Someone I recently met asked me what it was like NOT listening to music for an entire month—alluding to my exploratory study A Month Without Music conducted during February 2011. A rush of thoughts and emotions flowed over me as I thought about the process and journey of this project. I’ll start at the beginning and try to rationalize my thought process to make it as linear as possible.

There was a period during the beginning of the 2011 year when I became very conscious about how numb and deflated I had become when listening to music. It was a distressing thought because I love music, and hoped that this sudden truth would not ruin music for me. It was a very anxious time for me. I found this sudden insight to be quite profound and immediately wrote it down into my journal. My mind was racing with an uncontainable energy and I began to think inquisitively about what influences my behavior. My mind was filled with questions upon questions, then I stopped thinking all together and focused on how I could turn this uncontainable energy into creative energy. I came up with a ridiculous plan that not many would impose on themselves.

Step 1.) Stop voluntarily listening to music from Feb. 1 – Feb. 28, 2011
Step 2.) Keep a journal of experiences, musings, and moments on insight during this period
Step 3.) Illustrate one 3″ x 5″ image per day combining ephemeral material and journal logs
Step 4.) Combine all 28 illustrations in an accordion-fold booklet
Step 5.) Follow progress and discover interesting behavioral patterns

So how did everything pan out? The process was interesting because it was a struggle to avoid music. I started listening to podcasts, interviews, lectures and audiobooks to fill the void. The dialogue engaged my mind on a level that listening to music couldn’t do.I began to become more conscious of the present and the world around me. Eckhart Tolle would probably say that I was embracing the Now, and I would agree with him. Using the photo above as an example—I JUST HEARD THE WORLD refers to this exact instance. The title though is derived by the band OAR who perform a song of the same name.

As time went on I began to discover that I really did enjoy music, but I was surrounding myself with a lot of bad music. There was a sparsity of quality or what I call pure music in my collection. And by pure music I am referring to music that is innovative, original, timeless and is capable of crossing genre without debate. So maybe it was the bad music in my collection that was bringing me down?

Assembling the booklet was very interesting because it was an exercise in matching stylized typography with ephemeral materials such as personal photography, sketches, computer scans, and collages. The grayscale plus red palette proved to be an interesting arrangement because the tone during the beginning of the booklet was ominous and eerie; however, the final images use the red to demonstrate passion and power.

The most important part of the project was the element of challenge. It takes a certain type of curiosity and will power to abstain from something as universal as music. For any creative endeavor I’ve found that it is extremely important to push yourself down a path you’ve never traveled. The revelations could be groundbreaking, or you could always discover another thing that doesn’t work. Either way, there has been an effort made to strengthen your intestinal fortitude and prepare yourself for the next exploration into your creative psyche.

You’ll never know unless you try.

- Greg

The objective of this blog is to reinforce the design philosophy I share with my portfolio website, and that philosophy is as follows:

There is value in every idea or concept. It’s my responsibility to cultivate that value and make it a positive force to share to the world.

I’m comfortable saying that a majority of non-designers believe the job is about pushing pixels, choosing colours, and “making art”. What these non-designers do not recognize is that “making art” is less than a third of the design process. So what do designers do with the rest of that time? We build ideas, design marketing strategies, and plan, plan, plan, plan, plan. We are cerebral because the world is noisy and our client deserve a chance to be heard. As a wise lady once said, “you have to be different, great or first.” This is how we employ value.

So I’ll just say it one more time. This blog is dedicated to communicating value and sharing it to the world. Much has changed since my elder days of blogging, but I’m sure glad to be back with a new message.

Thanks for visiting,

- Greg