My life as a concert pianist can be frustrating, lonely, demoralising and exhausting. But is it worth it? Yes, without a shadow of a doubt.

This is an extract from a great article by pianist James Rhodes for The Guardian worth checking out.

Steve Jobs was a great editor, I think. Whenever I see an Apple product, the first thing I think about is all of the things it doesn’t do. I can see where they made decisions. Apple’s products have very clear decisions attached to them, unlike a lot of other products which try to do a lot of things and just add on more features. Most brands I really like have that editor at the helm who has a certain taste or vision or outlook on things. That’s where the best things come from. For example, a band could go into a studio and record 30 tracks, but they have to edit it down to 12. That’s what makes the album great: not the 30 tracks, but the 12 tracks.

 
Jason Fried on editing in an interview with Technori.

I just stumbled across this book spread on the website of my old ECAL colleague Mads Freund Brunse showing architect Sophie Hicks with this great statement by her:

What advice would you give to other women?
Follow your instincts and don’t be afraid. There’s no point in looking at what other people are doing wondering if what you’re doing might be better or not. That way of thinking is a disaster.

— Markus Almond

 
My interview with Mirko Borsche has recently been translated to French and published in the excellent The Shelf magazine.

(Image courtesy of MagCulture, also read a review there)

If you’re interested you can still buy a copy over at Magpile!

Just a quick reminder for all the Köln people — we are celebrating our Cologne Sessions tonight and invited one of our favourite DJs and producers: San Soda — looking forward!

Good morning.

 
My second habit of the day are the Morning Pages, an idea I got from a book my aunt gave me called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
In the authors own words: Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages — they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind — and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page.

I liked the idea of having a consistent writing ritual every morning and so I began one day in the summer holidays of 2009 and never (really) stopped until today. I adapted the practice from time to time and I don’t bind myself strictly to a certain amount of pages anymore — but I still write down first thing after waking-up what’s going on in my head. Every morning begins with the Morning Pages but the writing continues throughout the day and becomes a journal and a protocol of my life.

I don’t want to rely solely on my head to save ideas and memories. With the time the mind just makes this big memory-soup out of all things in the past and important details often get lost. But it’s not merely about the memories but all the things you have learned along the way, about life and about yourself. I see journaling as a cornerstone of self-progression.

Essentially it’s all about self-reflection and this is something I find truly important. Writing down what, how and why you are doing what you are doing gives you a clear view on your work and how you are spending your time and energy, clarifying your intentions and priorities.

Little note on the procedure:
Every single morning I create a new textfile for the day stored in a great app called NvAlt which is synced to the cloud with Simplenote. On the top of the file I have my Evigno Habits (to be marked off) and below space for thoughts throughout the day.

Last words:
For me, writing has become an irreplaceable tool. It’s my self-therapy and problem-solver. When I’m stuck with something I write about it. The mere act of transfering your thoughts to written words can move mountains. I found that this process generates ideas, solutions … and after all: makes me happy.

So even if you only jot down some notes for each day it is a wonderful habit I recommend to anyone.

Be like the mayfly — lovely meditation on life and longevity with the one and only Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Check out this fine little documentary on John Baldessari narrated by Tom Waits and directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman.

 
Hurray! After endless hours of drawing, kerning and testing in the last months the Grace Jones Typeface is now completely revamped and available for purchase in the Shop!

 
This week’s recommendation is REWORK, a book from Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of 37signals. It’s officially a business book — but don’t let yourself be scared off by this term. It’s truly refreshing and packed with great ideas on life and work in general. Without further ado here are some of the passages I highlighted in the book:

For everyone who loves you, there will be others who hate you. If no one’s upset by what you’re saying, you’re probably not pushing hard enough.

Stanley Kubrick gave this advice to aspiring filmmakers: “Get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.” Kubrick knew that when you’re new at something, you need to start creating. The most important thing is to begin. So get a camera, hit Record, and start shooting.

