Wisdom Is Wasted On Me

(More of my videos)

For the final assignment in his class "Can Design Touch Someone's Heart?", Sagmeister decided to forego the humanity phase of the project and give us the opportunity to design a phrase similar to the work his studio creates in the "Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far" series (Example 1, 2, 3, 4). The basic idea is to pick a truth or sage bit of wisdom that you've identified over the course of your life so far and design that phrase. As usual, huge emphasis is placed on making a beautiful composition, putting effort and thought into the form of said composition and using original, well-composed typography.

I originally settled on a sentence (the exact phrasing of which escapes me now) during an early comp presentation, but was unable to recall where I'd written it down. It was rubbish anyway. I'm not terribly comfortable generating these little pithy phrases because I think they can very easily veer into preachy advice-mongering. After much hand wringing and brainstorming, I settled on the phrase "Wisdom Is Wasted On Me," which is both a piss take of advice in general and aptly expresses my reluctance of settling on any single bit of sage wisdom. I think that, at this time in my life, advice and wisdom go in one ear and out the other for me. I'm much more apt to try and fail than heed the advice of someone in advance of someone before said failure.

For the presentation, I wanted to experiment with audio and video, using long and short consonant and vowel sounds from trite cliches to actually derive the final bit of wisdom. The overall result has grown on me. Several technical complications during filming and post-production have ensured that I will need to re-shoot this project. The final presentation was well-received in class and should be appearing on the site that Sagmeister, Inc. is launching in February to host user-submitted pieces.