November 21, 2006

• **NEW'S FLASH** Insight of the day here, monkeys. I just realized that the dull sensation of anxiety that you experience before a nervous breakdown is exactly the same feeling as the dull sensation of nervousness created when you're coming up on a psychedelic drug of some kind.
• Look, almost no one's first job in a chosen field is what you're dreaming about for yourself. You start at the bottom, and, with a lot of patience and effort work your way up, demonstrating your expertise, intelligence and creativity, plus your ability to follow direction. Think of it as continuing education. One of the things I learned early in my working life was that you have an obligation to make the job interesting for yourself, especially by seeing it as a challenge to meet the requirements that your employer sets out better than anyone else. Eventually, you work yourself up to the point that you have latitude and respect. That said, can you network to get some clues about what it takes to get into advertising or designing "places" (do you man architecture, or maybe decorating?) Finance and science might not suit you, though I'm not sure about scamming. ;)
• man = "mean."
• I eventually came to the conclusion in life that the things I love will never make me money. I try to get the best paying job I can get, so I can pursue my educational ambitions. I do this knowing that, even with a PhD in my field I will never make much money. At the same time I could never imagine myself pursuing anything but these very things.
• A lifetime of neuro-linguistic programming tells consumers that things matter - but my heart and theirs knows that they do not. I feel you on this, but I disagree. Would you say that people aren't fulfilled by painting or sculpture or fiction or (cover your ears, bees) poetry? No? But those are just things. The oil painting I bought from a street vendor -- just a thing. The old cast-iron bench vise I bought at an estate sale for fifteen bucks and bolted to an old door that I now call a workbench -- just a thing. So's the old cast-iron skillet I bought literally out of a barn, my beat-up workboots that are twelve years older than me, and Fern Hill, all just things. But they matter, they matter very much. Someone designed those things. Someone built them. So while I applaud your distaste for materialism and your desire to remain apart from it, I wholeheartedly disagree. Things do indeed matter, if they are things of use or beauty or are indelibly tied to something that matters to you. So you want to design/make things that matter? Enlightenment's out of the question, of course, but you could design useful and/or beautiful things. Learn to blow glass or do honest-to-God hand engraving (a dying art form in this country, as is watchmaking). There's a guy up north of me who makes damascus steel knives and is the closest goddamn thing to Yoda I've ever come across in life -- doesn't sound like a bad racket to me. Make violins. Become an artist, and be prepared to starve. Or else maybe just find a job that challenges you, helps you hone your skills, a stepping stone to The Next Thing, while you figure out what that is. The trick there is not allowing yourself to be seduced by its stability.
• First, MCT I appreciate your response. The things you mentioned carry further meaning that cannot be manufactured. I can't design an heirloom, or a piece of art, with your loving it in mind. I have the same exact tastes you do - and like you, I know when I love something, and know when someone made it look like I should love it - real vs. fake. If you design objects you are always imbuing them with impure motivations, to sell, to covet, to talk about. Beauty is created in the accidents, the decisions made by powers higher or lower than ours - drifwood, old junk, animal bones, quilts made from feed bags. I am aware of the craft route. I have some experience making musical instruments. I just don't think I could deal with making really expensive things. I play guitar a little, right? And so I should really consider making really gorgeous guitars, maybe fill a niche in custom resonator guitars with piezo and magnetic pickups (not many on the market). I could do this, I have lots of experience in exotic materials and acoustics. I feel pride in any good craft I have done. But this is the rub: the people who can afford beautiful things are not the people who need beautiful things the most. I admire craftsmen of this sort but I am too holistically minded to become a hermit. This is actually an asinine standpoint. I need to start looking at why there is always a rub.
• But this is the rub: the people who can afford beautiful things are not the people who need beautiful things the most. I admire craftsmen of this sort but I am too holistically minded to become a hermit. I believe your answer's in there, somewhere.
• Oh, and on loving it versus making it look like someone should love it: I understand the dichotomy there, and all I can really say is that the best you can do, if you are to be honest, is to make something you think is beautiful and and hope that someone loves it enough to make it an heirloom. If you do that once in life, you've really done something.
• So beautiful things must necessarily be expensive? So boots, bench vises and skillets cannot be manufactured, but only happen by accident? Sure, they have additional meaning now, but at one point they were objects coming off an assembly line too. What's wrong with making objects which bring the greatest good to the greatest number?
• Become an international arms dealer.