 
➝ REWORK on Amazon

 
As a side project in the last three weeks I built up the new website for our regular Cologne Sessions which were founded almost two years ago by my friends Magnus, Mitch and me.

For the web-experience I aimed to create the same aesthetic feel as in the printed matter and the overall visual identity for this project: purity and radical simplicity in contrast to the cluttered presentations of the competition. On the flyers and posters for instance we always tried to limit us to the most crucial information only: title, name of the artists, date, location.

 
If you’re interested in our little visual history so far you can find a complete collection of all designs in the calendar section of the website (see above) which also serves as an event planner for upcoming dates.
 

 
To keep a certain purity and not to be overloaded by information (same principle as in the printed matter) I made the navigation invisible on first sight and to become available and gracefully fade-in when you need it — or hover over the logo and the area to the sides of it.

On the frontpage you have a big teaser with the top stories directly linked to the respective blog articles which are separated into the four categories Upcoming, Past, Flashback and Q&A for now. The artists page (below) shows every single one of the great people we had the pleasure to work and play with upto now.

 
One of the distinctive aesthetic elements of the website is the outlined DTL Nobel typeface I also use for the current posters. It’s injected as a webfont with an applied “text-stroke” in CSS. Unfortunately only Chrome and Safari are able to translate this markup. For Firefox I had to find a hack and ended-up with the solution to use a all-around “text-shadow” instead. Looks a little clumsy but it’s a compromise I can live with. (If you’re surfing with Firefox please consider checking out the website with Chrome or Safari for an optimal web-experience.)

 
The website is based on WordPress and fully responsive. For the artists and calendar pages I used the great jQuery Masonry plugin by David DeSandro. Shout out to Magnus and Mitch for the support and see you on the dancefloor for our next session with San Soda in May!

 
➝ www.colognesessions.com
➝ www.facebook.com/colognesessions

I recently rewatched this great documentary about Keith Jarrett which I gave my father as a birthday gift some years ago. Check it out if you have some time, the whole thing is also available on YouTube. It’s a fascinating musical journey with amazing footage from all kinds of concerts by this master of improvisation and super nice guy Keith Jarrett!

 
To rise early is my first habit. I love the early morning hours when everything around me is still asleep. That’s my favourite part of the day.
I make myself a good bowl of tea, watch the sun rise and write a little to get the spirits going.

But I had to learn that it’s equally important to get enough sleep, too. Waking radically early without enough sleep is stupid. (Been there, done that). So it’s really the combination of the two. I try to have a fixed time when I rise which is at the moment around 6am meaning that I try to be in bed around 11pm. If I’m going to bed later, I rise ‘proportionately’ later — opposed to my time as a student when I woke early but went to bed very late, which I found to be counterproductive on the long run.

I made this “early as possible rising with enough sleep” a habit because I noticed how much better my day turns out when I’m not stressed in the morning and have enough time to get going in my own rhythm.

 
A successful day begins the night before
I discovered that my mindset before going to sleep has an amazingly huge influence in the waking phase the next morning. If I’m not excited about the day ahead it’s easier for my “morning mind” to convince me to stay in bed.

To be generally so motivated and excited about what we are doing that we can’t wait to start the new day is something we should strive for I think.

Do you remember when as a kid before a vacation you had to rise very early to catch a plane or the empty highway? It was still dark outside, in the middle of the night, but you were so excited and full of anticipation that you literally jumped out of bed!

That’s the feeling I want to have every morning. Of course you can’t be super motivated every day, and of course I also have days where I just want to stay in bed and let the rest of the world do their thing. But this is essentially my idea of a happy life. Being excited for every new day because you love what you do.

 
THE RIGHT ALARM CLOCK TACTIC
I used to use a very clever app called Sleep Cycle which tracks your sleep and wakes you up in a light sleep phase. My problem with this app: Obviously you have to keep the phone in bed so it can track your sleep. I’m not talking about radiation (I put on the airplane mode at night) but that the fact that you have your alarm clock right next to you when it rings makes it sometimes too tempting to snooze it off for way to long …
So my newest alarm clock is Wake’n'Shake and it’s the most efficient alarm I have ever used. It’s quite brutal but works extremely well.

