A few months ago, I made the leap. I lept from the land of hav­ing a cor­po­rate job to the vil­lage of “I want to run my own com­pany.” The leap itself wasn’t hard. Getting to the edge before I made the jump was excruciating. Was I mak­ing the right deci­sion? What is it that I want, any­way? Who am I? What is a designer? All the deep, soul prob­ing ques­tions that slowly stir in your head at 4am made my trek to the brink one that was coated in a foot of sticky mud. I let myself stew. The syn­the­sis por­tion of the design process as a cue, I allowed all of my thoughts to tum­ble and boil, know­ing that the moment of clar­ity would come when it was ready. On a Thursday evening at the Sheung Wan branch of Café O in Hong Kong, under­stand­ing arrived. With a new note­book I’d picked up in Japan and my favorite Muji pen, I began writ­ing future state­ments about myself. “I am a pro­fes­sor.” “I have my own line of sneak­ers.” “I work with the smartest peo­ple.” “I have enough money to travel for inspi­ra­tion.” I wrote about forty of these sen­tences, then started orga­niz­ing. My state­ments fell into six dif­fer­ent groups: Create, Curate, Convey,...

Read more »