Number 7 Printable

The persuasive, almost narrative copy was needed to overcome the natural skepticism of sending hard-earned money to a faceless company in a distant city. This is the danger of using the template as a destination rather than a starting point. At one end lies the powerful spirit of community and generosity. For a chair design, for instance: What if we *substitute* the wood with recycled plastic? What if we *combine* it with a bookshelf? How can we *adapt* the design of a bird's nest to its structure? Can we *modify* the scale to make it a giant's chair or a doll's chair? What if we *put it to another use* as a plant stand? What if we *eliminate* the backrest? What if we *reverse* it and hang it from the ceiling? Most of the results will be absurd, but the process forces you to break out of your conventional thinking patterns and can sometimes lead to a genuinely innovative breakthrough. The reason this simple tool works so well is that it simultaneously engages our visual memory, our physical sense of touch and creation, and our brain's innate reward system, creating a potent trifecta that helps us learn, organize, and achieve in a way that purely digital or text-based methods struggle to replicate. The principles they established for print layout in the 1950s are the direct ancestors of the responsive grid systems we use to design websites today.