Milton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Celebrated Designer Dispenses Wisdom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

in Creativity, Design, Life | September 1st, 2026

“None of us has real­ly the abil­i­ty to under­stand our path until it’s over,” the cel­e­brat­ed graph­ic design­er Mil­ton Glaser mused less than a minute into the above video.

The late Mil­ton Glaser’s many con­tri­bu­tions to pop culture—the I ❤ NY logo, the psy­che­del­ic por­trait of a rain­bow-haired Bob Dylan, DC Comics’ clas­sic bul­let logo—con­ferred unde­ni­able author­i­ty. To the out­side eye, he seemed to have a pret­ty firm han­dle on the path he trav­eled for lo those many decades. Aspi­rant design­ers would do well to give extra con­sid­er­a­tion to any advice he might have shared.

As would the rest of us.

His “Ten Things I Have Learned,” orig­i­nal­ly deliv­ered as part of a talk to the AIGA—a ven­er­a­ble mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tion for design professionals—qualifies as sol­id life advice of gen­er­al inter­est.

Yes, the Inter­net spawns bul­let-point­ed tips for bet­ter liv­ing the way spring rains yield mush­rooms, but Glaser, a self-described “child of mod­ernism,” did not truck in pithy Insta­gram-friend­ly apho­risms. Instead, his list was born of reflec­tion on the var­i­ous turns of a long and most­ly sat­is­fy­ing cre­ative career.

We’ve excerpt­ed some of his most essen­tial points below, and sug­gest that those read­ers who are still in train­ing give spe­cial empha­sis to num­ber sev­en. Don’t place too much weight on num­ber nine until you’ve estab­lished a sol­id work eth­ic. (See num­ber four for more on that.)

MILTON GLASER”S TEN RULES FOR WORK AND LIFE (& A BONUS JOKE ABOUT A RABBIT).

1. YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE

Some years ago I real­ized that… all the work I had done that was mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant came out of an affec­tion­ate rela­tion­ship with a client.

2. IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB

Here, Glaser quotes com­pos­er John Cage: Nev­er have a job, because if you have a job some­day some­one will take it away from you and then you will be unpre­pared for your old age. 

3. SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

Glaser rec­om­mends putting a ques­tion­able com­pan­ion to a gestalt ther­a­py test. If, after spend­ing time with that per­son “you are more tired, then you have been poi­soned. If you have more ener­gy, you have been nour­ished. The test is almost infal­li­ble and I sug­gest that you use it for the rest of your life.”

4. PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH (or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT)

Glaser con­cedes that a record of depend­able excel­lence is some­thing to look for in a brain sur­geon or auto mechan­ic, but for those in the arts, “con­tin­u­ous trans­gres­sion” is the qual­i­ty to cul­ti­vate. Pro­fes­sion­al­ism does not allow for that because trans­gres­sion has to encom­pass the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fail­ure and if you are pro­fes­sion­al your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat suc­cess. 

5. LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE

I have an alter­na­tive to the propo­si­tion that I believe is more appro­pri­ate. ‘Just enough is more.’

6. STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Style change is usu­al­ly linked to eco­nom­ic fac­tors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when peo­ple see too much of the same thing too often.

7. HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN

The brain is the most respon­sive organ of the body…. Thought changes our life and our behav­ior. I also believe that draw­ing works in the same way…. Draw­ing also makes you atten­tive. It makes you pay atten­tion to what you are look­ing at, which is not so easy.

8. DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY

One of the signs of a dam­aged ego is absolute cer­tain­ty. Schools encour­age the idea of not com­pro­mis­ing and defend­ing your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usu­al­ly all about the nature of com­pro­mise…. Ide­al­ly, mak­ing every­one win through acts of accom­mo­da­tion is desir­able.

9. IT DOESN’T MATTER

Glaser cred­its essay­ist Roger Rosenblatt’s Rules for Aging (misiden­ti­fy­ing the title as Aging Grace­ful­ly) with help­ing him artic­u­late his phi­los­o­phy here.  It doesn’t mat­ter what you think. It does not mat­ter if you are late or ear­ly, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stu­pid. If you were hav­ing a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cock­eyed or your boyfriend or girl­friend looks at you cock­eyed, if you are cock­eyed. If you don’t get that pro­mo­tion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t mat­ter.

10. TELL THE TRUTH

It’s inter­est­ing to observe that in the new AIGA’s code of ethics there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of use­ful infor­ma­tion about appro­pri­ate behav­ior towards clients and oth­er design­ers, but not a word about a designer’s rela­tion­ship to the pub­lic. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more cen­tral to what we do.

