Jordan Gray

Creative Friction, Storytelling in Design, Passion Projects & the Beginner Feeling

Hi Friends—

I first met Jordan in North Carolina back when I was an exchange student on my fourth year of architecture school. We soon realized we shared many creative interests and curiosities.

Ten years later, we bring you a long-form conversation on creative friction, the fine line between passion projects and work, storytelling in design, overcoming the beginner feeling, and lots more. (Take a look at this episode’s chapters to get a better picture of the topics we covered.)

Listen to "Jordan Gray — Creative Friction, Storytelling in Design, Passion Projects & the Beginner Feeling"

Links

• Gray Collab - Jordan’s renderings, photography, and film. Started while freelancing.

• Jordan on Vimeo

• Carolina Day School — Asheville, NC by Jordan Gray

• Kappa Achievement Park: A Place to Belong by Jordan Gray

• Hanbury

• Unreal Engine

• Lumion & VRay

• Rhino & Grasshopper 3D

• Building Information Modeling (BIM) & Revit

• Google Books Ngram Viewer

• Austin Kleon: Pencil vs. Computer on Hurry Slowly

Books

• Less But Better by Dieter Rams

• Faculty Department Volume 1 by Justin Chung

• The Photography Storytelling Workshop by Finn Beales

• So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

• You Can’t Make This Stuff Up by Lee Gutkind

• 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam

People mentioned

• Steve Martin

• Tim Ferris

• David Allen

• Cal Newport

• Jocelyn K. Glei

• Austin Kleon

• Dieter Rams

Chapters

• 00:00 · Intro

• 01:25 · Photography

• 02:54 · Lack of time

• 06:42 · Deliberate practice

• 11:42 · Skill transferability

• 18:21 · Maintaining growth and creativity

• 32:13 · Friction

• 35:19 · Passion & work

• 38:43 · Gratification, fulfillment, and satisfaction

• 44:27 · Storytelling

• 48:17 · The human experience

• 51:58 · Deep rebranding

• 58:34 · Making people feel something

• 01:00:59 · Personal branding

• 01:03:23 · Making others seek you out

• 01:05:45 · The podium

• 01:09:14 · The chaos of taking pictures

• 01:13:20 · Overthinking and overdoing

• 01:14:34 · Will people notice the details?

• 01:17:23 · Capturing creative moments

• 01:21:03 · Daily routines to be happier and productive

• 01:22:45 · Books

• 01:24:59 · A message to the world

• 01:27:05 · Enjoying the process of grinding the beans

• 01:34:39 · Designing versus clicking

• 01:37:08 · Simplicity

• 01:42:15 · Learnings on simplicity from making this podcast?

• 01:46:28 · Connect with Jordan

• 01:50:53 · Outro

Bonus

🎥 'I'm Never Far From a Good Idea'. A conversation between Atomic Habits author James Clear and Polina Pompliano. The Profile.

📕 Formulations by Andrew Witt. MIT Press. Witt depicts a series of conceptual investigations appealing to the designer minds, tracing the origins of the use of mathematics and scientific methods in architecture.

Lastly, here are the latest stories from my sketches newsletter.

🔑 Algorithmic passwords

⏱ When to-do lists get too long

🪙 Most-visited stories of 2021

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