• That's a great point now that I think about it. I can choose to see the beauty in anything. You can only present others with a choice. This is frustrating, of course, since as a young man I want nothing more than to affect dramatic change in people's every-day life, to wake them up, to allow them to see the world with greater clarity and purpose. I do have a bit of a messiah complex, which is especially ironic considering that I struggle with clarity and purpose myself. expii, when I first read your comment I found it confrontational, but I realize now that it merely confronted my inconsistency. Also, I am fascinated by the common things people find beautiful. For me, mandolins, tupperware, coiled telephone cords and quality knit goods are awesome. What are some more? Chrismas decorations, wire baskets, turntable cartridges and LL Bean duck boots.
• AS, I'm in a similar position and am dealing with similar questions. I graduated a little over a year ago with a BA in Art (painting), and have been struggling to justify my existence as an artist. It's probably worse in the visual arts than in any other field: painting/drawing/prints/etc have gotten absurdly over-priced, and most of the work ends up snatched up by hedge-fund billionaires and hollywood mavens. Maybe .001% of the population ever sees the art shown in Chelsea galleries, and only the tiniest fraction of those can afford it. How can I in good conscience push myself into a field that is simultaneously increasinly materialistic and increasingly irrelevant? Well, for one, I love it. I spent last year working for an Americorps program in Philadelphia, and I was miserable. And because I hated it, I was also extremely bad at my job. I made it through the year, but only barely, and I felt proud of almost nothing I'd accomplished (well, quite frankly, I felt I accomplished almost nothing). But then, at the beginning of this year, I got myself some studio space, and started drawing again. And pretty soon after, I was able to say to myself, "this feels right. This is what I should be doing right now." And because of that, and probably that fact alone, I'm a MUCH better artist than I was activist. And I still ask myself those questions every day: how is this relevant? Does your work help people? Can you justify doing this? I don't have any answers, I don't expect to get any soon. Right now, I'm just concentrating on making my work as good as I can - and I'm confident that as long as I keep asking those questions, some things will start to work themselves out. But it should be even easier in design - you may not have the level of creative control that you'd like, but you CAN have a direct, positive influence on the world around you. Design for Social Impact is a Philadelphia-based company that provides low-cost web/graphic/print design for non-profits, arts organizations, NGOs, and other do-gooders who need the design abilities but can't afford super-high desing prices. They do great work, and provide these organizations with the kind of visibility that comes with great design. Could you think of an equivalent use for Industrial Design? Is there a company out there doing it already? There are some fields that provide public services that may intersect slightly with your industrial design training, as well. What about civil engineering? Once again, not the most creative field, but you'd probably get a lot more satisfaction out of, say, building a bridge, than from building a high end light-fixture. Or what about Architecture, as someone already suggested? There's certainly a commodity aspect to building structures, but you're also designing people's space, which has an immense effect on their psyche and the way they live their lives. There's also plenty of room for exploration in terms of the relationship between architecture and sustainable living (such as places like Arconsanti). Be warned, low-level architects are basically slaves, but it has potential to grow to an incredibly satisfying (and potentially world-altering) occupation. Oy, I rambled a lot - hope you can find something useful in there. In any event, I wish you luck. These are hard questions, but you should be proud you're asking them. It's too easy to settle in complacency.
• I have a bachelor's in the History of Art. I sit around on my arts.
• Path is right - shitty jobs are part of life. But you will always get something out of them, even if it's just the desire to do something else (I moved from a job in the arts to a business-focussed job for the cash and, bingo, I'm painting again. Thank you, boring job). Don't worry about knowing what you want to be when you grow up - very few do. Just try and find a job in which you can use your skills, or a job that you can at least get on with (for the moment) and do what makes you really happy in your own time. Eventually, hopefully, the two will merge. Don't sweat it. My 'lost years' after graduating with an arts degree did nothing for me professionally, but loads personally. Good luck.
• But this is the rub: the people who can afford beautiful things are not the people who need beautiful things the most. For every three guitars you make for sale, you make one to donate to a young musician?
• But this is the rub: the people who can afford beautiful things are not the people who need beautiful things the most. Maybe you should read up on the democratisation of design. Not much to find on the net, but you can start here. Seems like a worthy cause to pursue.
• Try to eat as much as you can. Start with small round things, & then work up. Set a goal, then try to beat your goal.
• And there's a lot to be said for taking a day job that desn't thrill you for a while to pay the bills while you fiddle around with stuff you enjoy on the side. Design some sets for a theater company. Build a guitar or two without having to care if they sell so you can eat that week. You might stumble onto your true calling.
• Dammit, I love me some LL Bean duck boots.
• Become the founder of a giant turkey island made entirely out of fat.
• Have sex with a ghost.
• Thou shalt not tup the dead!
