Every morning, I get on this bus like someone stepping into a necessary pause. Forty-five minutes separate my home from the studio. Some people tell me it’s too much. That if I live in Barcelona, it should help me be closer. And if not, what’s the point? But for me, this commute is also part of the work. It’s the space where everything inside me falls into place. It’s the time I get to look at things from the outside, before they swallow me up again.

In fact, I’ve realized that this idea — of taking distance — doesn’t just come up during the commute. It shows up again and again in how I work. It’s a tool, almost a condition, that helps me make sense of things, organize them, or even correct them. And often, when something works for me, I try to repeat it.

Here are a few examples:

When a client explains a project, I absorb everything they say, without filtering — details, stories, adjectives, anecdotes… all of it. I leave the meeting with my head full of fragments that I don’t quite know where they start or end, and for a few days I do what might be the most important part of the process: nothing. I don’t sort it or review it. I just let it rest. Over time, the brain filters. What’s not essential fades. And the structural things —the ones that define the project— stay.

Also, when I’m working on a proposal, I need to step back from it. I need to get some distance to see if it actually works. I let it sit for a few days and then come back to it. But if I can’t wait —oh, those cursed deadlines— I cheat a little: I send the proposal to my phone. I step away from the computer and look at the same thing from another place, on another device, as if it and I had both become someone else.

The same thing happens with a trick I learned fourteen or fifteen years ago from graphic designer Quim Marin, for adjusting the kerning in a logo. We’d print it out and hang it upside down and backwards on a window. That way, we stopped reading it as a word. It became a set of unfamiliar shapes, and from there it was easier to fix the imbalance between characters.

Graphic designer Marta Cerdà also told me recently that, while she was working on her book Sobrevivir al diseño, she used an app that would read her writing back to her using a voice she could choose. That allowed her to hear the text as if it were written by someone else. And to spot, with more objectivity, what worked and what didn’t.

And a couple of weeks ago, in Vitoria-Gasteiz, during the Baskerville festival, I listened to interactive designer Eva Sánchez talk about the red flags she’s encountered in different projects, and the lessons she’s learned. Not from a place of complaint, but from a perspective only time can give. So often, when you’re in the middle of something, you already sense that something isn’t working —but you don’t want to see it. You’re too involved. Too close. And only with distance —and a little emotional coldness— can you look back and really understand what happened.

Maybe that’s why I love writing these columns from the bus. Every two weeks, between turns and traffic lights, I jot down what’s been occupying my mind. And I think that in five years, I’ll enjoy reading them again. Not to see if they were good, but to see what’s changed. What I still think the same. And what I no longer recognize.

Hugs from the H6,
Ingrid