Here is the comp of a cover I designed for 3d LAAD Battalion’s newsletter. This issue will contain a discussion of Marine Corps values which is a favorite subject of mine. If you’re not familiar with Marine Corps values and philosophies, you can check out a lens I put together on the subject:
Here are a couple of sketches from the weekend:
Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4— Part 5
When there’s no experimenting there’s no progress. Stop experimenting and you go backward. If anything goes wrong, experiment until you get to the very bottom of the trouble.
— Thomas Edison
Experimentation is vital to the development of understanding and the discovery of truth. There are two kinds of experiments: The first kind of experiment helps us verify the validity of the work of others. Ideas, be they scientific, business, artistic or political, are tested in the real world and judged by practical results. Through this process — where second-hand knowledge is exchanged for first-hand knowledge — fact is separated from error. There is also another kind of experiment — the kind that lives on the edge of human knowledge staring out into the murky unknown. When we forge into this unknown we become the cartographers of human progress, mapping new intellectual territory for ourselves and others. Both kinds of experimentation are essential to the development of expertise.
To illustrate the necessity of experimentation to increase human understanding, consider the Wright brothers and the invention of the airplane. When the Wright brothers read of the death of the leading aerospace expert Otto Lilienanthal, who died in a glider accident, they got the aviation bug. At the time, their intellectual map of aviation was more of a blank sheet of paper. Their first step in the learning process was research. First, they turned to their encyclopedia to see what they could find, which was not much — just a few articles on bird flight. Next, they visited the Dayton public library. At first there was not much to be found, again, just information on bird flight. Eventually they came across excerpts from the book L’Empire del’Air by Lois-Peirre Mouillard, which were published in The Smithsonian Institute’s Annual Reports. Of Mouillard’s work, Wilbur wrote that it was “one of the inspiring causes in the efforts of the Wright brothers.â€
From their research, the Wright brothers knew that the Smithsonian Institute had been interested in the problem of flight. Wilbur wrote to the Institute stating:
The Smithsonian Institute sent Wilbur reprinted articles from the Institute’s Annual Reports which included an account of Samuel Langley’s power-model flights of 1896, descriptions of Otto Lilienthal’s experiments, and a list of books that were commercially available. The Wright brothers ordered the books and devoured the information. As they did so, their intellectual map of the subject took shape.
One of the books that was ordered was Octave Chanute’s Progress in Flying Machines which, Wright brothers biographer Fred Howard describes as a “veritable Old Testament of aeronautics, to which the three Aeronautical Annuals were a latter-day Gospel bringing the story up to date.†Howard goes on to say that the Wright brothers had at their disposal “the entire record of human flight.â€
They took the further step of contacting author and glider experimenter, Octave Chanute, because as Wilbur put it, “the problem is too great for one man alone and unaided to solve in secret.†Of course, Wilbur’s primary collaborator was his brother Orville, but he did reach out and receive assistance and even mentorship from Octave Chanute, especially early on.
The stage was set for experimentation. The learning methods of reading and collaboration were insufficient by themselves. After all, since no one had solved the problem of human flight, no book or collaborator had that information. Although what had come before would guide them, hey had to move into uncharted territory.
There was also another problem that needed to be found and solved through experimentation. Namely, the information that they were working with was wrong. Where they expected to find a road to travel by — Otto Lillienthal’s air data table — they ran into a dead-end. Through experimentation they came to the realization that the air data table was incorrect for the wing shapes they were testing. In their experiments, the Wright brothers’ gliders did not have the lift that Lilienthal’s table predicted. Because their glider received only one third of the lift that the tables predicted, the Wrights began to think of their experiments as a failure. In truth, their failures were in fact very informative and brought them closer to solving the problem. Their experiments uncovered the fact that the information that they read in Lilienthal’s experiments was incorrect. As this dawned on them, they conducted their own experiments for the express purpose of testing the validity of Lilienthal’s data. Wilber wrote to Chanute in 1901, “I am now absolutely certain that Lilienthal’s table is very seriously in error.â€
To discover this fact and to solve the problem of wing shape, configuration and size, the Wright brothers created a homemade wind tunnel at very little expense. They conducted three weeks of experiments to systematically test the affects of wind on 38 different wing configurations. With the air table corrected with their own data, the Wright brothers were much closer to solving the problem of human flight. Octave Chanute offered to calculate the result of the experiments and finished his work by December of 1902. The intellectual map that was once blank — then inaccurate — became a reliable guide for the final leg of the journey. Armed with accurate information, the Wright brothers were able to solve the design problems of their airplane and successfully achieved human flight with their flight experiments twelve months later.