BONUS JOKE

A butch­er was open­ing his mar­ket one morn­ing and as he did a rab­bit popped his head through the door. The butch­er was sur­prised when the rab­bit inquired ‘Got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er said ‘This is a meat mar­ket – we sell meat, not veg­eta­bles.’ The rab­bit hopped off. The next day the butch­er is open­ing the shop and sure enough the rab­bit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er now irri­tat­ed says ‘Lis­ten you lit­tle rodent, I told you yes­ter­day we sell meat, we do not sell veg­eta­bles and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those flop­py ears to the floor.’ The rab­bit dis­ap­peared hasti­ly and noth­ing hap­pened for a week. Then one morn­ing the rab­bit popped his head around the cor­ner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butch­er said ‘No.’ The rab­bit said ‘Ok. Got any cab­bage?’’

Read Mil­ton Glaser’s “Ten Things I Have Learned” in its entire­ty here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Glaser Draws Shake­speare & Explains Why Draw­ing is the Key to Under­stand­ing Life

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

Mil­ton Glaser (RIP) Explains Why We Must Over­come the Fear of Fail­ure, Take Risks & Dis­cov­er Our True Poten­tial

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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The Essence of Hayao Miyazaki Films: A Short Documentary About the Humanity at the Heart of His Animation

in Animation, Creativity, Writing | July 27th, 2026

Film­mak­er Hayao Miyaza­ki detests being referred to as the Japan­ese Walt Dis­ney. The great ani­ma­tor and sto­ry­teller admires the gor­geous ani­ma­tion of clas­sic Dis­ney films, but finds them lack­ing in emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty, the ele­ment he prizes above all else.

Miyaza­k­i’s films are cel­e­brat­ed for their mys­ti­cal, super­nat­ur­al ele­ments, but they take shape around the human char­ac­ters inhab­it­ing them. Plot comes lat­er, after he has fig­ured out the desires dri­ving his peo­ple. “Keep it sim­ple,” he coun­sels in Lewis Bond’s short doc­u­men­tary The Essence of Human­i­ty above. An inter­est­ing piece of advice, giv­en that a hall­mark of his 60-year career is his insis­tence on cre­at­ing real­is­tic three-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters, warts and all.

Amer­i­can ani­ma­tors are also taught to sim­pli­fy. They should all be able to sum up the essence of their pro­posed fea­tures by fill­ing in the blank of the phrase “I want _____,” pre­sum­ably because such con­ci­sion is a nec­es­sary ele­ment of a suc­cess­ful ele­va­tor pitch.

As Bond points out, West­ern ani­mat­ed fea­tures often end with a con­ve­nient deus ex machi­na, free­ing the char­ac­ters up for a crowd-pleas­ing dance par­ty as the cred­its roll.

Miyaza­ki doesn’t cot­ton to the idea of tidy, unearned end­ings, nor does he feel bound to grant his char­ac­ters their wants, pre­fer­ring instead to give them what they need. Spir­i­tu­al growth is supe­ri­or to wish ful­fill­ment here.

Such growth rarely hap­pens with­out time for reflec­tion, and Miyaza­ki films are notable for the num­ber of non-ver­bal scenes where­in char­ac­ters per­form small, every­day actions, a num­ber of which can be sam­pled in Bond’s doc­u­men­tary. The beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered weath­er and set­tings have pro­vid­ed clues as to the char­ac­ters’ devel­op­ment, ever since the love­ly scene of cloud shad­ows skim­ming across a field in his first fea­ture, 1979’s The Cas­tle of Cagliostro.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

Hayao Miyazaki’s Mas­ter­pieces Spir­it­ed Away and Princess Mononoke Imag­ined as 8‑Bit Video Games

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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How William S. Burroughs Used the Cut-Up Technique to Shut Down London’s First Espresso Bar (1972)

in Creativity, Film, Literature | June 10th, 2026

As we’ve not­ed before, the Eng­lish cof­fee­house has served as a stag­ing ground for rad­i­cal, some­times rev­o­lu­tion­ary social change. Cer­tain­ly this was the case dur­ing the Enlight­en­ment, as it was with the salons in France. And yet, by the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry it seems, cof­fee shops in Lon­don had grown scarcer and more hum­drum. That is until 1953 when the Moka Bar, the UK’s first Ital­ian espres­so bar, opened in Soho. On his blog The Great Wen, Peter Watts describes its arrival as “a momen­tous event”:

London’s first prop­er cof­fee shop—one equipped with a Gag­gia cof­fee machine—opened at 29 Frith Street. This was a place where teenagers too young for pubs could come and gath­er, and it is said by some that the intro­duc­tion of this cof­fee bar prompt­ed the youth cul­ture explo­sion that soon changed social life in Britain for­ev­er.

