In this post, I write about how my piecemeal research into building my own practice and schedules, from ECTS to a sort of RPG system, has come to an end with the simple acceptance that the best formal solution already exists.

These are the books I will use as the basis for my self-regulated reconstruction of my graphic design studies from now on:

1. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
2. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
3. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

My reasons are simple. I have gradually chipped away at the problems inherent in my currently poor study system, which is entirely my own doing, because I abandoned an earlier system in favour of the bad but conventionally accepted one. Slowly, I have found my way back on track and discovered, as this illustration puts it, the “right system”, after losing both it and myself between 2017 and 2023.

I believed that passing grades were all that mattered. This left me stranded with half-remembered and poorly understood knowledge born of rote repetition.

This is how I intend to address my own shortcomings in all things graphic design: by using the right system, along with a great many books and other reading materials.

Libraries are an amazing resource here in Germany. Through interlibrary loans, you can even borrow books held by other libraries, usually for a small fee. If you are fortunate enough to live in a country with a solid library system, use it. Otherwise, the privilege goes to waste, and eventually, through disuse, it disappears.

I say this as someone who once believed that I could learn anything online. That is not so: tutorials are not learning. Tutorials are designed to guarantee a successful result in the easiest way possible.

And judging by the books above, ease is the enemy of expertise when it comes to learning and understanding.

This is Rio, sending a message from here to anyone out there who feels that they should know and understand more, but doesn’t.

Quelle: Code & Canvas