THE TENETS
Conviction,
made practical.
Eight principles for choosing, making and taking responsibility for the work.
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them”
Respect the person.
Treat people as participants with their own purposes, histories and judgment. Represent their experience with care. Design for their agency. Respect the attention they choose to give.
Think independently.
Ask the question behind the brief. Examine the inherited assumption. Seek evidence, welcome a serious challenge and take responsibility for the conclusion. A point of view should be earned.
Attend to the particular.
Specificity gives work its life. Notice the detail, the local context and the exception that complicates the easy story. Understanding grows through careful attention to what is actually there.
Make the form worthy of the idea.
Choose the medium deliberately. Develop the structure. Refine the language, image and interaction until they carry the intended meaning. Craft is a continuing obligation to the audience.
Use power with restraint.
A platform, a tool or a persuasive story can change what someone sees and does. Consider that influence carefully. Give people room to understand, question and choose.
Build through relationship.
Listen closely, define responsibilities and honor the contributions of others. Trust develops through repeated acts of clarity and follow-through. The quality of a collaboration lives in those acts.
Care for the shared world.
Consider the resources a project uses and the consequences it leaves. Take care of the material, cultural and human settings that make creative work possible. What we inherit deserves thoughtful stewardship.
Accept responsibility for the afterlife.
Publishing does not end our relationship with the work. Correct what needs correction. Preserve what deserves preservation. Maintain what people depend on. Let experience improve the next decision.
A standard to return to.
Aristotle connects practice with the formation of character. Our principles take their shape in the same practical arena: the choices we repeat, the work we revise and the responsibilities we keep.
These tenets are a working standard. They belong in the brief, in difficult conversations and in the review of a finished piece. Their value is in the decisions they help us make.
Read the philosophy behind them or begin a conversation.
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
An idea worth exploring.