“By 1972,” Watts writes, “cof­fee bars were every­where and the teenage rev­o­lu­tion was firm­ly estab­lished.” Places like the Moka Bar might seem like the ide­al place for coun­ter­cul­tur­al maven William S. Bur­roughs—a Lon­don res­i­dent from the late six­ties to ear­ly seventies—to hob­nob with young dis­si­dents and out­siders. Bur­roughs, who so approv­ing­ly refers to the pos­si­bly apoc­ryphal anar­chist pirate colony of Lib­er­ta­tia in his Cities of the Red Night, would, one might think, appre­ci­ate the bud­ding anar­chism of British youth cul­ture, which would flower into punk soon enough.

But rather than join­ing the cof­fee bar scene, the can­tan­ker­ous Bur­roughs had tak­en to fre­quent­ing “plush gentlemen’s shops of the area, not to men­tion the ‘Dil­ly Boys,’ young male pros­ti­tutes who hus­tled for clients out­side the Regent Palace Hotel.”

And he had grown increas­ing­ly dis­il­lu­sioned with Lon­don, fum­ing, writes Ted Mor­gan in Bur­roughs’ biog­ra­phy Lit­er­ary Out­law, “at what he was pay­ing for his hole-in-the-wall apart­ment with a clos­et for a kitchen” and at the ris­ing price of util­i­ties. “Bur­roughs,” Mor­gan tells us, “began to feel that he was in ene­my ter­ri­to­ry.” And he thought the Moka cof­fee bar should pay the price for his indig­ni­ties.

There, “on sev­er­al occa­sions a snarling coun­ter­man had treat­ed him with out­ra­geous and unpro­voked dis­cour­tesy, and served him poi­so­nous cheese­cake that made him sick.” Bur­roughs “decid­ed to retal­i­ate by putting a curse on the place.” He chose a means of attack that he’d ear­li­er employed against the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy, “turn­ing up… every day,” writes Watts, “tak­ing pho­tographs and mak­ing sound record­ings.” Then he would play them back a day or so lat­er on the street out­side the Moka. “The idea,” writes Mor­gan, “was to place the Moka Bar out of time. You played back a tape that had tak­en place two days ago and you super­im­posed it on what was hap­pen­ing now, which pulled them out of their time posi­tion.”

Bur­roughs also con­nect­ed the method to the Water­gate record­ings, the Gar­den of Eden, and the the­o­ries of Alfred Korzyb­s­ki. The trig­ger for the mag­i­cal oper­a­tion was, in his words, “play­back.” In a very strange essay called “Feed­back from Water­gate to the Gar­den of Eden,” from his col­lec­tion Elec­tron­ic Rev­o­lu­tion, Bur­roughs described his oper­a­tion in detail, a dis­rup­tion, he wrote, of a “con­trol sys­tem.”

Now to apply the 3 tape recorder anal­o­gy to this sim­ple oper­a­tion. Tape recorder 1 is the Moka Bar itself it is in pris­tine con­di­tion. Tape recorder 2 is my record­ings of the Moka Bar vicin­i­ty. These record­ings are access. Tape recorder 2 in the Gar­den of Eden was Eve made from Adam. So a record­ing made from the Moka Bar is a piece of the Moka Bar. The record­ing once made, this piece becomes autonomous and out of their con­trol. Tape recorder 3 is play­back. Adam expe­ri­ences shame when his dis­c­grace­ful behav­ior is played back to him by tape recorder 3 which is God. By play­ing back my record­ings to the Moka Bar when I want and with any changes I wish to make in the record­ings, I become God for this local. I effect them. They can­not affect me.

The the­o­ry made per­fect sense to Bur­roughs, who believed in a Mag­i­cal Uni­verse ruled by occult forces and who exper­i­ment­ed heav­i­ly with Sci­en­tol­ogy, Crow­ley-an Mag­ick, and the orgone ener­gy of Wil­helm Reich. The attack on the Moka worked, or at least Bur­roughs believed it did. “They are seething in there,” he wrote, “I have them and they know it.” On Octo­ber 30th, 1972  the estab­lish­ment closed its doors—perhaps a con­se­quence of those ris­ing rents that so irked the Beat writer—and the loca­tion became the Queens Snack Bar.

The audio-visu­al cut-up tech­nique Bur­roughs used in his attack against the Moka Bar was a method derived by Bur­roughs and Brion Gysin from their exper­i­ments with writ­ten “cut-ups,” and Bur­roughs applied it to film as well. At the top of the post, see an inter­pre­tive “med­i­ta­tion” based on Bur­roughs’ use of audio/visual “mag­i­cal weapons” and incor­po­rat­ing his record­ings. On YouTube, you can watch “The Cut Ups,” a short film Bur­roughs him­self made in 1966 with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Antony Balch, a dis­ori­ent­ing illus­tra­tion of the cut up tech­nique.

