PART 1 of 3
This years conference, like last year and year before, was quite an amazing day, spent with some visionary thinkers… Some great talks, some not so great, but that is always expected.
At the end of the day, I looked at mu notes and certain words jumped at me, words that were repeated by most speakers, words that resonated with me.
‘WHY – PURPOSE – CALLING -TRUTH – COMMUNITY – REASON – SHARING’
this made me think about design, ofcourse particularly my arena of design which is graphic design and what it really means… we have many dialogues, talk to like-minded people [not always a good idea though] as it makes us believe what we really want to… but yes, so coming back to what design sets out to do.
The keynote speaker for the day Emily Oberman of Pentagram [https://www.pentagram.com/about/emily-oberman[ said ‘think about things that nobody is asking for’ hence its about not just problem solving but also problem defining.
Next up was Paul Sahre, http://paulsahre.com/ who I thought was pretty inspirational as he was looking at design from a very personal point of view and it said it for me, when he said that ‘Graphic Design is not a job, but a calling’ and that one line made me think a million thoughts and led to a sleepless night… thanks for that!
In his book Two-Dimensional Man, from which he did a beautiful reading, he talks about not just his professional work, and ‘it is most engaging is when Sahre talks about how design has influenced his everyday life, and how it has affected him.’ https://www.creativereview.co.uk/two-dimensional-man-paul-sahre-different-kind-design-book/ [check out his approach to the book here].
His approach made me think about my website even more. I am currently putting it together and it has been a challenge to say the least, in terms of the desired narrative for it … ok maybe more on that later.
Coming back to the conference, a question raised by Sahre as we went along with his talk, was ‘Why graphic Design?’ and it felt as if he answered it for me…. ‘What’s f***ing better than this, I ask you…… Graphic Design gives a sense of purpose, it gives life meaning, its survival, it’s like breathing, it just happens.
Is it even a choice?’
Now all you lovely Graphic Designers out there, let us try answering that one.
