Transcribed with Otter.ai
Guest Ruth Kedar
Unknown Speaker 0:02
Hey. Hey everyone, welcome to unique ways with Thomas Girard in audio podcast, got a really great guest on today. She’s best known as the designer of the Google logo. Her practice is described as we are passionate about problem solving through creative collaboration, we ask questions, share and develop stories. Go wide and deep and magic happens. Please join me in welcoming. Ruth Girard, welcome.
Unknown Speaker 0:27
Thank you so much for having me. Hi. Hi. Are you ready for 20 questions?
Unknown Speaker 0:33
As ready as I’ll be okay. Question one, tell me a little bit more about yourself. What do you do?
Unknown Speaker 0:40
Well from your intro, professionally, I’ve been a designer for most of my career. I was born in Brazil, born and raised. My parents moved to Israel when I was 16, and so my life kind of turned upside down. I went on to finish high school and applied for the School of Architecture and Town Planning at the Israel Institute of Technology. Graduated from architecture, although during my studies, it became really clear that I was more interested in design, generally speaking, than in architecture. And then after that, I started my own business. We can dig in a little bit more, if it’s interesting, actually creating information systems, or what I like to call then
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translating architectural big public
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buildings and systems to the user. This was before user interface was a thing, or usability was a thing, but that’s what I did for five years. And then I thought that having been formed in architecture and yet practicing in design, in a field that was not known in Israel, that I really needed to go back to school. And so I applied for I was looking for an interdisciplinary program, and there were two choices, either MIT in Boston or Stanford University in California, and California one. And so I found myself at Stanford doing my graduate studies in design again, taking at full advantage of all that was being offered at the time, as well as delving back into art, which always been a passion and a love of mine, and then upon graduation, because of my master thesis, which I think that perhaps the thread of this whole conversation is how my life has not progressed linearly, which I am really very glad about. But when I came to Stanford, my idea was to continue and deepen my interest, which was information graphics. However, for my master thesis, I ended up doing a full year study on playing cards, and ended up designing a series of of decks for the presentation. And upon graduation, my one of my
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mentors at the time, David Kelly, who is founded the School of Design at Stanford, and was the founder of IDEO, thought that I should be connected with Adobe, because they were developing postscript, and it would be interesting for me to talk to them. And I met with Russ Brown at Adobe, and he told me that they were developing this new software called Adobe Illustrator. They were about to launch it, and they were going to launch it in Las Vegas, and wouldn’t be great for me to design a playing card, a deck using Adobe Illustrator.
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And so again, anecdotally, I asked him, you know,
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what is the software? What does it do? You know, what are the issues that you have with that? And one of the things that became really clear from our conversation is that the program was had a very high
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barrier of entry. Users could not use it. Adobe Illustrator at the time was not the Adobe.
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Illustrator that we know today. It was all lines, only, no color. You had to envision what the final product would look like. So designers who were not perhaps technologically inclined really didn’t want to use the software. And similarly to what’s happening today, a big fear from creatives that, you know, using a computer software would stifle their creativity, and everything was going to look exactly the same based on that conversation. I said, Well, you know, one of the great things about a playing card deck is it has four suits, and instead of my designing the whole deck, why don’t we have four different designers coming in, each will be responsible for a suit. And then we can actually showcase the fact that our own creativity, our own styles, are not being diminished. If anything, we might find new ways of expression. And so that’s what we did. And we introduced the Adobe deck at com Dex, which was a huge success, and kind of the rest is history. So I was invited to actually come and work at Adobe as an art director, which I did for a few years, and then Stanford called asking me to come back and teach design, which I found very interesting, because I still thought that I have a lot to learn and I don’t know anything, and I should not be asked to teach. But it was a great experience. I actually found kind of a second or a third or a fourth vocation, and was really interested in collaborating with students and
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in helping them grow.
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And it was at Stanford that I was introduced actually Stanford and martial arts, which I took later in life
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through a acquaintance friend during Aikido practice, which is Japanese martial arts, he suggested I get In Touch, or that perhaps the people at Google was just formed by Larry Page and Sir gabrion and have a conversation, because they were forming this new company, and they were looking for somebody to design their logo, and that’s how that happened. So
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at the same time that I was at Stanford, I continue working in my own practice, and I had been doing those two things in tandem, continue to practice, and that brings us more or less to where we are today.