As can be seen from the Wright brothers example, when charting new territory there is only so much that one can learn through books and collaboration. By definition, innovations break new ground. For a modern day example of experimentation, consider Michael Dell. Where the Wright brothers applied experiments this to aeronautical science, Michael Dell applied his experiments to business. In his book, Direct from Dell, Dell states:
Chapter 3 of Direct from Dell is titled, “Learning the Hard Way.” In the chapter Dell lists many of the missteps his company made while trying to grow to a 2 billion dollar company. The title of the chapter is a bit misleading. It eludes to the possibility that there was an easy way to learn how to innovate an industry. Forging into uncharted territory is inherently time consuming and arduous. Every fork in the road and dead-end has to be painstakingly mapped out. Without the aid of reading and collaborative learning to let Dell know which of the paths would be dead-ends, he had to travel them himself. In a way, all experimentation is learning “the hard way.†Like Michael Dell and the Wright brothers, we shouldn’t shy away from it or avoid it — we should simply understand it.
Learning through experiment is typically difficult and awkward by nature. Experiments are often wrought with mistakes and outright failures. Accepting this will help develop the necessary character trait of resiliency. After all, innovation is impossible of one quits after failures. Only with experimentation accompanied by persistence, can breakthroughs occur.
A buddy of mine sent me a link to the latest Marine Corps commercial. I’ve always loved Marine Corps commercials. I think it’s easy to make them great because the Marine Corps itself stands for something great.
The Marine Corps really is one of the best organizations the world has ever seen. Its strength is in its values of honor, courage and commitment and the dedication of its people to those values. Most Marines love being Marines and what that stands for. Think about it; how many people would tattoo their company’s logo on their bodies the way Marines do? I would speculate that there are not a lot of Microsoft or IBM tattoos out there. The Marine Corps is special.
Here is one of the designs we worked on last week. I did the pencil and ink work and Turner Hilliker did the colors and text.
We got a bit of snow yesterday so everybody was at home. My six year old insisted that I draw a picture of her in between the pictures of ninja bulldogs, and armed-to-the-teeth Marines. I think it came out well, but I consider the major accomplishment getting the human hurricane to sit still for a few minutes.
Here are a couple of pictures I did for the drawing jam going on over at Drawingboard.org. Come join the fun.
With a book and a blog underway, I have become more attuned to good writing. Sculpting a lumpy mass of words into linguistic art seems to me to be a feat of magic.
Below is one of the tightest paragraphs I have come across in recent memory. I found it unexpectedly in a review for the Yugo in an article in Time titled, “The 50 Worst Cars of All Time.” This paragraph — where each sentence is a gem — is the work of a true craftsman. Enjoy:
Malcolm Bricklin, he of the Bricklin SV1, wouldn’t be satisfied until he had forced every American to walk to work. To that end, in 1985, he began importing the Yugo GV, which turned out to be the Mona Lisa of bad cars. Built in Soviet-bloc Yugoslavia, the Yugo had the distinct feeling of something assembled at gunpoint. Interestingly, in a car where “carpet” was listed as a standard feature, the Yugo had a rear-window defroster — reportedly to keep your hands warm while you pushed it. The engines went ka-blooey, the electrical system — such as it was — would sizzle, and things would just fall off. Yugo. Or not.
You can read the full article here:
Dan Neil, the author of the piece, is a Pulitzer Prize winner. I can’t say that I’m surprised.
[B]ad drawing springs from basic faults as surely as good drawing springs from basic merits.
— Andrew Loomis
One of the most critical fundamentals of draftsmanship is perspective. You really cannot draw much without it. Even an expert understanding of anatomy will be worthless unless combined with a basic understanding of perspective. Fortunately it’s easy enough to understand the basics with a little instruction. Picture railroad tracks going back in the distance. Once they get to the horizon the tracks meet at a point in what is called the vanishing point. Easy, right?
But what about the wooden planks on the tracks? As they go back in the distance it’s easy to see that we have to draw them closer together, but how much closer together? How does that get measured? What if we want to have the tracks at a three quarter view? What if there is a train on the tracks? How do we draw the wheels on the train in perspective? As we can see, perspective gets a little harder.
I’ve read different books on the subject and while I have found pretty good answers to these questions, I’ve never been completely satisfied. Mastery eluded my grasp until recently when I found what I consider the best resource on the subject — a DVD series by Marshall Vandruff.
Contained in the series is 12 hours of college level instruction on perspective. In fact, the DVDs are a documentation of an actual college class that Marshall taught. Compare the $129 price of the DVDs with any college class on the subject and you will see the value is tremendous.
Marshall isn’t just a good college teacher; he is a great college teacher, and the real value is in his ability to convey key concepts. More than once while viewing the DVDs, I found myself saying, “Ooooooooh, so THAT’S how they do it!” The perspective itches that have plagued me for years have finally been scratched. The DVDs naturally cover the basics of one, two, and three point perspective, but move on to circles in perspective and depth measuring systems.
