I left my last job a few months ago for one primary reason. I was a designer working in a vacuum. I was the only designer in the company, a position a lot of people would love (you get paid well, they can’t afford to lose you, etc. ). However, I have a core belief that design is best when it involves other people. Because I was on my own there, I left.
I’ve been at this design thing for a few years now and there’s still one major aspect that I am missing. The social design community – not just in a specific job, but on a broader scale. Here’s the thing. I’m on twitter, facebook, flickr, tumblr, simler, blah blah blah. Somehow, there is a disconnect between this thing we call social media and any actual interaction with other designers. Like any other social situation in the world, there are certain groups or cliques, and it can be hard to break into them. In the design community, you make friends if you produce incredible work or if you have something valuable to say. At least that’s the theory. The reality is more like this. You make one good connection and that person sees something nice in what you do, and they share it. Begin ripple effect.
But that’s where it gets’ sketchy for me. things begin to catch on, which is kind of exciting. Suddenly thousands of people are hitting your site every day, and everybody wants to retweet everything you say on twitter. But what’s so social about that? It might as well be a faceless system. We are still single designers, working in a vacuum. What I’m looking for is for a way to work WITH people on projects. Not some place to show people the projects I’ve completed. That’s a single moment in time (when you share your work), but what about the process. The process is what I’m interested in. I think if we spent more time working on the process rather than trying to promote the product, we would have better products to promote.
I’ve got this list of possible projects scribbled on a piece of paper in a moleskine in a bag I keep with me. It’s always growing. There has to be close to 50 ideas on there - most of them full-on business models. The problem is that for me, ideas get stuck when I have to carry them from idea to product all on my own. It’s not that I can’t do it (although I am increasingly aware of my inadequacy in many areas), but who wants to go through all of that by themselves. I want to work with a team to make things happen. I want to sit down with friends and hammer out the details. I am keenly aware that working with other talented people is going to produce something far greater than I could produce on my own. And so, those ideas will stay on that page, and probably a few new pages, until I can actually find a community. Not a community to share my finished designs with, but one to share my raw ideas with.
The picture of an idea designer is often one of a freelancer, sitting in his PJs, designing the world’s next big thing – alone. Unfortunately, this simply isn’t the reality. While this exists, most of the great products we see were not designed alone at all. There was collaboration, critique and a desire to do something bigger than just one person. That’s where I want to be, and I think that’s where most of us need to be headed. PJs are optional.