Not lim­it­ed to attack­ing annoy­ing Lon­don cof­fee­house own­ers, Bur­roughs’ sup­pos­ed­ly mag­i­cal inter­ven­tions in real­i­ty were in fact the fullest expres­sion of his cre­ativ­i­ty. As Ted Mor­gan writes, “the sin­gle most impor­tant thing about Bur­roughs was his belief in the mag­i­cal uni­verse. The same impulse that led him to put out curs­es was, as he saw it, the source of his writ­ing.” Read much more about Bur­roughs’ the­o­ry and prac­tice in Matthew Levi Stevens’ essay “The Mag­i­cal Uni­verse of William S. Bur­roughs,” and hear the author him­self dis­course on the para­nor­mal, tape cut-ups, and much more in the lec­ture below from a writ­ing class he gave in June, 1986.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain & Thom Yorke Write Songs With William Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

When William S. Bur­roughs Joined Sci­en­tol­ogy (and His 1971 Book Denounc­ing It)

How to Jump­start Your Cre­ative Process with William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Lynda Barry on How the Smartphone Is Endangering Three Ingredients of Creativity: Loneliness, Uncertainty & Boredom

in Art, Creativity, Productivity, Technology | March 24th, 2026

The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key ele­ments of dis­cov­ery: lone­li­ness, uncer­tain­ty and bore­dom. Those have always been where cre­ative ideas come from. — Lyn­da Bar­ry

In the spring of 2016, the great car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor, Lyn­da Bar­ry, did the unthink­able, pri­or to giv­ing a lec­ture and writ­ing class at NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter.

She demand­ed that all par­tic­i­pat­ing staff mem­bers sur­ren­der their phones and oth­er such per­son­al devices.

Her vic­tims were as jan­gled by this prospect as your aver­age iPhone-addict­ed teen, but sur­ren­dered, agree­ing to write by hand, anoth­er anti­quat­ed notion Bar­ry sub­scribes to:

The delete but­ton makes it so that any­thing you’re unsure of you can get rid of, so noth­ing new has a chance. Writ­ing by hand is a rev­e­la­tion for peo­ple. Maybe that’s why they asked me to NASA – I still know how to use my hands… there is a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing that goes along with them.

Barry—who told the Onion’s AV Club that she craft­ed her book What It Is with an eye toward bored read­ers stuck in a Jiffy Lube oil-change wait­ing room—is also a big pro­po­nent of doo­dling, which she views as a cre­ative neu­ro­log­i­cal response to bore­dom:

Bor­ing meet­ing, you have a pen, the usu­al clowns are yakking. Most peo­ple will draw some­thing, even peo­ple who can’t draw. I say “If you’re bored, what do you draw?” And every­body has some­thing they draw. Like “Oh yeah, my lit­tle guy, I draw him.” Or “I draw eye­balls, or palm trees.” … So I asked them “Why do you think you do that? Why do you think you doo­dle dur­ing those meet­ings?” I believe that it’s because it makes hav­ing to endure that par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion more bear­able, by chang­ing our expe­ri­ence of time. It’s so slight. I always say it’s the dif­fer­ence between, if you’re not doo­dling, the min­utes feel like a cheese grater on your face. But if you are doo­dling, it’s more like Bril­lo.  It’s not much bet­ter, but there is a dif­fer­ence. You could han­dle Bril­lo a lit­tle longer than the cheese grater.

Meet­ings and class­rooms are among the few remain­ing venues in which screen-addict­ed moths are expect­ed to force them­selves away from the phone’s invit­ing flame. Oth­er settings—like the Jiffy Lube wait­ing room—require more ini­tia­tive on the user’s part.

Once, we were keen­er stu­dents of minor changes to famil­iar envi­ron­ments, the books strangers were read­ing in the sub­way, and those strangers them­selves. Our sub­se­quent obser­va­tions were known to spark con­ver­sa­tion and some­times ideas that led to cre­ative projects.

Now, many of us let those oppor­tu­ni­ties slide by, as we fill up on such fleet­ing con­fec­tions as fun­ny videos and all-you-can-eat serv­ings of social media.

It’s also tempt­ing to use our phones as defac­to shields any time social anx­i­ety looms. This dodge may pro­vide short term com­fort, espe­cial­ly to younger peo­ple, but remem­ber, Bar­ry and many of her car­toon­ist peers, includ­ing Daniel Clowes, Simon Hansel­mann, and Ariel Schrag, toughed it out by mak­ing art. That’s what got them through the lone­li­ness, uncer­tain­ty, and bore­dom of their mid­dle and high school years.

