Has it ever occurred to you that cooking can teach a couple of lessons about design? A couple of weeks ago I started posting Flickr finds on different meals that looked inspiring and all of a sudden followers were really clicking through. I realized something about food was really, literally, sticky.
Here's the thing: we've been eating sumptuous meals all our lives that have probably been prepared by others. Just like we've been looking at advertisements others designed, websites that others made, and marketing that came out of someone else's hyperactive brain cells. Something inside us tells us that, somehow, we know these recipes. We know what's in them, what we like about them, and- most importantly- what's missing to make us go from "this is nice" to "how the hell did you do this?!"
No one is born knowing how to cook. We kind of absorb these things while we're doing a million other things. But what if you stopped for a second as you bite that steak ferociously, or as you spoon a piece of cheesecake, or -simply- looked at a billboard on the street. Ask around, think of what the cook/advertiser might have thought... stop.
There's something delicious about good design. Something utterly magic, but in the end, it's all about following the right recipe and surprising your guests with a little twist.