Design Common Sense

When I was only a few years into my career I really struggled with the subjective versus objective and swore design outsiders just didn’t get it.  I think most designers and creatives can agree that EVERYONE thinks they are a designer.  People rarely question their lawyer, their doctor, and any one of the other nameless professions around, yet everyone wants to comment on design, layout, and the work you just put your heart and soul into.

And so I body say, it is extremely likely fair to say that most if not all creatives have run into or lived through situations as I just described.

Now back to when I was only a few years into my career.  I was young, not that young as it took me a few years after high school to find my path, but young in the business world, and very young in the design world. In those years I had nothing but a positive outlook, dreams of being a famous artist, not knowing the real difference between artists and designers. I, and for many years now, have come to understand that difference and also know that to be or become a Bogusky, a Weiden, a Kennedy, a Goodby, a Silverstein, or any one of the many greats we as creatives looked up to and aspired to be, and probably still do, would be a hard to accomplish if even possible at all.

I also had an illusion of grander that I would sit down, start a blog, and become rich on the advertising dollars as many of tech design bloggers of that era managed to do following the dot com boom and collapse. I read many of those blogs at the time, still do read some of them, and knew for sure my insight would be valued if i just sat down and made it happen…Little to say, I never sat down to do it.  It might have been I was too busy with work, too busy living life, too busy chasing my soon to be wife, and in reality maybe just lazy (mind you I was working 60-70 plus hour weeks back then).

All of these years later I like many of you likely have, I have taken the time to rebuild my portfolio/personal site to show off my work whether for notoriety or to heighten my stance while looking for my next career move multiple times, and each time I think about whether or not I want to finally set up a blog and put words from this ever busy and overthinking brain out there for others to read. Each time thinking back to those moments when I thought…If I just…but never did and so as I set up this most recent rendition of my personal portfolio site for the same reasons, I finally think it might be time to put some of my thoughts out there whether anyone reads them or not, and doubt I will not get the visitor numbers required for today’s blog adverting model.

I titled this post as “Design Common Sense” as that was going to be my famous design blogs name.  Believe it or not I bought that domain name and have owned it for probably over ten years now. Renewing it each year, thinking one day I am going to make that work, yet I never have. So if anyone out there is reading this has been wondering who and why someone has been squating on such an awesome domain name, now you know why. HA!

Cheers.