Unknown Speaker 7:58
Wow, that’s amazing.
Unknown Speaker 8:01
Yeah, maybe a note for the audience, which is kind of related. If you’re interested in other big 2025, episodes, check out the episode with industrial designer Kareem Rashid. He was a great guest as well. So number two, what’s a key piece of knowledge that makes you different?
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Well, I think that I’m
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really interested in going broad and going deep. My interest
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are not
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only
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which, by itself, is your interest? I am really interested in what makes people move in the world. I am really interested in
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again, going what I call the rabbit holes every time I find some interesting article, or I hear something, or I see something, I go and I investigate. And that really broadens my understanding and broadens my my toolkit, if you will. And so it makes it for really interesting conversations. I’m always more interested in the questions than necessarily
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the perfect solution, but really understanding the nuances, understanding what it is that makes people tick. What are the problems that they need solving? I think that based on necessity, perhaps, or maybe, is a kind of inherent talent. I’ve always been a keen observer and and a very good listener,
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which today, since I am talking no end.
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Kind of it’s kind of the opposite of what I prefer to do. But I’m really interested in conversations. I’m interested in learning, and I think that those conversations, because I bring in a lot of different aspects, allows me to ask interesting and deep and poignant and perhaps different points of view from the people that I collaborate with.
Unknown Speaker 10:27
Great. Okay, so number three, why this of all things? Why do you do what you do?
Unknown Speaker 10:33
Well, it’s again, interesting. I was born into a very eclectic family, people who did many different things. My mother, as an example, was a mathematician, but she was also a an artist, and
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I was exposed very early on to, again, very heated conversations and many, many different topics was introduced. I was born in Brazil, which, luckily for me, it’s an incredibly rich culture, music and architecture and, you know, language and diversity and foods and sounds and colors and everything that you can imagine. And so very early on, I became really interesting in everything around me, and again exposed because of my parents interest in in the arts. And my mother would mention once in a while that her dream was to become an architect. And I think the trip that we did when I was about maybe 11 or 12 years old to Brasilia, which is was a newly minted capital of Brazil, designed by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, it was, this whole idea of an architect being able to create a city, I was introduced then into what is urbanist design, and it really left a very indelible mark in me. At the same time we visit Europe and, you know, Greece and Rome and all of the different sites of antiquity and the history and architecture and kind of all kind of melded together. And I thought, This is what it is that I want to do. And so I, as I said, Before I enrolled in architecture school, and one of the things that I was kind of really interested in, I’ve always been very interested in, in math and technologies and art on the other side, and visual arts or all different kinds that
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how many systems were involved, how many things that were not perhaps the first things that come to mind when you visit a site, when when you encounter any product or architecture building that There are many things that are kind of integrated, that make it work. You know, organisms, very complex organisms. And I was really, really interested in that. And at that point I’ve also because I’m really avid reader, and I really wanted to expand beyond what I was being taught at the time. I came across the books from graphics press, and, you know, got really interested in the basil School of Design, and was really considering whether or not I could go into design, kind of abandon my architecture studies and going design instead.
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But what was offered in Israel at the time, it was almost like a trade school, and I felt that it would really be good for me to finish the architecture studies so that I could actually get a much broader education. And upon finishing my studies and graduating, I went looking for architects at that point. I had in my hands a copy of the book archegraphia by graphics press, which dealt with information systems in architecture, and I tried to interest the inter the architects at the time that this is what I would be interested in doing, kind of translating their visions for the public use, so that if you go to airport, you can figure out where your gate is, or where your bags are, where the restroom is, etc. And they were not interested. And so I went to graphic design.
