Justin Ahrens - Life Kerning: Creative Ways to Fine Tune Your Perspective on Career and Life

INTRO

What is Life Kerning, you ask? In graphic design, kerning is the fine tuning or adjustment of the space between letterforms (type). The changes may be small, but they make a big difference. A designer can go in and finely tune the space within a headline or a placement of a title so that a presentation is more enjoyable and downright beautiful to the reader. Or a design can alter the aesthetic part of a presentation, to ensure the material has the desired effect visually, beautiful or not.

In our business careers, we tend to think sweeping or wholesale changes need to be made to enable us to more deeply appreciate our lives or our jobs. Yet its often the fine adjustments between the smaller details of our lives that we neglect or do not revisit often enough that tend to make the headlines of our lives seem uncomfortable, not as harmonious as they could be, or just hard to read.

This perspective applies to individuals in all careers, without question. From time to time, all of us need to assess our personal and work lives to see whether they are feeding each other or fighting each other. This book is about you and these circumstances that will happen. Its about you the business owner, creative director, worker bee, cookie monster, creative problem solver, or just the person whose life is a little out of whack and needs a nice realignment. Regardless of how we got to this point in our lives, were hopefully all doing what we were designed to do. When we were growing up, we doodled on our Trapper Keepers or on lined paper during math class and dreamed about creating or being a part of something that would be recognized and admired worldwide. Perhaps you havent quite arrived there yet... or maybe youve made it, but there is not quite as fulfilling as you thought it would be. Perhaps youve even questioned whether pursuing that early dream was worth it. Was it really what you wanted? Did it even matter? My guess is that the answer to all those questions is yes, but thats what well explore in the pages ahead. Im going to share some insights from my own experiences, along with some wonderful perspectives from others, and when were finished, I hope youll have gained some perspective on balancing the important things in your life or, at the very least, start looking at them differently.

Since nothing ever follows a direct path in life, this book is designed so you can, if you wish, peruse the table of contents and meander or explore the topics that are most important to you now. Or, if youre like me and, in some activities, order gives you peace of mind, then sequentially explore these thoughts and let your anxiety subside. Either way, as you progress through this book, you will see that you are wonderfully in control of the direction, choices, and next stepsnot only in how you prefer to read this book, but in how you respond and in which steps you take next. Dont let routine, anxiety, expectations, or whatever excuse you may struggle with stop you from making adjustments; after all, you may be closer than you think to your lifes goals.

...after all, you may be closer than you think to your lifes goals.

CHAPTER 01

Okay, so its not the most encouraging chapter title, but thats because were getting right to the point: Some of your biggest problems are created by assuming you already have the answers. Weve all been there, whether we realize it completely or not. You walk into a job or project and really feel like youve got this one. You say you are interested in others opinions or feedback, but if you were honest, youre really not. Sometimes you are stubborn, you want to do this all by yourself, or you really believe you know all you can about the job ahead, or you may just not like your coworker offering suggestions.

At my first job out of college, even while I was working on my very first assignment there, I already thought I was the typography master and was ready to present my brilliant ad campaigns to wow our biggest clients. After months of hounding my creative director for an opportunity to showcase my brilliance, I finally got my chance. I was given the opportunity to put a direction into our pitch ifand only ifit made it through the internal critique. Man, I must have done hundreds of sketches (or at least it felt like it) until I finally came up with a couple of ideas that I knew were spot-on. I worked for days on the ad. And I reworked it. Then I started over and went back to my original ideas and reworked those.