Life, Death, and Garbage Collecting

Today I received a letter from one of my former students. The letter touched me deeply, and at the same time honored and humbled me. The substance of the letter speaks directly to the reason I created Designorati, and why, barely a week after its debut, Designorati was already a success.

I don’t want to embarrass anyone, so we’ll pseudononymously call the student Ron.

The Story of Ron

Roughly a year ago I taught Ron, his co-worker, and a few other students from disparate workflows to use InDesign CS. It was an intensive four-day class, starting with no-one having opened InDesign before through everyone producing polished for-print documents utilizing what most would quantify as advanced techniques. (I don’t put much stock in labels like “beginner,” “intermediate,” or “advanced; my concern, in that respect, is only whether my students leave the class able to do their jobs and express their creativity using the application.)

Working so closely with a handful of people over four days, getting to know their work and what they need and want to do with the software, I get to know the people well. I got to know Ron, and I consider him a friend.

Ron had, at the beginning of the class, a great enthusiasm for learning InDesign. It was instantly obvious to me that he had passion, that he was a creative without an outlet. I watched his excitement grow as, bit by bit, InDesign was made accessible to him, and thus he channeled his creativity into it. At the same time, I watched a sadness growing in him; he had all these wonderful ideas and now the skills to realize them, but didn’t feel his current position as a production artist for a manufacturer afforded him the freedom to express himself. It was heartbreaking; I helped open doors to him that he feared he’d never be able to walk through.

Upon returning to work, Ron demonstrated his newly acquired skills—and the creativity they allowed him to express—to his employer. To his surprise, the company gave him the freedom to use them. Beginning small with internal sales fliers, product promotions announcements, and similar projects. Meanwhile, Ron was experimenting with InDesign at home, honing his skills and learning new ways to express the creative drive he had always had, but had always been forced to repress.

When the company was nearing release of a new product line, Ron took the opportunity to ask his boss if he could design the advertising on his own for submission to the powers that be for critique. He didn’t expect much more than encouragement to try his hand at future projects. At the time, Ron’s company was using an outside agency for their ad creative and PR. To Ron’s surprise, the powers that be were so impressed with Ron’s ad they immediately placed it in a trade magazine—it was Ron’s first published work beyond the walls of the office. That one ad rolled into another, which Ron designed in InDesign and wrote the copy, then on into other projects.

Today, Ron told me that his job has transformed from what he has to do into what he wants to do. It is the career he has dreamt of all his life.

Life, Death, and Garbage Collecting

I got into training and consulting by accident, but it was a natural progression of my drive to help and teach other people whatever I know. I continue to train and consult because, as I see it, the job is to enable others’ creativity; they have passion and ideas, and I help them find the means to express those. It makes me feel like I’m genuinely doing something worthwhile, something that helps people on an individually important level. Every time I stand up in front of a class I’m sincerely grateful to be there, grateful that my students have allowed me the privilege and honor of helping them translate their creative drives, the ideas in their imaginations, into something they can see. My greatest joy is when my instruction somehow unlocks new possibilities they hadn’t even considered before.

According to a line in one of my favorite films, Serendipity, when a man died, the ancient Greeks asked only one question: Did he have passion? It is a profound statement on life.

I believe that, if there is a purpose to human existence, it is to be alive and enrich ours and each other’s souls. Indulge your passions, make them your job if there is any chance of doing so. And, even if there isn’t, try anyway.

There are so many people in this world, each with his own unique passions, each fired up by something in which others are disinterested, that none of us should be spending the majority of his days doing something he doesn’t love. There are people out there whose greatest joy comes from some aspect of being a garbage collector, but some of them are delivering mail or working on an assembly line. Some people who are riding on the back of garbage trucks and hating it would derive great personal satisfaction from being the courier of Santa’s mail and “I miss you” greeting cards or from being able to say “I helped build that car.” Truly, it saddens me to recognize the fact that, in a world of choices, many of us “do what we have to do” when, with so many people in the world, we should nearly all be able to do what we love to do without leaving any job vacant.

Personally and professionally, I wholly believe that each of us should be doing what he loves for a living. I’m so incredibly fortunate to be able to say that I only do what I love. And I’m even more fortunate and humbled to hear Ron say that, however small my assistance, I helped him get to the place where he can say the same thing.

Designorati began in its infant stage under another name, a new site wherein, like my previous websites, like my magazine articles and books, like everything else I do, I would indulge my passion for discussing and teaching design as I reached out to touch your passions for design. From the moment I conceived of that site, however, I realized I had the wonderful opportunity to make it so much more—it could serve as a vehicle to assist others in indulging their own passions at the same time I explored mine and spoke to the passions of readers. I could help others do what they love, whether they were already there and looking for additional outlets, or if they were still trying to span the gulf of unsatisfying work and “day jobs” on their way to doing what they love on their own terms.

I have always held the personal philosophy that it’s lonely at the top, so take people up with you. I may never reach the top of any particular mountain, but I’ll never be lonely on the climb either.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Designorati is about passion. Pure, simple, unadulterated passion in the form of professional creativity. Creativity is passion, and anyone who works in a creative field should have a bonfire in his breast. The editors and writers of Designorati all possess that bonfire, and they write to fan the flames of yours.

Many members of Team:Designorati are fortunate enough to do what they love—and only that—already; some still do what they have to. One of the most important goals of Designorati is to get every team member to the place where, in a year’s time, each can look me in the eye and say: “I only do what I love.”

On the inside, that’s what Designorati is all about. For you, the reader, it’s about the unique something that comes through in the articles, editorials, and tutorials from Team:Designorati. It’s about knowing that you’re reading something written by someone who shares your passion for creativity, and who creates and writes for the same reason you do: passion.

Follow your passions. Transform your world like Ron did, to make your work and your life an outlet for the fire blazing in your heart. Designorati will help, however we can, through expanding your skills and knowledge, through feeding your repertoire and your soul. Do what you love, and leave no one questioning after your time if you had passion.