Internet celebrity Andrew Sloat brought this flyer back from the AIGA conference on Tuesday.

He gave us a fine recap of a talk by the phenomenal Canadian typographer Marian Bantjes. Bantjes started out her talk by expressing astonishment to be there, and credited it to the fact that four years ago, she quit doing everything she had been working at and “followed her heart” – that is, she sold her design firm and started with her crazy beautiful typographic-inspired illustrations. Now she’s making amazing work, a super-success story. Inspired by both the HP flyer and Marian Bantjes, I got to thinking about following your heart.

On Following Your Heart: A conservation with myself.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Five years ago, the intern version of myself received some choice advice on my last day of work for Ryan McGinness. Over lunch, I asked him all kinds of questions about working, about how to find what you love in life, and be able to make the kinds of things that you want to make. Deep stuff, for sure. He told me to “follow your heart.” At the time, I thought this was the biggest cop-out of all time. About two years ago, I realized that it was actually pretty good advice, even though it’s a cliché. It’s really something to think about during trying times when you’re not sure what to do.

What do we mean when we say that we’ve followed our heart?
Yesterday, Renda said that computers can do almost anything. The only thing that they can’t do is love (CORRECTION: Andrew said this). I think she’s right. Computers definitely cannot follow their hearts.

But how would you define following your heart? What’s the difference between following your heart and simply taking action or taking risks?
This question is really about certainty versus uncertainty. It also has to do with the possibility of regret, and the degree of investment you have in your actions. There are times when it’s hard to be sure what to do. Perhaps there are two equally good options available to you. Perhaps the choice is between maintaining the status quo and abandoning it in favor of an uncharted future. Or maybe there is something you’ve been thinking about for a long time but are afraid to do. And a time comes to act upon something that’s only existed theoretically up until then. Where “following your heart” – versus simply taking risk or taking action (ie boldness, tk on the RSS feed) – comes into play is in the perceived degree of regret as a result of that very action. To employ another cliché, in order to follow your heart, you have to risk breaking your heart.

But how reliable is the heart anyway? Why should we trust in our hearts? What is a heart anyway, and why do we seem to think that it holds the solutions to our problems?
For these types of questions, it’s sometimes good to turn to poetry. I often think about part of a Dylan Thomas poem called “Should Lanterns Shine.”

“I have been told to reason by the heart,
But heart, like head, leads helplessly“

I have always thought that the implication here is that both heart and head are flawed and unreliable navigators. Here, reason and emotion are the two sides of a losing coin toss.
You can certainly follow your heart and fail. But if you fail while following your heart, you most likely won’t regret your action, only the mistakes made in the practice of that action. You acted upon what you knew to be true at that moment in time. And when you act upon truth, your action is genuine and – here we go again – heartfelt. The important part: you believed in something.
That faith gets at the crux of what following your heart means, and how you can do it. It’s when you do something because you have to, because it’s the only honest option, because the greater regret would be inaction rather than failure. People don’t usually look back wondering what would have happened if they would have stayed in their miserable situations.

How does one achieve the wisdom necessary to follow their heart?
First, you have to listen to your heart (self-assessment may be the most difficult part). Then you must follow your heart. No matter what happens, your heart will go on.