Watch Helvetica (Amazon, iTunes) and become obsessed with typefaces.
Watch Objectified (Amazon, iTunes) and think about the design of objects.
Watch Urbanized (Amazon, iTunes) and consider the planning of cities, including potentially disturbing implications.
Watch Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (Amazon, iTunes) and witness delightful, singular brilliance.
Read The Design of Everyday Things and be mindful of door handles, tea cups, and much more.
Work through Hack Design and behold a new sense of taste.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Isaac Asimov
Twenty-two years have I lived,
time the Almighty did give.
How it shall go from now,
to His will I must bow.
In youth and inexperience,
I must lean upon Providence.
Last year I wrote twenty-one resolutions;
they remain wanted for my attributions.
Opportunities for creativity abound,
yet they often do not seem to publicly astound.
I am learning the importance of process,
for into laxity I dare not recess.
My schedule becomes increasingly packed,
with discipline must I now make a pact.
Some tell me I need a relationship,
but "I have many" is my constant quip.
Before one may seek to be that special guy,
one must first have saved to be ready to buy.
Comprehensive remarks are not in this style formed;
do not presume full knowledge, lest you be misinformed.
The law of cause and effect is profound,
yet I often miss this and run aground.
Abundant undeserved blessing is mine,
scold me if merit I try to define.
I don't know what's the matter with people; they don't learn by understanding, they learn some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
Richard Feynman
From John Dewey's How We Think:
While a limited vocabulary may be due to a limited range of experience, to a sphere of contact with persons and things so narrow as not to suggest or require a full store of words, it is also due to carelessness and vagueness. A happy-go-lucky frame of mind makes the individual averse to clear discriminations, either in perception or in his own speech. Words are used loosely in an indeterminate kind of reference to things, and the mind approaches a condition where practically everything is just a thing-um-bob or a what-do-you-call-it. Paucity of vocabulary on the part of those with whom the child associates, triviality and meagerness in the child's reading matter (as frequently even in his school readers and textbooks), tend to shut down the area of mental vision.
(from page 145 of the Barnes and Noble Library of Essential Reading edition)