full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Chip Kidd: The art of first impressions -- in design and life

Unscramble the Blue Letters


This is an approach I wanted to take to a book of essays by David Sedaris that had this title at the time. ["All the Beauty You Will Ever Need"] Now, the chnlaegle here was that this title actually means nothing. It's not ceocenntd to any of the essays in the book. It came to the author's bnryeoifd in a deram. Thank you very much, so — (lthaeugr) — so usually, I am ctnraeig a design that is in some way bsaed on the text, but this is all the text there is. So you've got this mysterious title that really doesn't mean anything, so I was trying to think: Where might I see a bit of mysterious text that seems to mean something but doesn't? And sure enough, not long after, one evening after a csnheie meal, this arrived, and I thought, "Ah, bing, ideagasm!" (Laughter) I've always loved the hilariously mysterious tropes of fortune cookies that seem to mean something extremely deep but when you think about them — if you think about them — they really don't. This says, "Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future." Thank you. (Laughter) But we can take this visual vernacular and apply it to Mr. Sedaris, and we are so fiialmar with how fortune cookie fortunes look that we don't even need the bits of the cookie anymore. We're just seeing this strange thing and we know we love David sdreias, and so we're hoping that we're in for a good time.

Open Cloze


This is an approach I wanted to take to a book of essays by David Sedaris that had this title at the time. ["All the Beauty You Will Ever Need"] Now, the _________ here was that this title actually means nothing. It's not _________ to any of the essays in the book. It came to the author's _________ in a _____. Thank you very much, so — (________) — so usually, I am ________ a design that is in some way _____ on the text, but this is all the text there is. So you've got this mysterious title that really doesn't mean anything, so I was trying to think: Where might I see a bit of mysterious text that seems to mean something but doesn't? And sure enough, not long after, one evening after a _______ meal, this arrived, and I thought, "Ah, bing, ideagasm!" (Laughter) I've always loved the hilariously mysterious tropes of fortune cookies that seem to mean something extremely deep but when you think about them — if you think about them — they really don't. This says, "Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future." Thank you. (Laughter) But we can take this visual vernacular and apply it to Mr. Sedaris, and we are so ________ with how fortune cookie fortunes look that we don't even need the bits of the cookie anymore. We're just seeing this strange thing and we know we love David _______, and so we're hoping that we're in for a good time.

Solution


  1. creating
  2. sedaris
  3. based
  4. familiar
  5. laughter
  6. chinese
  7. dream
  8. challenge
  9. connected
  10. boyfriend

Original Text


This is an approach I wanted to take to a book of essays by David Sedaris that had this title at the time. ["All the Beauty You Will Ever Need"] Now, the challenge here was that this title actually means nothing. It's not connected to any of the essays in the book. It came to the author's boyfriend in a dream. Thank you very much, so — (Laughter) — so usually, I am creating a design that is in some way based on the text, but this is all the text there is. So you've got this mysterious title that really doesn't mean anything, so I was trying to think: Where might I see a bit of mysterious text that seems to mean something but doesn't? And sure enough, not long after, one evening after a Chinese meal, this arrived, and I thought, "Ah, bing, ideagasm!" (Laughter) I've always loved the hilariously mysterious tropes of fortune cookies that seem to mean something extremely deep but when you think about them — if you think about them — they really don't. This says, "Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future." Thank you. (Laughter) But we can take this visual vernacular and apply it to Mr. Sedaris, and we are so familiar with how fortune cookie fortunes look that we don't even need the bits of the cookie anymore. We're just seeing this strange thing and we know we love David Sedaris, and so we're hoping that we're in for a good time.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
digestive system 4
visual vernacular 3
los angeles 3
pearl harbor 3
human digestive 3
deft strokes 2
diet coke 2
blih blah 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
human digestive system 3

Important Words


  1. anymore
  2. apply
  3. approach
  4. arrived
  5. based
  6. beauty
  7. bing
  8. bit
  9. bits
  10. book
  11. boyfriend
  12. challenge
  13. chinese
  14. connected
  15. cookie
  16. cookies
  17. creating
  18. david
  19. deep
  20. design
  21. dream
  22. essays
  23. evening
  24. extremely
  25. familiar
  26. fortune
  27. fortunes
  28. future
  29. gained
  30. good
  31. hilariously
  32. hoping
  33. ignoring
  34. laughter
  35. long
  36. love
  37. loved
  38. meal
  39. means
  40. mysterious
  41. sedaris
  42. strange
  43. text
  44. thought
  45. time
  46. title
  47. tropes
  48. vernacular
  49. visual
  50. wanted