• I am staggeringly intelligent... In that case you should definitely hang drywall for a living. the people who can afford beautiful things are not the people who need beautiful things the most. You couldn't be more wrong. Everyone needs beautiful things. Look, you're going about it all wrong. You're looking for spiritual fullfillment from your job. Jobs are for financial fulfillment. If you're lucky enough to have a job you don't hate and leaves you with enough time in the day to explore your real passions then you're lucky. Industrial design is a good gig. Forget that it feeds the industrial capitalist machine you hate so much and focus on the end user, or at least the end of the work day.
• Ooooh - ghost! I thought you said...um...er..nevermind...
• Having worked for one of the most respected Industrial Design firms in the US for many years, I can relate to your current struggle. I handled their recruiting for many of those years, and I became so numb from the countless portfolios all showcasing the latest shoe or chair design. Meh! But I think you are not giving your education the chance it deserves. Industrial design doesn't have to be about designing pretty things for the wealthy, or vice versa. It's quite an amazing position to be in really, because you have the opportunity to change the way in which millions of people live their daily lives. The CEO of my former firm has made a huge name for himself by making slight improvements on banal everyday items, making them more accessible to people (e.g. individuals with arthritis) of all abilities. I would suggest that you don't pen yourself in a corral; be open to new possibilities and areas in which you can apply your degree. It doesn't have to be about designing for the sake of aesthetics, perhaps utility?
• Forget the career counseling and the spirit guide. I'd suggest you travel. A lot. Get as far away from home as you can afford to go, to places you've never been before. Spend time getting to know people there. Look at interesting things, learn everything you can about them. Lather, rinse, repeat, grasshopper. You'll find your way.
• I am pretty much set against design since designers wield very little power or influence. And I think you are mistaken there as well. Influence and power (if this is what you are after) is to be found in every profession imaginable. It's about how you apply yourself. For Grog's sakes, no one ever designs for the homeless.
• I would echo other people's sentiments. I have 9 years of university education in a field I no longer have anything to do with. I have a job I don't particularly like very much, but my life is not my job. I work in order to get the money to do what interests me in my spare time. It's become my feeling that you shouldn't do something you enjoy for a living because once you do it for money, you start enjoying it less and less.
• I'm a mechanical engineer and never thought industrial design would come into my orbit, but it did. I find a lot of creative scope there. My designs tell people "I'm robust and fit for my purpose, you can't break me and I will faithfully do what you bought me for, for many years". This pleases me a great deal, especially because I engineer the insides and the design speaks the truth. When my job was strictly engineering I thought ID was a woo-woo, beret-and-goatee field but it isn't and I have had a bunch of come-uppances on my path to learning it. If you want to discuss this off-list, email in my profile's current.
• Donald Norman writes intelligently about the importance of design.
• Paul Landry writes about hanging drywall... and does so with staggering intelligence.
• AS, I feel I'm in a similar position: I'm a History Honours Graduate, and I'm working a numbingly negative job as a receptionist/admin monkey at a debt collection agency. I want to write-- you want to design. The simple solution is, write. Design. Throw out all the ways you limit yourself and start to recognise the fences you build up around your dreams which mean you feel you 'can't' allow yourself to achieve them. I find this incredibly hard to do myself, but it's the only answer I have come up with. The Right thing to do is usually Hard, I'm afraid, so motivating yourself to do it can be really difficult. I guess the best thing you can do is let go and allow yourself the freedom to let your inner designer wander and design on whimsy, and out of that, maybe you'll figure out what it's been trying to tell you to do all this time. You might design silly unnecessary things at first, but they could lead to you stumbling on something really big and meaty to get your teeth into. Godd luck!
• I'm glad we're all fucked. The world would be so fucking lonely if everyone else wasn't plagued with silent doubt and failure through all the noise and gnashing.
• We're not fucked, we're just mad writer / painter / bomber / musicians disguised as wage slaves. Now take your clothes off and sit STILL!
• Beauty is subjective. I find very little beauty in the handiwork of mankind, so I'm not impressed with art, poetry, and the like. But then, I see human history as little more than a short burp of bioturbation at the end of a long history of interesting tectonism and biological derivations. I was talking the other day with some pals about how hard it is for liberal arts majors to find jobs in their chosen fields. One girl in my group was very proud to announce that she had a bachelor's degree in Latin American studies. I asked, "And what do you do with a degree like that?" "Well, I'm now working toward a master's degree in hydrology," she responded.
• Turn the rock tumbler off, nunia, and let Grandma Moses go free.
• Grandma Moses is free to go. Make sure you sign her out at the counter before you leave. *tumbles more rocks, because that's obviously what geologists do*
• Waaaay down in Egyp' laaaaaaaand
• Yeah, and what about those who have managed to live 30+ years, and still not even know what their dreams are?
• Tell me about it.