Design as a Doorway

This year marks my 25th year as a graphic design professional—a “visual communicator”—as my degree was called. Most of those twenty-five years I’ve struggled with some variation of imposter syndrome (as I’ve learned most creatives do) as my career wandered along a very non-traditional path. Was that path of my own choosing, with its diversions and deviations from the norm, or did it somehow choose me because that’s how it was meant to be?

I once gave a Pecha Kucha talk entitled “How to be Adventurous,” outlining my personal story of how I ended up doing a lot of things outside my comfort zone. 

As part of my adjunct teaching I was once asked to pull together some work for a faculty art show. At the time, as a Creative Director leading in-house design teams for many years, this was a puzzle for me. I had work I was proud of, but not so much for the face value, as for what the work represented. Much of the work was done collaboratively and it felt incongruous to take full ownership of it.

I began digging through two decades of design projects, most of those years in-house, and trying to figure out what represented my work. What I discovered as a recurring theme was that many of the projects I’ve had a hand in still live on. I’ve branded and brought to life ideas, not just businesses or events. I’ve worked on projects that captured and preserved moments in time.

In an era and an industry where so much doesn’t last or doesn’t matter, it’s been my privilege to be a part of so many projects that do. Design, for me, has been a doorway to helping launch new things or re-envisioning the old.

To me, that’s the power and potential of design—to make the intangible, tangible—whether that is things we’ve forgotten, or things we don’t see yet.