The book you hold in your hands would not exist had high school been a pleas­ant expe­ri­ence for me… It was on those qui­et week­end nights when even my par­ents were out hav­ing fun that I began mak­ing seri­ous attempts to make sto­ries in comics form.

- Adri­an Tomine, intro­duc­tion to 32 Sto­ries

Bar­ry is far from alone in encour­ag­ing adults to peel them­selves away from their phone depen­den­cy for their cre­ative good.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Eric Pickersgill’s Removed imag­ines a series of every­day sit­u­a­tions in which phones and oth­er per­son­al devices have been ren­dered invis­i­ble. (It’s worth not­ing that he removed the offend­ing arti­cles from the mod­els’ hands, rather that Pho­to­shop­ping them out lat­er.)

Com­put­er Sci­ence Pro­fes­sor Calvin Newport’s book, Deep Work, posits that all that shal­low phone time is cre­at­ing stress, anx­i­ety, and lost cre­ative oppor­tu­ni­ties, while also doing a num­ber on our per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives.

Author Manoush Zomorodi’s TED Talk on how bore­dom can lead to bril­liant ideas, below, details a week­long exper­i­ment in bat­tling smart­phone habits, with lots of sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to back up her find­ings.

But what if you wipe the slate of dig­i­tal dis­trac­tions only to find that your brain’s just… emp­ty? A once occu­pied room, now devoid of any­thing but dim­ly recalled memes, and gen­er­al­ized dread over the state of the world?

The afore­men­tioned AV Club inter­view with Bar­ry offers both encour­age­ment and some use­ful sug­ges­tions that will get the tem­porar­i­ly par­a­lyzed mov­ing again:

I don’t know what the strip’s going to be about when I start. I nev­er know. I often­times have—I call it the word-bag. Just a bag of words. I’ll just reach in there, and I’ll pull out a word, and it’ll say “ping-pong.” I’ll just have that in my head, and I’ll start draw­ing the pic­tures as if I can… I hear a sen­tence, I just hear it. As soon as I hear even the begin­ning of the first sen­tence, then I just… I write real­ly slow. So I’ll be writ­ing that, and I’ll know what’s going to go at the top of the pan­el. Then, when it gets to the end, usu­al­ly I’ll know what the next one is. By three sen­tences or four in that first pan­el, I stop, and then I say “Now it’s time for the draw­ing.” Then I’ll draw. But then I’ll hear the next one over on anoth­er page! Or when I’m draw­ing Marlys and Arna, I might hear her say some­thing, but then I’ll hear Marlys say some­thing back. So once that first sen­tence is there, I have all kinds of choic­es as to where I put my brush. But if noth­ing is hap­pen­ing, then I just go over to what I call my decoy page. It’s like decoy ducks. I go over there and just start mess­ing around.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Infor­ma­tion Over­load Robs Us of Our Cre­ativ­i­ty: What the Sci­en­tif­ic Research Shows

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Prof. Cal New­port

Lyn­da Barry’s Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her New UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

Lyn­da Bar­ry, Car­toon­ist Turned Pro­fes­sor, Gives Her Old Fash­ioned Take on the Future of Edu­ca­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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Lessons in Creativity from Rick Rubin: Focus on Your Art, Not the Audience

in Creativity, Music | January 27th, 2026

If you’ve heard Run‑D.M.C.‘s Rais­ing Hell, Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled debut, John­ny Cash’s Amer­i­can Record­ings, or Adele’s 21, you’ve heard the work of Rick Rubin. Yet even if you’ve lis­tened close­ly to every song on which he’s been cred­it­ed as a pro­duc­er over the past 45 years, you may have trou­ble pin­ning down what, exact­ly, the work of Rick Rubin is. Though his résumé includes such pro­fes­sion­al achieve­ments as co-found­ing both Def Jam Record­ings and Amer­i­can Record­ings, as well as shar­ing the pres­i­den­cy of Colum­bia Records for a stretch, he’s become best known in recent years as a kind of bare­foot sage of cre­ativ­i­ty.

Rubin has proven ready to dis­pense some­times-cryp­tic wis­dom in what­ev­er con­texts he finds him­self, and in the twen­ty-twen­ties, that role nat­u­ral­ly involves appear­ing on a lot of long-form inter­view pod­casts.

For Rubin in par­tic­u­lar, the pub­li­ca­tion of his book The Cre­ative Act: A Way of Being con­sti­tut­ed an incen­tive — or per­haps an excuse — to take a seat across from pop­u­lar pod­cast­ers like Lex Frid­man, Jay Shet­ty, and Andrew Huber­man. Nat­u­ral­ly, these con­ver­sa­tions spend a good deal of time on ques­tions of what it takes to cre­ate a work of art, great or oth­er­wise, in music or whichev­er medi­um it may be.

