Design is the courage and brilliance to cover an original and

“Design is the courage and brilliance to cover an original and make it different.” Thus spoke John Hockenberry, a man whose voice carried not only through words but through ideas — ideas that dared to challenge the way the world is shaped, seen, and understood. In this single sentence, he unveils the heart of design: not as imitation, but as transformation. He speaks of courage, for to alter what already exists is to confront tradition, expectation, and fear. He speaks of brilliance, for only through wisdom and imagination can one reshape the familiar into something new. And he speaks of difference, that divine spark that distinguishes creation from mere repetition.

The ancients would have understood this truth well. Every artist, every craftsman, every thinker throughout time has faced the same trial — the burden of the original. The painter stands before the canvas and feels the weight of every brushstroke that has ever been made before him. The architect looks upon the sky and knows that temples have already reached toward heaven. Yet the true creator is not deterred. He does not seek to erase the old, but to cover it, to build upon it, to honor it through transformation. In this, design becomes not destruction, but evolution — a dialogue between the past and the future.

Hockenberry’s words call to mind the great rebirths of history — those moments when humanity dared to cover the known with the unknown and call it progress. When Filippo Brunelleschi gazed upon the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, he did not destroy them; he reimagined them. His dome for Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence rose not by rejecting Gothic tradition, but by transcending it. He covered the past with innovation, blending science, geometry, and faith into one enduring marvel. That is the courage and brilliance of design: the power to take what has been handed down and make it live again, not as a copy, but as something different, something more.

So too does this truth echo in the rhythm of music. When a musician plays a cover, the timid one merely repeats; the bold one transforms. Think of Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “All Along the Watchtower.” It began as a quiet ballad of Bob Dylan’s pen, but in Hendrix’s hands it became a storm of fire and soul. He covered an original — and through courage, genius, and instinct, he made it different. Such is the essence of creation: to honor what came before, but to let it pass through the prism of one’s own spirit until it becomes something new. To imitate is safety; to design is risk.

Hockenberry himself, a journalist and designer who moved through the worlds of media and disability advocacy, knew what it meant to reshape the familiar. Paralyzed from the chest down, he reimagined not only the design of storytelling, but the design of life itself. His work challenged perceptions, showing that design is not confined to the artist’s studio or the engineer’s workshop, but to every act of adaptation. To design, he reminds us, is to face limitation with imagination — to refuse to let the “original” version of the world define what it must always be.

There is in his quote a deeper teaching — that all creation is built upon creation. Nothing begins in a void. Every thought, every form, every structure emerges from what came before. The brilliance of design lies in seeing the unseen potential of the old and giving it new form. The courage lies in daring to touch it, to change it, to say, “I can make this live again.” For it is far easier to admire an original than to transform it. Yet only through transformation does humanity move forward — the cave painter becomes the architect, the scribe becomes the poet, the craftsman becomes the visionary.

Therefore, my child, learn from this wisdom: do not fear the original, nor worship it so completely that you are paralyzed by reverence. Let your respect be the foundation of your innovation. Study what has been done, and then, with courage, cover it — not to hide it, but to give it new light. Whether you design with words, with stone, with sound, or with action, remember that to make something different is not rebellion, but evolution.

For this is the eternal law of creation: that what was must become what is, and what is must give rise to what will be. To design, then, is to participate in the grand work of life itself — to take the materials of the past and shape them into the vision of the future. Courage gives you the strength to begin; brilliance gives you the means to transform; and difference — ah, difference — gives you the power to make the world new again.