Creativity • Design • Thinking
I think we have a pretty good idea of design work and environments that don’t connect with our passion: feeling like a cog in the wheel; taking any type of design work just to pay the bills; producing work that we’re not particularly proud of just to meet deadlines or the client’s druthers; and on and on. What would your ideal design work and environment look like if there were no monetary constraints? Would you be designing from home in pajamas, or would you open up your own design studio in some old, remodeled, exposed brick building? What type of clients would you choose to pursue? What type of clients would you turn away? Would you charge clients or let them set their own prices? What projects would you start? What is already in your heart to design that you wished you could do, but can’t for whatever reason. Let’s hear it....... Keep reading
Business • Design • Thinking
Editor’s Note: For aspiring and practicing designers and artists out there who may feel a little intimidated by your client’s or manager’s fancy business degrees, take heart. Your art and design background is the future of the new economy. As we explore the possibility that you can pursue your passion in design and still put food on the table, this should give you hope regardless of whether or not you have a master’s degree. Thank’s Daniel for allowing us to post this article you wrote for the Harvard Business Review in February 2004 in your name for our readers. Daniel H. Pink is the author of Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind (and no, we don’t get anything for promoting these books).
Getting admitted to Harvard Business School is a cinch....... Keep reading
Design • Thinking
Thank’s to Paul Rustand’s thoughtful article, we’ve identified the gulf between passion and profession that most designers seem resigned to straddle. We’re not alone though.Talk with just about anyone in any profession these days, and you’ll find a similar consensus: Following one’s heart does not lead to making a decent wage, while making a good living seems to exclude doing something meaningful and fulfilling. Paul points out the division between the sacred and the secular that exists in our lives. This compartmentalization of our lives into work, passion, play and the sacred stems from the ancient Greek philosophical mindset that forms the basis for our Western thinking and training. When you add the intense compartmentalization and dehumanization effects of the Industrial Revolution on Western culture, it’s no wonder we live divided lives. Other cultures, like the ancient Hebrew culture, viewed work, passion, play and the sacred as an interwoven tapestry of life.
In bridging the chasm between role and soul, I’ve found the book Cry Hope, Cry Pain: A Guide to the D...... Keep reading
Business • Design • Thinking
Something strange is occurring out there: art, business and design are finding each other. This isn’t the first time in history where these three have met (think Renaissance), but it may be the first time they’ve had a soul searching encounter of this magnitude. Recently, I read a very good speech given by Daniel Pink (author of Free Agent Nation) to the Ringling School of Design’s graduating class that stopped me in my tracks. Here’s a quote:
“These two forces—automation and globalization—are profoundly changing the world of work. They mean any job that is based on simply following a prescribed set of rules—that can be reduced to a spec sheet or configured to produce a singe right answer—is a goner. And that means that the jobs that remain will be the sort of things that computers can’t do faster and low-wage overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper. The jobs that remain will involve creating beauty and touching the human soul. They’ll rely less on the sort of left brain, SAT kind of intelligence we’ve been schooled to respect and hectored into worshipping – and more on the right brain qualities of art and heart. Art and heart. Creating something the world didn’t know it was missing. Forging meaningful relationships and empathizing with others. These are qualities that are diff...... Keep reading
Design • Reviews • Thinking
While studying in Taiwan several years ago, I was struck by the workspaces there—large open rooms filled with row upon row people hunched over ’50s styled desks. I wondered how anyone was able to work with folks talking in your ears from all sides. If it weren’t for the amazing speed and efficiency of the Taiwanese people, I suspect nothing would have been accomplished in this type of environment. So, when I returned to the States and entered the working world, I was pretty happy to receive my plot of desk on the cubicle farm. But over the years I increasingly sensed that my once lovely cubicle was nothing more than a rat hole in a giant corporate maze. No matter what I or my coworkers did to rearrange them and make them personable, cubicles came to symbolize our feeling of being a cog in someone’s profit making machine.
Not long ago I stumbled across this fascinating article on the cubicle’s history and an interview with the original designer. It seems the problems I saw in Taiwan’s office environment were common in the post-industrialized US until the early 1960s. Then along came former University of Colorado fine arts professor Bob Propst, who designed the first modular office furniture (ironically dubbed the “Action Office”) that would serve as a “vehicle to carry other expressions of identity.” ...... Keep reading
Business • Design • Thinking
Much to my surprise, a friend recently left a well respected regional advertising agency where he was a principal for several years. From the outside, everything seemed to be going fine. Why I wondered, would he want to leave? He told me at lunch one day he was “unequally yoked.” For those unfamiliar with the term, “unequally yoked” is an agricultural reference to two different animals (like a donkey and an ox) yoked together to pull a load or plough a field. When there are different animals hitched together, the yoke weighs heavily on one animal while choking the other. Or the animal with the longer stride drags the other along by the neck. This is a painful and unproductive situation for all. Equally yoking two animals of the same weight, size and type enables them to pull smoothly and help each other accomplish the work. I’ve heard “unequally yoked” applied many times in a marriage relationship, but never thought about it in a professional one. I believe a lot of us are unequally yoked with our work. Our passion is hitched up to a client, agency, company, philosophy or pattern of thinking that is essentially choking the life out of us. You may have started pulling the load together equally, but it’s obvious now that you can’t breath. You know your unequally yoked when:
+ You find yourself doing a lot of good work, but nothing truly great or inspiring.
+ You go to work, but the ...... Keep reading
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