One of the most sur­pris­ing points to which Rubin returns again and again is that the best art is nev­er made to please an audi­ence. Instead of try­ing to antic­i­pate the tastes of oth­ers, you must first sat­is­fy your­self with your work. Think back to your first encounter with your very favorite albums, films, or books, and you’ll real­ize the truth of Rubin’s words. Even then, it must have felt like the musi­cian, the direc­tor, or the author did­n’t guess what you want­ed, but worked to cre­ate some­thing per­son­al­ly res­o­nant that went on to res­onate with you — and, per­haps, mil­lions of oth­ers as well.

The fac­tors involved in such an artis­tic con­nec­tion are many and inscrutable, in Rubin’s telling, and attempts at their expla­na­tion tend to verge on the mys­ti­cal. But they can’t be reduced to a for­mu­la that applies always and every­where, which means that cre­ators of all kinds have to go through expe­ri­ence after long expe­ri­ence of tri­al and error through­out their careers. For many, this can neces­si­tate get­ting a day job, Rubin’s advo­ca­cy of which puts him at odds with anoth­er of the most famous music producer/gurus of all time. But then, there’s more than one way to get cre­ative in this world.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rick Rubin: The Invis­i­bil­i­ty of Hip Hop’s Great­est Pro­duc­er

The Beast­ie Boys & Rick Rubin Reunite and Revis­it Their For­ma­tive Time Togeth­er in 1980s NYC

Rick Rubin Revis­its the Ori­gins of Def Jam Records & the NYU Dorm Room Where It All Began

Mal­colm Glad­well and Rick Rubin Launch a New Music Pod­cast, Bro­ken Record: Lis­ten Online

Famed New Orleans Music Pro­duc­er Mark Bing­ham Dis­cuss­es His Songs and Col­lab­o­ra­tions: A Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Con­ver­sa­tion (#136)

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Alejandro Jodorowsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Creative Inspiration

in Creativity, Film | October 22nd, 2025

The prac­tice of car­toman­cy, or div­ina­tion with cards, dates back sev­er­al hun­dred years to at least 14th cen­tu­ry Europe, per­haps by way of Turkey. But the spe­cif­ic form we know of, the tarot, like­ly emerged in the 17th cen­tu­ry, and the deck we’re all most famil­iar with—the Rid­er-Waite Tarot—didn’t appear until 1909. Pop­u­lar main­ly with occultists like Aleis­ter Crow­ley and Madame Blavatsky in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, the tarot explod­ed into pop­u­lar cul­ture in the new age 70s with books like Stu­art Kaplan’s Tarot Cards for Fun and For­tune Telling, and by way of cult film­mak­ers like Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky.

Since its rel­a­tive­ly recent pop­u­lar­iza­tion, “fun” and “for­tune telling” have more or less defined most people’s atti­tude to the tarot, whether they approve or dis­ap­prove of either one. But for artists and poets like William But­ler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and sur­re­al­ist direc­tor Jodorowsky—whose film nar­ra­tion is per­haps the most poet­ic in mod­ern cinema—the tarot has always meant some­thing much more mys­te­ri­ous and inspir­ing. “The tarot,” says Jodor­owsky in the short film above, “will teach you how to cre­ate a soul.”

After study­ing the Major and Minor Arcana and the suits, and puz­zling over the sym­bols on each card, Jodor­owsky dis­cov­ered that “all 78 cards could be joined in a man­dala, in just one image.” Learn­ing to see the deck thus, “You must not talk about the future. The future is a con. The tarot is a lan­guage that talks about the present. If you use it to see the future, you become a con­man.” Like oth­er mys­ti­cal poets, Jodorowsky’s study of the tarot did not lead him to the super­nat­ur­al but to the cre­ative act.

And like many a poet before him, Jodor­owsky explored the jour­ney of the Fool in his 1973 film The Holy Moun­tain, a “daz­zling, ram­bling, often inco­her­ent satire,” writes Matt Zoller Seitz, that “unfurls like a hal­lu­cino­genic day­dream.” Jodorowsky’s cin­e­mat­ic dream log­ic comes not only from his work as a “shaman­ic psy­chother­a­pist.” He also cred­its the tarot for his psy­chomag­i­cal real­ism. “For me,” says Jodor­owsky in the video at the top, “the tarot was some­thing more seri­ous. It was a deep psy­cho­log­i­cal search.” The result of that search—Jodorowsky’s sin­gu­lar and total­ly unfor­get­table body of work—speaks to us of the val­ue of such an under­tak­ing, what­ev­er means one uses to get there.