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Nurse studios, and they told me they couldn’t hire me because I was over qualified. So one of the things that
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I don’t like hearing is no so I decided, Okay, I am going to start something on my own. And I heard that at Israel there was a
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a contractor. There was the biggest private contractor in Israel. He was doing a lot of different projects that he was an idea. He thought out of the box. And I tried for months to get a meeting with him. And
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after eating a lot of humble pie, I finally got one. And I came and the only thing I had was the archegraphic book. And I said, I want to do this. And you know, you don’t know me. I’m very small. I looked very hung. And his question was, did you finish high school? And I said, No, I have a degree in architecture, I can do this. And he said, go ahead and do I want you to do the signage for all of my warehouses. And so I did, and I started the practice of designing information systems for all of the major public buildings in Israel, and I did that for for five years. So I think in in your intro, you kind of hit the point that’s really important to me. I’ve always been a problem solver, and when I encounter one, and if it is complex, then I want to solve that. I’m also really interested in languages. I speak quite a few of them, perhaps not as many as you do. But for me, visual,
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the visual graphics or the visual arts, are another language, another way of translating complex problems into solutions.
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Great.
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So four is a question that some people struggle with. The question is, what does your future look like?
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I think a lot of people struggle with this for different reasons. I have absolutely no idea what my future looks like, and I really like to be surprised. I hope that I can surprise myself and do things that
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my imagination. My imagination is limited on one hand by where I’ve been and with some of my experiences, and it broadens each time by each day and each minute that I into the future, so it will broaden my imagination. So that’s what I hope for, that it’s a never ending process.
Unknown Speaker 18:14
Great, five we say, is unique to this show. The question is, let’s talk about location. How does the notion of place play into what you do.
Unknown Speaker 18:24
The notion of place is integral to my being. I again, I was born and raised in Brazil. I I lived my formative years in Israel and then the lion’s share of my life here in the United States, I think that my surroundings, the culture, the people, the language, the nuance of the place, is Something that I am very attuned to and excited by so it is incredibly important to me, and it’s also really important not only what the place represents, kind of for itself, but what it’s its place In the bigger places in which it inhabits, or perhaps should inhabit, right? So I think that that is really important to me, this understanding and this seek for knowledge and wider understanding of what the place means.
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Great six, if you have to start from the beginning, what advice would you give your former younger self?
Unknown Speaker 19:46
You know, this is a question I am asked often, and I want to say a couple of things. One, I think that in many ways, I go back to.
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To the young person that I was, and I tried to keep her in mind, because she was fearless. And I think this is one of the things as as you grow older, and perhaps you settle, or you know you in certain aspects of your life, you choose the safe, the safe option that this fearlessness that I had as a young person as a young adult, is something that I need to continue reminded of. So that’s number one. Number two, I think that many times we say, Oh, I wish I knew this sooner. But I really believe that
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you need to be open
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in order to learn to absorb and to take it in and implement something. So just knowing something, I knew a lot of things, but I have absolutely no idea what to do with them, because I was not ready. You need to be ready for things. I’m a very, very big fan of serendipity, not as something that kind of just happens to you, but it’s something that happens to you because A, you are open to it, so you can see it, and B, you have the tools to it, to be able to grasp the importance of what it is. So maybe that doesn’t answer your question, necessarily, but that’s the way I kind of look at it.
Unknown Speaker 21:41
That’s great. Seven. What’s a day in your life like?
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So I wake up unless I have meetings. Whenever I do, I am
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kind of a dichotomy. On one hand, I’m incredibly productive in the morning. On the other hand, I think, by nature, I am a night owl, and so I go to bed really, really, really late. I start my day by
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doing the puzzles in the New York Times online and doing, you know, solitaire games by reading the news
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and both, you know, in the US and abroad. As I said, I’m really interested in what’s happening in the world, kind of larger scale. So after I do all of that, and if I haven’t gone by doing those things into, you know, the proverbial rabbit hole in which I suddenly am looking and learning all kinds of things
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I will then, you know, do the work these days I am doing a lot less, and
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do a lot more, or dedicate a lot more time to art.
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I
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you know, exercise,
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meet up with people, go about life, etc. That’s today.
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Great age is about lifelong learning as a popular topic. How do you stay up to date
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again? You know, I’m a citizen of the world. I am curious. I’m interested. I read, I listen to podcasts, again, eclectic taste in that. And I’m really interested in hearing different voices and so that I can again
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listen and
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and get better at understanding the nuances, the complexities. Really interested in everything,
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pretty much anything that I see, things that happen again, serendipitously or part of, you know, my professional journey, they’re all opportunities for learning and to grow. I am very indiscriminate when it comes to learning anything and everything.
