You’ll ask what would seem to be the obvious, except nobody’s seriously thought about it.*
(Paula Scher)

Read, look into other areas, use different learning mediums, ask better questions, reflect, be open to ideas, be surrounded by learners, and prioritise learning.**
(Michael Heppell)

Ask twenty people what they understand design to be and you’ll get twenty different answers.

Not surprising really given that design is one of the defining features of the human species. We have covered the planet in our designs and would have to travel a long way from home to find somewhere untouched by human design.

Of course, this flags up how design can be both good and bad, and the bad has left us in a predicament; we now know we have to get better at designing if we’re going to survive.

We’re all a part of this because we’re all designers, though we can forget this, thinking that designing is something people called designers do. But design begins with things we can all do: looking and listening, asking the stupid question, followed by the hard work of learning and imagining and making.

Soon enough, you’ll find yourself designing and making possibilities in areas of your own curiosity and interest. There’ll be people who want to collaborate with you, too.

It’s how we change the world.

(*Paula Scher, quoted in Warren Berger’s Glimmer.)
(**From Michael Heppell’s The Edge.)