Or as Jodor­owsky says in one of his mys­ti­cal pro­nounce­ments, “If you set your spir­it to some­thing, that phe­nom­e­non will hap­pen.” If that sounds like mag­i­cal think­ing, that’s exact­ly what it is. Jodor­owsky shows us how to read the tarot as he does, for psy­cho­log­i­cal insight and cre­ative inspi­ra­tion, in the video above, addressed to a fan named John Bish­op. Span­ish speak­ers will have no trou­ble under­stand­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, as he quick­ly slides almost ful­ly into his native lan­guage through lack of con­fi­dence in his facil­i­ty with Eng­lish. The video belongs to a series on Jodorowsky’s YouTube chan­nel, most of them ful­ly in Span­ish with­out sub­ti­tles.

Nev­er­the­less, for Eng­lish speak­ers, the sub­ti­tled video at the top offers a sur­pris­ing­ly dense les­son on the Chilean mystic’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the tarot’s sup­posed wis­dom as a sym­bol­ic sys­tem, and a way of telling the present.

Should you wish to know more, you can find it in Jodorowsky’s book The Way of Tarot: The Spir­i­tu­al Teacher in the Cards, and prac­tice on your very own deck of Jodor­owsky-designed tarot cards.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet the For­got­ten Female Artist Behind the World’s Most Pop­u­lar Tarot Deck (1909)

Behold the Sola-Bus­ca Tarot Deck, the Ear­li­est Com­plete Set of Tarot Cards (1490)

Carl Jung on the Pow­er of Tarot Cards: They Pro­vide Door­ways to the Uncon­scious & Per­haps a Way to Pre­dict the Future

The Tarot Card Deck Cre­at­ed by Sal­vador Dalí

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Behold an Anatomically Correct Replica of the Human Brain, Knitted by a Psychiatrist

in Art, Biology, Creativity | September 4th, 2025

Our brains dic­tate our every move.

They’re the ones who spur us to study hard, so we can make some­thing of our­selves, in order to bet­ter our com­mu­ni­ties.

They name our babies, choose our clothes, decide what we’re hun­gry for.

They make and break laws, orga­nize protests, frit­ter away hours on social media, and give us the green light to binge watch a bunch of dumb shows when we could be read­ing War and Peace.

They also plant the seeds for Fitz­car­ral­do-like cre­ative endeav­ors that take over our lives and gen­er­ate lit­tle to no income.

We may describe such endeav­ors as a labor of love, into which we’ve poured our entire heart and soul, but think for a sec­ond.

Who’s real­ly respon­si­ble here?

The heart, that mus­cu­lar fist-sized Valen­tine, con­tent to just pump-pump-pump its way through life, lub-dub, lub-dub, from cra­dle to grave?

Or the brain, a crafty Iago of an organ, pos­ses­sor of bil­lions of neu­rons, com­plex, con­tra­dic­to­ry, a mys­tery we’re far from unrav­el­ing?

Psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Karen Nor­berg’s brain has steered her to study such heavy duty sub­jects as the day­care effect, the rise in youth sui­cide, and the risk of pre­scrib­ing selec­tive sero­tonin reup­take inhibitors as a treat­ment for depres­sion.

On a lighter note, it also told her to devote nine months to knit­ting an anatom­i­cal­ly cor­rect repli­ca of the human brain.

(Twelve, if you count three months of research before cast­ing on.)

How did her brain con­vince her to embark on this mad­cap assign­ment?

Easy. It arranged for her to be in the mid­dle of a more pro­sa­ic knit­ting project, then goosed her into notic­ing how the ruf­fles of that project resem­bled the wrin­kles of the cere­bral cor­tex.

Coin­ci­dence?

Not like­ly. Espe­cial­ly when one of the cere­bral cor­tex’s most impor­tant duties is deci­sion mak­ing.

As she explained in an inter­view with The Tele­graph, brain devel­op­ment is not unlike the growth of a knit­ted piece:

You can see very nat­u­ral­ly how the ‘rip­pling’ effect of the cere­bral cor­tex emerges from prop­er­ties that prob­a­bly have to do with nerve cell growth. In the case of knit­ting, the effect is cre­at­ed by increas­ing the num­ber of stitch­es in each row.

Dr. Norberg—who, yes, has on occa­sion referred to her project as a labor of love—told Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can that such a mas­sive crafty under­tak­ing appealed to her sense of humor because “it seemed so ridicu­lous and would be an enor­mous­ly com­pli­cat­ed, absurd­ly ambi­tious thing to do.”

That’s the point at which many people’s brains would give them per­mis­sion to stop, but Dr. Nor­berg and her brain per­sist­ed, push­ing past the hypo­thet­i­cal, cre­at­ing col­or­ful indi­vid­ual struc­tures that were even­tu­al­ly sewn into two cud­dly hemi­spheres that can be joined with a zip­per.