Unknown Speaker 24:24
Great. Nine, you spoke a bit about tools. Do you use both digital and analog tools? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve been, as I said before, been really interested in technology. When I was doing my studies in architecture, I actually took a lot of computer programming courses at the time. These are the times of punching cards and, you know,
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putting together, coding something, and then going and
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two days later to see what.
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Came what came out of them,
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but that was really interesting to me. And, you know, I purchased the first Macintosh in 1984
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and I used it quite a bit, even though we didn’t have a hard drive. Had a 120 8k of memory. And the first full, not even full paint, I think it was matte paint at the time to do all of my master projects in playing cards. I did a lot of experimentation with that, pushing the envelope. And again, when I started working at Adobe, one of the things that I did quite a bit was actually push work together with engineers and trying to develop the software and keep telling the engineers This is not a bug, this is a feature, and pushing the envelope so this display with technology and being up to date has always been something that has been part of my DNA, I guess, and so as I’ve been really blessed to be born in a time in which all of these incredible technological advances have been happening, and lucky to be here in Silicon Valley again when all of these things were being developed. So I’ve always been on top of it, and I continue to be on top of it, and what’s happening all around at the same time, I think that you’re saying, you know, digital is the thing. However, I really love the analog aspect of things. I love to touch and to feel and to smell, and that’s one of the great,
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great joys of going back to art and actually doing something with all that involve all of my senses.
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Great. Halfway. Number 10, how do you deal with work life or life work balance?
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I don’t know.
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You know, for me, they’re all one and the same, although I think that for me, the biggest challenge has always been
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being present.
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You know, I came to the states to do my graduate work when I already had two children, and we needed to integrate them with new language, which is something that I was familiar with, being also uprooted, although much, much later in life. And so dealing with all of those things, you were being pushed and pull and you want to be available and present, and all of those things, and in the olden days, and perhaps again, I’ve been lucky in that we had less distractions, meaning that when we were at work, we were work, when we were home, we’re home. But yes, always that feeling that, and maybe also because of my mother, that, you know, I had to somehow divide, split my brain and a million in my heart and different meeting different pieces so that I could be of service in a lot of different fronts. And I think that that is a challenge every day. Some days I’m much better at that, and some days, not so great.
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Okay? And if you weren’t doing what you do now, what may you be doing?
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You know, my first love was, you know, before I started thinking about architecture, you know, being in a family in which a lot of heated discussions and and a lot of different points of view, and sometimes there was no way in which to kind of align or kind of keep the peace, if you will. I was an old child surrounded by adults all of my early years. I really thought that I wanted to become a diplomat. This is what I wanted to do. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I heard somebody talking about it, in which you bring parties together and you find common ground. And that sounded something wonderful to do. So perhaps that would be and again, taking advantage of the tools that I have today, perhaps I could be useful
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in this world of ours.
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And on the other hand, I’ve always loved animals, and I think working with animals would be pretty awesome.
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Great. And 12, what would you not like to do with your career? I.
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You know,
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you know, there are certain things that you look at and you go like, Oh, I wouldn’t want to do that. But from my experience, I think that every work is worthwhile if it can bring value.
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And I’ve my life has taken a lot of
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turns, and there were times in which I needed to start from scratch,
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and
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I went into industries where I did not have a lot of experience, and perhaps the jobs that I took, somebody would say they were beneath me, but they have been really invaluable for both my personal growth and for my professional growth. So these days, I try not to turn my nose on anything I am open
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to whatever comes my way. It might not be necessarily right for the moment, and I might say no to it, but not because of what it is, but it’s because at the moment, it does not serve
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great and how about a favorite word, quote or sentence.
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So I do not have favorites.
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I you know, things move me in different ways, depending on context and the situation.
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But perhaps truism has been for me that life happens when you’re busy making other plans. So I like to remember that when things don’t necessarily go as as planned.
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Great and 14 uses favorite, but the word the question is, What is your least favorite word, quote or sentence.
