Aaron Trindar of Film:Motion:Music made this wonderful video about desks of creative people and how they think about them, and what sort of desk makes them work best?  Some, like Designer Massimo Vignelli‘s remain an austere clean slate, others like Einstein’s, a wild jumble of papers and notes. This video made us reflect on our own occasionally harsh judgements about our desks, as we bought into the popular notion that the chaos of papers revealed the chaos of our own thinking – NOT! – rather than a very personal unique, often quirky creative process. This illuminating and somehow comforting video will make you view your workspace in a new way.

It also reminded us of a photo we once saw of the desk of Alexander Calder, one of the Twentieth century’s most influential sculptors and inventor of the mobile.

We did a Google Search and found the image displayed on a website called TraditionInAction.org in a post called The Importance of Order in Professional Life. “The well organized offices” the blog reads “gives a sense of calm and accomplishment” and uses Calder’s office as an example of “chaotic and cluttered”… Which it may be to ordinary mortals. But if you look at Calder’s massive creativity and output, you get that there is no simple equation between messiness or neatness, and productivity.

It’s whatever works for you to do your (real) work.

Related post: On Things “Not Looking Good While You’re Working on Them”

via BoingBoing