It’s all about the accidents

Friday, 31 May, 2024

Glitches, mishaps and accidents are a huge part of design for me. Apps like Figma, Illustrator and Photoshop has such heavy focus on things not going wrong, avoiding bugs and glitches that you will never be surprised by a glitch or accident.

It’s all about the accidents

One thing I love with music making and playing in bands is the uncertinty, all the ideas and momentum that is caused by and pushed forward by accidents.

When you wire a bunch of synths, effects and modules together things will alwys start to wander, sounds will be distorted, you will apply effects to the wrong tracks, loops and automations will flip out and go crazy.

All of these glitches, mishaps, hiccups and imperfections are a huge part of creativity for me.

but also all the mistakes and all the accidents were also coming up and then we were vibing off that and responding to that with the writing, rather than those beautiful accidents that occur in the recording studio just being an artefact that we then embrace in the song. We then used this artefact to then go and write. You know, the rest of the song and to finish it.

And it’s all these like broken bits and accidents that by and large is how we’ve written before. Like, I mean, our music isn’t like accomplished normally, you know, it’s all about the accidents. The best bits are the squealy bits in the guitar, the… the chaos and the drums or, you know, just dev in general.

So, yeah, so it was just about, like, kind of having those bits and capturing them and then seizing upon them. So that was really, that was the big difference on this album was that everything we were writing was being recorded and it was also kind of, like, blossoming out into something else as it was going, which was great, and it all evolved. - Idles, Kenny Beats & Mikko Gordon, Tape Notes episode 137

Apps like Figma, Sketch, Illustrator and Photoshop has such heavy focus on things not going wrong, avoiding bugs and glitches that you will never be surprised by a glitch or accident.

That’s why I tend to only make a first rough draft in Figma and then switch over to code.

[bilder] Hitta alla mina glitch screenshots illustrera med

Trying to stumble across accidents is a big thing as well. So just like trying to keep sort of playing in the arena of the song for long enough that an accident can happen is often what leads to the inspiration. - Fred Again, Tapenotes episode 105

Ai as your creative sidekick?

At their latest Config conferance Figma launched a bunch of Ai features, the one that interested me was the «Make design» feature.

We are really trying to make it so that you can make the most obvious thing in the most obvious way possible just to get over that blank canvas problem. – Dylan Field, ceo Figma