There aren’t any prerequisites to understanding this instruction. Marshall Vandruff starts with the most basic instruction, but gradually moves to the most complex. Few teachers that I’ve run into have the mastery of perspective to teach it well — if at all. Marshall Vandruff is the exception. Because he generously taped his best instruction on the subject of perspective, we can now all become his students.
For anyone interested in illustration, I could not recommend these DVDs more strongly. You can purchase them on Marshall’s Website:
Here is a sample from the DVDs:
Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4— Part 5
The good men may do separately, is small compared with what they may do collectively.
— Benjamin Franklin
One of the misleading things about attributing greatness to a person is that we often give too much credit. Thomas Edison is credited with over 1000 patents, and yet most of his inventions were the result of a collaborative process. This fact should not detract from what Thomas Edison accomplished. He gets too much credit for his inventions; however, I believe he does not get enough credit for the pioneer he was in making invention a systematic, collaborative process. His laboratory at Menlo Park in New Jersey was the pivot point in history where invention itself became a collaborative process on a massive scale. Prior to Menlo Park, an inventor would work primarily alone or with only one or two assistants. Edison, however, collaborated with up to sixty mechanists and experimenters at Menlo Park. Edison’s greatness was their greatness too.
Collaboration is an important component of the learning process. Collaboration is more than the sum of the knowledge of the group, because it also reduces errors of thought. Errors of fact and opinion get vetted in the collaborative process, because when we collaborate with others, we calibrate the correctness of what we know. The open-source principle of Linus’s Law states that, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.†This is the underlying principle that leads to invention, scientific breakthroughs, medical advances, and even successful free market societies. Together we can solve almost any problem — individually, almost none.
Collective expertise trumps individual knowledge. Benjamin Franklin understood this more than most. Everywhere Franklin went he made acquaintances with interesting and thoughtful people—usually thinkers and avid readers like he was. Moreover he would habitually and instinctively lead his social groupings in activities designed to improve the minds of those in the group. The first known instance of this was his debates as a boy with another “bookish lad,†John Collins. Sometimes their debates would be done in the form of letters, which, combined with Franklin’s improvement schemes, was key in his becoming a better writer.
Keenly aware of, and perhaps bitter about his lack of formal education, Franklin was always consciously trying to improve his mind. As a printer in Philadelphia Franklin formed an organization called the Junto, which met for the purpose of improving the minds and social standing of the members. There was no tuition to be a member of the Junto, making it a model for the open-source education concept. As Walter Isaacson put it, “the Junto existed to discuss issues of the day, debate philosophical topics and devise schemes for self-improvement.” The Junto was not only a place to share reading lists, but also of action. Franklin, along with his Junto, created the first lending library in the colonies, the first fire company, and helped establish a university for the “education of youth in Pennsylvania,†which later became known as the University of Pennsylvania.
Later, when postmaster for the colonies, Franklin took his Junto concept and formed the American Philosophical Society which was created for “promoting useful knowledge among the British plantations in America†and included scientists and thinkers from other colonies. Although it had a slow start, it is in existence today and the mission listed on its website reads, in part, as follows:
Franklin understood that there is a social aspect to learning and did his best to seek out or create collaborative learning environments wherever he went.
A collaborative learning environment draws its strength, not from its curriculum, per se, but from the aptitudes and knowledge of its members. The appeal of Harvard, for instance, is not any particular course of study. That can be easily duplicated. It is its stringent admissions process that ensures that only accomplished learners can attend. While Harvard dilutes the quality of its environment somewhat by admitting 40 percent of its legacy applicants compared to only 11 percent of its overall applicants, its applications process is very selective. This makes high quality collaborations more likely, especially since teachers are in essence collaborators as well. Stanford graduates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard met at Stanford and went on to form HP. Their collaborative learning environment was less Stanford and more their own personal relationship which was institutionalized in their own company — HP. A similar modern day example would be the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin who also met at Stanford. Now their learning is focused around Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.†Again, their collaborative group was more each other than Stanford, which is just a place. The founders of Google institutionalized their group dynamic in Google the company, which has now 5,680 employees/collaborators.
A collaborative group like the Junto can have an advantage over any formal academic university, because most students think of higher education as a four to eight year commitment. For Franklin learning was lifelong. With his guidance, the Junto met and stayed in touch for nearly forty years. Of the Junto, Franklin states that it “was the best school of philosophy, morality, and politics that then existed in the province; for our queries, which were read the week preceding their discussion, put us upon reading with attention upon the several subjects, that we might speak more to the purpose.â€
Franklin’s learning inclination was inspired by several books, and from his experience with the Puritan practices, which stress meetings and self-congregation. Franklin was also exposed to the Enlightenment in London as a teenager and did his part to bring its practices back to Philadelphia. In London, during the Enlightenment, people would frequently congregate at coffeehouses to discuss politics, philosophy and to read. These coffeehouses were called “penny universities,†because for the price of a cup of coffee you could get an education. Franklin visited these coffeehouses frequently and when he came back to Philadelphia, he and his club mates initially met, although in a tavern instead of a coffeehouse. Coffeehouses in London also served liquor as well as coffee, so it’s not as big a transition as it might seem.
It may be funny to some that a medium for the Enlightenment in America was Taverns, but this is where, like coffeehouses in London, citizens met to discuss the politics and philosophy of the day. Franklin and his Junto initially met in a tavern, although they would later rent a house. In 1776, as the break from England loomed, delegates of the 2nd Continental Congress would weigh many critical decisions about independency at City Tavern in Philadelphia according to John Adams. And, as any Marine can tell you, the Marine Corps itself, was founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. This probably has less to do with the lore that taverns were hotbeds for fighters and brawlers, than because taverns were simply the place where thoughtful citizens who understood the issues of the day were likely to be found.
While the Junto is the model for the collaborative aspect of open-source education, it is not the only one of its kind. This format can be used as a follow on to a formal education. The best example of an open-source education collaboration post-graduation is Albert Einstein and his Olympia Academy.
In an attempt to make ends meet while waiting for a job, Einstein placed an ad in the paper offering tutoring in math and physics. “Trial lessons free†the ad proclaimed. I wonder how many people would today jump at this opportunity knowing what we do about Albert Einstein. Maybe every living person. Back in 1902 though, only Maurice Solovine came knocking on Einstein’s door. After all, it wasn’t a chance to meet someone famous — Einstein wasn’t – it was simply a chance to learn. They hit it off immediately. In his biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson writes:
In this way, Einstein’s education after college continued. Later joined by Conrad Habicht, another math and physics enthusiast, they dubbed themselves the “Olympia Academy†to poke fun of elite institutions.
The discussions and activities that took place in the Olympia Academy led directly to Einstein’s intellectual breakthroughs and his miracle year in 1905. They studied the works of such Enlightenment thinkers as Ernst Mach, Immanuel Kant, Baruch Spinoza, and David Hume. Meeting several times a week, this learning collaboration helped Einstein herald in the greatest scientific revolution since Isaac Newton, made him internationally famous, and made his name synonymous with genius. At the time he wrote the papers though, he was merely a patent clerk who collaborated with his newfound friends to improve their minds.
Some of the best collaborative learning environments do cost money, like Harvard and Stanford. Others, like the Junto and the Olympia Academy are free. Profound learning can occur in both social groupings. The economics are just different.
There is a third kind of learning environment where students can learn AND make money at the same time – businesses. Not every business has a culture of learning, but the ones that do, are more likely to adapt to changing environments. Thomas Edison’s laboratory at Menlo Park is an example that has been previously mentioned. My favorite example, as a student of learning, a student of art, and as a fan of their work, is the Walt Disney Company.
Although Walt himself did not graduate high school, he was intensely focused on learning, and went to great lengths to self-direct his education. He would actually skip classes at his regular high school to attend classes at a nearby art school. As the Disney Company grew, it became apparent that a culture of learning was an absolute necessity. Disney biographer Neal Gabler writes:
At first the group met on the soundstage just two evenings a week, with twenty to thirty men in attendance. Within a month the numbers had swelled, compelling Graham to call in another instructor, Phil Dike, and divided the class in two. Over the next two years weekly attendance averaged better than fifty per session, and Graham occasionally had to enlist a third instructor to accommodate the group. Soon they were meeting five nights a week, and though attendance initially was not mandatory, as Babbitt put it, “you’d better go!â€
Of course all these animators, in addition to the collaboration on their studies, would have to collaborate on their actual work as well. Animation is so labor intensive that it can’t be done any other way. Snow White alone took about 250,000 drawings and two hundred years worth of man-hours. It’s possible to work for a company that collaborates on the work but does not collaborate on the intellectual development of its people. The key is to only look for a job at a company, like Disney, that does both.
At this point hopefully you’re sold on the concept that collaboration is essential to meaningful learning. If collaboration can help a printer become a scientist, and help a patent clerk revolutionize physics, perhaps it can help the rest of us also. If you can’t attend a school or have finished with school, the best thing you can do is to start your own collaborative learning group to further your education. All you need to do is gather at least one other like-minded person to get started. Where and how far you take this kind of education is up to you.
Gannon Beck's Blog 