New Visual Essay: Back to the Cave

Frank Chimero in his most desperate state is Frank Chimero writing a talk. Each time I go through the process, I swear I will never do it again. Then someone invites me to speak at a conference about innovation in a hot air balloon over Catalonia, so I say yes, then end up in the same desperate position.

One of my tricks is to start a new Keynote presentation and drop in images and quotes that feel loosely related or simply ones that I feel drawn to. Images can speak to me on this cryptic level, but text rarely does (even though I love both). I’m not sure how to describe this attraction to certain images other than to call it a seduction. The same image can have it on one day and not on another. If I were more hippy-dippy, I’d call it kismet.

Once I have a solid pile of nonsense, I push the slides around into groups and sometimes add in new slides with declarative sentences and words like “BUT” and “THEREFORE” to join it all together into a story. You get odd, cryptic puzzles like:

Sample slides

This is specific enough to feel like you have done work, but fuzzy enough to let you forget the details when you come back to it. It works much better for me than an outline. Eventually a story emerges, but the process always feels a little silly and gratuitous. I guess I can’t argue with results.

Unused slides from previous talks are another source for the “fake deck”. This is nice, because it eliminates waste: stray ideas find new homes and I get to continually circle my obsessions like a vulture who is here to pick the last meat off the bone. Old images or quotes turn into new images or quotes by the same artists through association, and like the metaphorical Ship of Theseus, I eventually end up with something new for all the airborne Catalonians.

I was dredging my archives this past week and came across “XOXO 2016.keynote”. Oh, huh. I guess I never posted that on my site afterwards, did I? So adapting my XOXO Festival talk from last September became today’s project to avoid working on the talk I should be writing.

The XOXO talk is called “Back to the Cave” and it’s about independence and creativity. It reworks and clarifies some of my old writing on these topics and presents them in a much cleaner and more memorable way. You can read the old talk here. As for the new talk? Wish me luck…

Frank Chimero Designing & writing

Hi, I’m Frank Chimero, a designer from New York. Currently, I’m on sabbatical walking NYC, investigating new creative tooling, and researching Brian Eno’s collaborations with machines.

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Portrait of Frank Chimero

The Shape of Design A short book for new designers about the design mindset

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Writing Selected essays
and lectures

An anvil tied to a balloon
Everything Easy is Hard Again Is it twenty years of experience in tech or five years, repeated four times? 2018
A grid of wood cubes
The Web’s Grain Design by thinking inside the box model 2015
Time lapse image of a galloping horse
What Screens Want Design as choreography instead of composition 2013
A rose growing out of a pile of dirt
Only Openings Some problems must be tended instead of solved. 2014
Two torn pieces of paper matched together
Designing in the Borderlands Designer as translator, integrator, and merchant of ideas 2014

Blog 2009–?

About CV and bio

Hi, I’m Frank Chimero, a designer and writer from New York.

Previously, I was Creative Director and Head of Brand at the payments platform Modern Treasury. Before that, I co-founded and led design at Abstract, a design workflow and knowledge base startup that was later aquired by Adobe.

I also spent fifteen years running a solo design studio and consultancy, designing across product and brand for technology and media companies. Clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Nike, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and many early stage startups. I helped design a few things during that time you’ve probably used, from NPR’s online audio player to Wikipedia’s article pages.

In 2012, I wrote, designed, illustrated, and published The Shape of Design, a little book for new designers about the design mindset and making things for other people. Since the book’s launch, it has become a staple text in design education and found an enthusiastic audience beyond the design community.

I have a big love for museums, beat-up pocket-edition paperbacks, ambient music, antique JRPGs, and Phil Collins. (Nobody’s perfect.)

Experience

  • Sabbatical
  • Creative Director and Head of Brand Modern Treasury
  • Creative Director Fictive Kin
  • Self-employed Studio Frank
  • Co-Founder and Head of Design Abstract (acq. Adobe)
  • Self-employed Studio Frank

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Awards

  • ADC Young Guns 8 Art Directors Club
  • New Visual Artist Print Magazine

Speaking

  • AIGA National Conference
    US
  • AIGA Regional Events
    US
  • An Interesting Day
    NO
  • Awwwards Conference
    DE
  • Build Conference
    UK
  • Creative Works
    US
  • Cusp Conference
    US
  • dConstruct
    UK
  • Design Speaks
    US
  • Design Thinkers
    CA
  • Do Lectures
    UK
  • Etsy
    US
  • Harvard University
    US
  • How Design Live
    US
  • Interlink Conference
    CA
  • Kerning Conference
    IT
  • Mailchimp
    US
  • Mirror Conference
    PT
  • New Adventures
    UK
  • Portable Series
    AU
  • School of Visual Arts
    US
  • Shopify
    CA
  • South by Southwest
    US
  • Substans
    NO
  • Webstock
    NZ
  • XOXO Festival
    US