What Did We Learn?

First: you gotta play. All work and no play makes life pretty boring. Rob and I were both around fifty — too old to do only serious work all the time. Building Flag Machine was a blast. The time of our lives. Design that happens after work hours.

Second: curation is design. Generating thousands of options isn’t a substitute for taste — it’s fuel for it. Looking at a wall of possibilities and saying “that’s the thing” is as much a part of the design process as drawing from scratch. Chaos is where creativity happens. Let some crazy stuff happen.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. This is a freaking fun profession. Enjoy it — at least before the robots come for the jobs.

And it was cool to watch non-designers make flags — in classrooms, for clubs, for fun. Flag Machine has been used across the globe. Other states working on redesigns might see it again. Michigan. Minnesota. Pennsylvania.