(She also let slip that her brain—by which she means the knit­ted one, though the obser­va­tion cer­tain­ly holds true for the one in her head—is female, due to its robust cor­pus cal­lo­sum, the “tough body” whose mil­lions of fibers pro­mote com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­nec­tion.)

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Rewire Your Brain in 6 Weeks: A BBC Reporter Explores How Every­day Life Changes Can Alter Our Brains

The Human Brain: A Free Online Course from MIT

The “Brain Dic­tio­nary”: Beau­ti­ful 3D Map Shows How Dif­fer­ent Brain Areas Respond to Hear­ing Dif­fer­ent Words

A Mas­sive, Knit­ted Tapes­try of the Galaxy: Soft­ware Engi­neer Hacks a Knit­ting Machine & Cre­ates a Star Map Fea­tur­ing 88 Con­stel­la­tions

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er.

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Albert Einstein Tells His Son That the Key to Learning & Happiness Is Losing Yourself in Creativity (or “Finding Flow”)

in Art, Creativity, Health | July 14th, 2025

As one par­tic­u­lar­ly astute observ­er of human emo­tions might put it, it is a truth uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged that we can’t all be Albert Ein­stein. In fact, none of us can. That unique expe­ri­ence was denied even Einstein’s son Hans Albert, though he did go on to his own dis­tin­guished career as an engi­neer and pro­fes­sor of hydraulics. Ein­stein father and son had a strained rela­tion­ship, yet the great physi­cist had a hand in his son’s suc­cess, inspir­ing him to pur­sue his sci­en­tif­ic pas­sion. But Einstein’s pater­nal encour­age­ment extend­ed fur­ther, beyond sci­en­tif­ic pur­suits and toward a gen­er­al the­o­ry of learn­ing and enjoy­ment that sug­gests we can be hap­pi­est and most pro­duc­tive when being most our­selves.

While liv­ing in Berlin in 1915, Ein­stein wrote a poignant let­ter to his son, just two days after fin­ish­ing his the­o­ry of gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty. His tone swings from buoy­ant to pained—lamenting his family’s “awk­ward” sep­a­ra­tion and propos­ing to spend more time with Albert, as he calls him. His son can “learn many good and beau­ti­ful things from me,” writes Ein­stein, “These days I have com­plet­ed one of the most beau­ti­ful works of my life.”

Ein­stein also writes, “I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and car­pen­try are in my opin­ion for your age the best pur­suits.” An ama­teur musi­cian him­self, Ein­stein under­stood the val­ue of devel­op­ing an infor­mal avo­ca­tion. “Main­ly play the things on the piano which please you,” he tells his son, “even if the teacher does not assign those.” Doing what you love, the way you like to do it, he goes on, “is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing some­thing with such enjoy­ment that you don’t notice that the time pass­es.”

This great theme of total immer­sion in a cre­ative endeav­or sur­faced sev­er­al decades lat­er in anoth­er scientist’s work, that of Hun­gar­i­an psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, described by Mar­tin Selig­man—for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Association—as “the world’s lead­ing researcher” in the field of pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy. Pre­sent­ed in his pop­u­lar TED talk above, and at more length in his books on the sub­ject, Csikszentmihalyi’s insights into human flour­ish­ing mir­ror Einstein’s: he calls such cre­ative immer­sion “flow,” or the state of “being com­plete­ly involved in an activ­i­ty for its own sake.”

The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, move­ment, and thought fol­lows inevitably from the pre­vi­ous one, like play­ing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.

Con­trary to our usu­al con­cep­tions of using one’s “skills to the utmost,” Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi tells us that the reward for enter­ing such a state is not the mate­r­i­al ben­e­fits it gen­er­ates, but the pos­i­tive emo­tions. These emo­tions, as Ein­stein the­o­rized, not only moti­vate us to become bet­ter, but they also pro­vide a source of mean­ing no amount of finan­cial gain above a min­i­mum lev­el can offer. “The lack of basic mate­r­i­al resources con­tributes to unhap­pi­ness,” Csikszentmihalyi’s data demon­strates, “but the increase in mate­r­i­al resources does not increase hap­pi­ness.” While none of us can be Ein­stein, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi tells us we can all ben­e­fit from Einstein’s advice, by doing what­ev­er we do to the best of our abil­i­ties and with­out any motive oth­er than sheer plea­sure.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Enter a ‘Flow State’ on Com­mand: Peak Per­for­mance Mind Hack Explained in 7 Min­utes

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

How to Get into a Cre­ative “Flow State”: A Short Mas­ter­class

How to Enter Flow State, Increase Your Abil­i­ty to Con­cen­trate, and Let Your Ego Fall Away : An Ani­mat­ed Primer

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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