 
 
So this was my little reflection my first Evigno Habit in the row. The next one follows in a few days!

 
I teamed up once again with my friend Béla Pablo Janssen to create a new book for Spontan Verlag. This time we were approached by photographer Alexander Basile who runs the fabulous SSZ Sued gallery in Cologne and also happens to be (among many others) a longtime collaborator with my old favorite brand Carhartt. His newest project is titled Emerging Sculptures and will be an evolving series of photographs beginning with this first book consisting of the first 20 pieces.

We experimented with lots of different paper stock and ended up using a special transparent paper before each photograph so that the photographs of the sculptures in the book are emerging in front of the readers eyes. The book is currently in production at the fabulous printshop near Leipzig (where we also printed the Ein Du project) and I’ll let you know when it’s published for more images!

To be continued …

 
 
“When you sit down to design something — and it can be anything a car, a toaster, a house, or a shoe — what you design really is a culmination of everything you have seen and done in your life previous to that point.”

“You have to have a pretty thick skin when you do something different, people are going to take shots at you, they’re going to criticize what they don’t understand. […] I just wanted to shake people up a little bit more. I wanted to push it as far as I could possibly push it without being fired.”

 
Check out this fine little film about Tinker Hatfield, the legendary designer at NIKE, starting as an architect and ending up creating many of the most famous sports shoes of all time including the Jordans, the Air’s with the visible air bubble and so many others!

This morning routine before the beginning of the “real” day felt so good that I planned to stick with it in everyday life. So when I was back home I started my days with the Evigno Habits. But the first few months where difficult and I couldn’t maintain the consistency I aimed for. I was getting way too often distracted and overwhelmed by all the “urgent” tasks and all the things other people wanted from me “asap”. My days became a constant juggling between those external task and the habits which was exhausting.

IMPORTANT vs. URGENT

Eventually I discovered that it was crucial to notice and understand this constant battle and: to put a priority on the important stuff. I realized that to stay happy, sane and clear in head I absolutely and radically had to do what is truly important to me FIRST. So since some time now I’m strictly doing my habits first thing in the day. And it makes all the difference. Not before all of them are finished I turn my attention to all the “urgent” stuff in my life. And it’s also only then when I allow myself to turn-on my phone and check the mails.

I try to rise early to do the most important tasks which have the most profound priority for me first. When that’s done the rest of the day is cool. No more clashing. And no more bad conscience when I’m working on “urgent” tasks for others thinking in the back of my mind that I should do more of my personally important stuff. Evigno Habits first — everything else after that. So what extactly are these habits?

 
This was the introduction to the little series I’d like to write over the next weeks about each habit. I don’t know if it’s of any interest for anybody out there but I wanted to write about this subject because some of my friends wanted it know more. So … to be continued!

 
Update:
➝ Evigno Habit 1: Early Rise / Enough Sleep
➝ Evigno Habit 2: Morning Pages

 
Last week I visited the Hans Arp museum just outside Cologne together with Felix and Mathis. It’s an Impressive building on the shore of the Rhine created by American architect Richard Meier who I first encountered in Pin-Up magazine a few years ago.

The photo above pictures his Douglas House which I always admired but didn’t know was his work. Reading and seeing more about it I recently became a little obsessed with it. It’s just so elegant and perfectly fitting into the wonderful nature it’s surrounded by … beautiful!

[Edit: It's interesting for me how I can't watch it myself. After the first moments I got to let it go. I just feel awkward when watching it because I would do things a bit differently now. But I guess that's somehow normal and probably even a good sign (?) as it shows me that I learned and progressed since giving the talk … well, I hope so! And thanks again for watching!]

 
➝ Grace Jones Typeface
➝ Grace Jones Identity