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Anonymous asked: How did you find your identity through design? How does one transition when you've grown internally and none of your work matches who you are?

e-r-h:

It’s tough. The role of the identity of the designer behind a work is a very contentious topic. Previous movements have stressed a removal of the designers personality from the end result in an effort to push “neutrality.” Perhaps this was a misguided goal. Contemporary discussions have since gone towards the complete opposite—then slowly back to an ambiguous center.

Most graduate programs today, as far as I know, frame a student’s academic exploration as one of building towards a body of work that responds to a thesis. I’m not sure when this shift happened, but somehow along the way, the idea of our practice being firmly planted within a service industry began to dissolve. We started looking towards the models of contemporary art practice and borrowing as much as we could from them—seeing our portfolios not only as a set of isolated works in exchange for money, but as a larger narrative statement of our ideology, goals, and predispositions. The portfolio, at least viewed from the lens of our own inner circles, not only functions as a declaration of skill sets but also as a rough timeline of our past, and an indication of our future. Combined with Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and a variety of other outlets—designers have the ability to project their personalities across wider territory to paint a bigger picture of who they are. Whether or not this phenomenon has negative consequences should be up for a separate discussion.

We’ve seen the role of identity, when taken in its extremes in design, become highly problematic. Amongst our contemporaries, we have both the superstar designer as well as the designer who chooses to not speak up, contributing to the capitalist machine side by side.  If I can be honest, I can easily see myself falling into the trap of becoming an online personality type should the circumstances fall into place—I think it’s already happened to some extent. Well, the solution’s easy—just find something in between. Sure, but how?

Well, maybe it’s best to sidestep that word altogether for the time being. I personally find the word ‘perspective’ to be more flexible topic than identity. identity is a useful and extremely important topic in terms of self-reflection but design is very much about a conversation and very often a collaborative practice where the practitioner needs to engage a variety of contexts. With perspective, we bring to the table our own individual set of experiences, predispositions, taste and ideologies, but we are ultimately using these traits and qualities to look at something beyond ourselves.

Perspective isn’t something you can find, you already have it. You can nurture it only through experience, discussions, and a hunger to learn more. An eureka moment may last a second, but took it also needed the entirety of your experiences in order to actualize.

As far as transitioning, there’s no simple answer other than to keep producing and taking on opportunities to make work. But know that your situation isn’t exactly a bad situation. Periods of inactivity and rest are equally important in ones personal growth. It’s probably a cliche story told by many people and I may sound stupid for even bringing it up but I haven’t really heard it from anyone else besides my father. He is a simple but ultimately extremely successful individual. When I was younger, after many frustrating moments about my progress in something, he would encourage me to “sharpen my axe.” That is, to take time off and be okay with progress not exactly being visible for the time being and instead to allow yourself to reflect and rest and grow internally. If I kept hacking away at something, desperately hoping to arrive somewhere, the tools and methods that I use to hack away become dull and less effective. Taking time off to enhance how you approach is an extremely valuable activity.

Ira Glass, also remarks on this in a much more eloquent manner than I ever could that I still subscribe to. He sees improvement as this act of satisfying your taste with your actual ability.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”