Where are you getting your information from?

The other day I listened to THIS podcast on Design Matters with Debbie Millman. Debbie interviewed Steven Watson of Stack Magazines, which is a magazine subscription company that sends out a different independent magazine each month.

The podcast was particularly inspiring to me because it touched on something that has been lingering on my mind lately and something that has been affecting me creatively. And that is, information. Information that I am consuming and where I am getting my information from.

Part of my problem has been that I have had so much work lately, that I haven't been able to discover new things like I'm used to. I haven't spent enough time with friends, I haven't read many books or watched any new films. I have just been sitting in my studio continuously refreshing my instagram feed and twitter feed, and I've found that even though the images I get from instagram can be inspiring, there really is no substance in most of them or any nourishing information.

In the podcast, Debbie and Steven both talk about how in the current time, we feel like we have the whole world at our fingertips, however what we actually get is filtered information. When you do a Google Search, Google guesses the things you hear about, and when you're searching for something, it's something you already know about, or you go directly to your favourite writers, ignoring everyone else, or even the constant stream of things shared on facebook by the people you follow and depending on who you follow on ig, it can create the illusion that that is the only thing going on in the world at the moment.

The point is basically that there is less chance of you discovering something new or being surprised by something, and as Steven says in the podcast "[we are]...reinforcing the prejudices and ideas that we already have".

And, besides his obvious love of magazines, this is kind of where Steven's idea for Stack Magazines comes from. They mention in the podcast a blog post by Wired columnist Russell Davies "...he recommended in that post that a good way to stay interesting as a person was to read a different magazine every week".

So the idea is that if you read a different magazine each week, on a genre that you don't really know much about, you will be opened up to many different perspectives, points of views and you will have the opportunity to stumble across new and potentially inspiring information.

So, in conclusion, I will be reviewing the accounts I follow on social (If you have any suggestions of people I should follow leave a comment below), trying to get out more, I'm a little less busy now which is great, and I will buy and read a new magazine each week. Woo.