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So
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again,
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if I were to think about it, it’s it’s both my
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something that I can’t stand here. I using the word, the word can’t when it’s directed at me. You cannot do something in the sense that you’re not capable, you’re not able. It’s to this or it’s to that.
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And so I don’t like to hear it, however, it’s always been a great catalyst for me into doing you know, first I heard that you cannot arrive in Israel at 16 and think that you’re going to be accepted in architecture school. You don’t have the language. You’re not going to be able to do it. You’re not going to get in while I did. You cannot do this. You cannot do that.
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You cannot, you know, do what you love. When I finish architecture school, I found a way to do it. So in many ways, the word can’t, which I hate hearing, is a great motivator for me to actually go and figure it out.
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Great. And you’re choosing one word to describe yourself, what word do you choose?
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Multi potential light.
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What keeps you up at night?
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The world keeps me at night. I worry what kind of world we’re living. To our children,
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I worry
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whether they’re going to have the tools or we as a whole, as the world, we’re going to have the tools to,
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you Know, remain humans and
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retain the value of humanity. So that really keeps me up at night. How about a dream you’re chasing?
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So at this point in my life, I mean, personally, I think the dream I’m chasing is becoming an artist,
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and the sense that letting go of the ego or the need to
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make this into a money making thing, but really as an artist, In the sense of being able to fully express and enjoy the process and continue experimenting without
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letting me be an impediment to that. So that’s kind of personally and.
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Again. More to the point, the previous question, I think the dream I’m chasing is that we will be a kinder world.
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Last few here, what inspires you?
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Everything inspires me.
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You know, things, I find it really interesting that,
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you know, apropos art, that when I create something, I look at it and again, the the critic comes in and says, you know, this is, this is not good or not good enough. And I let it go, and I go do something else, but very often I come back to things, and I look at them, and suddenly they are really points of inspiration. So again, discards can be inspiring, things that you encounter, people that you encounter, things that you see.
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Pretty much I try to find, and I do find inspiration in everything from the mundane to the sublime.
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19 any advice you’d like to share.
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So if we go back to both profession and professionally and personally, I think it’s really important for for us to understand that critique and criticism are not the same thing, right,
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something that you have done, and perhaps again, in terms of mindset, if you can look at something that comes back to you as a result of something that you did, or something that you said or something that you expressed, that instead of criticism, you take it as a critique, then a critique is not personal. Is a reflection of something that you had done, and it’s an again, if you are open to it is opportunity to growth right the other hand, because it is something that you have done, you can put a little bit of distance, because the person who did, which it was you, but it’s the past you who has done, expressed or created something
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is no longer The that you are now. So you can put a little bit of distance there to be open to what it is that is being said, and you can take it maybe a little bit less
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personally and and,
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and be able to to, you know, get the kernels
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in order to to grow, and again, bringing an experience I had as as a professor, I was always really interested that when we had critiques, critique days in which students brought in their work, whether in progress or their finished work. And it was always interesting that the person that was being critiqued
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very seldom took any of it in it was they were mostly so defensive that they were not opening, opened to what was being said to them, and conversely, they really learned a ton about what was being said to others, right? So the value here was that you could take in when the critique was directed at somebody else. So maybe this is something that we need to kind of sit with a little bit and see how we can be better listeners from when critique is directed at us.
Unknown Speaker 38:55
Perfect. And finally, number 20, how can our listeners keep tabs on you? And what’s our call to action.
Unknown Speaker 39:02
Well, you can, you know, check, you know, all of the socials, kiddar designs, or if you’re interested in the design work that I did, or that I do, or the talks, or some of my ideas,
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if you’re interested in the art side of things, you can check Ruth Girard or Ruth girard.com
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you know, Facebook and all of those things. Read articles if you’re interested in some of the things that I’ve done. And the call to action is not necessarily just for me. The things that I would like you to do, I am really interested. If you do choose to go and into any of those, I would love to hear what you think. If you have questions, I’m always a.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
Available. And, you know, I read them, and I try to be really thoughtful in my responses. Might take a little bit of time, but you’ll hear back from me.
Unknown Speaker 40:12
Okay. Thanks so much, sister. Privilege to have you on today. Thank you. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai