I don’t know what bookstore I was in when I first came across the illustrated version of The Elements of Style, but I know I was with Pam, and I know I dragged her over to the display so I could show her the artwork inside.

So I was thrilled to read The 99 Percent’s interview with the talent behind all that loveliness, Maira Kalman. In “The Pursuit of Happiness”, Kalman talks about how she became an artist, what inspires her, and her latest project. But I especially love what she has to say about the art of storytelling in relation to her illustrations:

I think everything I do is narrative, but it’s not just a story, it’s a movie – a movie of my life. And usually I’m trying to put too much information in one image. But because I thought that I would be a writer, and that’s how I started out – as a writer and not as an artist – then when I decided to start drawing, it was going to be narrative. It’s things that are from my life, and things I’ve seen, and things I’ve seen in books. It’s always telling stories.”

[Writing] is like having imaginary friends that are the length of city blocks. The pages you write are like fingerprinting them, done to prove to strangers they exist.”

— Alexander Chee, 100 Things About A Novel, Pt. 1

There are many paths, and if you wait for everything to be perfect before you show up and participate, you will have missed thousands of opportunities to establish your voice, connect with others, and make an impact.”

— Shannon Paul, Having a Personal Brand is Fine, But Making an Impact is Better

We tend to think of craft in the tangible things—in the elegant drape of handcrafted fabric, in the smoothness and style of the arm of a chair, in the way a well-made tool eases into the palm and places no burden on the wrist. But I’ve come to see craft in the intangibles as well—in the rhythm of a well-written sentence, in the exact number of pixels separating two columns, in the lucidity that emerges from an orderly line of code.

In this manner, the web is itself an enormous place for craft—in that every bit of markup or CSS, every decision about font-size or color, every float, and every sentence have within them the opportunity for craft—the chance for the maker (be it the designer or the engineer or the writer) to put more of themselves into it than they have to. The tools have changed—from wood and blade to keyboard and cable—but the craftsmanship is hardly diminished.”

— Mandy Brown, On craft