08 March 2010
A good story gets me… gets me excited, teaches me, inspires me, motivates me, makes me a better person.
Life to me is all about stories.
Are we living a good story? One worth telling? One worth remembering?
And what of the people, organizations, and companies that we associate ourselves with? What makes them tick, and what makes me—or you—connect to them?
This is where the subject of this blog comes in:
Designing is storytelling. And it’s a powerful medium for it. We get to use words, images, shapes, colors, textures, music, pacing, and motion to tell our story. We can publish our stories on paper, in books or magazines, on the web, in movies, We get it all. And that is one of the reasons that design is so exciting to me.
When I’m looking for new people to work with, this is criteria #1 that I’m looking for: If I can find the essence of their story—and if that story is one that resonates with me—it’s a story I can bring passion and beauty and clarity to its telling. This is what I want for my life, and my career.
04 March 2010
I 100% feel this.
There have been jobs where my employer has said something along the lines of “Just knock this one out quick—we don’t need it to look great—but it will make a huge difference in (fill in the blank).” Or they’ve said things like, “Don’t you think it’s cool that thousands of people are seeing your work?” in reference to a job that I was given a day to just hash out. And, I’ve tried with huge amounts of failure to explain that reward does very little—if anything—for me. If only I had seen this video before…
I don’t see myself as a decorator. I don’t just make things look pretty. And I’m not just a “computer guy” who knows Photoshop and so obviously I can design a web-banner right quick… I want to tell stories and I want to cause a change for my clients as well as the people that interact with my work. But, in the end, if the things I am producing are not beautiful, they do little to satiate my appetite for design.
Great designers—which I am striving to become—combine aesthetics with intelligence that can touch someone’s soul and encourage them to do something. And hopefully more than just buy sugar water or an expensive new car.