reading "Graphic Design - A New History"

"Based on cursive handwriting, italic was not used as a subset to create emphasis, as it mainly is today, but was its own style - one that proved valuable because more words could fit on each line than with either gothic or roman."

[austinkleon]

Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese,” from New and Selected Poems, Volume One

Here’s a recording of her reading the poem: 

She did a wonderful interview with On Being. I used this quote to open The Steal Like An Artist Journal:

I think we’re creative all day long. We have to have an appointment to have that work out on the page. Because the creative part of us gets tired of waiting, or just gets tired.

Via Frank, who keeps a copy of the poem in his wallet.

[nikhilav]

"Although a triumph of gear ratios, [the orreries] did commit a grave sin of information design - Pridefully Obvious Presentation - by directing attention more toward miraculous contraptionary display than to planetary motion." - Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte

[nikhilav]

It is difficult enough, oneself, to survey this whole, whether nature or art, but still more difficult to help another to such a comprehensive view.

Paul Klee in Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte