Design isn’t my job, it’s a way of expressing myself.
Design a job?
How to do a good job from 8 till 5?
Just do what’s expected and maybe a little more. And leave the office just in time to start living.
Design your life?
How to express myself via design?
Having style with nice fashion, let all of my surroundings and having be influenced with a drive of looking good. When the aesthetics have to match with how I like them to be.
Trough my surroundings where I’m living I show a way of the looking good life as a form of design. Like doing design is following my lifestyle as ‘designer’.
When design is your passion, you breathe design.
I can’t stop thinking about design. I see it everywhere. So going to places that stimulates me to have originality, creativity and motivates me to make great work. It’s impossible for real designers to have no inspiration. Or to be personal, I have always inspiration, as far as I know I have a solution for creative projects.
So when a designer has no inspiration, it’s for me a sign that that person isn’t really a designer at all. Or he or she hasn’t the right tools and approach to be creative. In that case you have to learn new approaches. A designer without inspiration is like a fireman without a fire. Like a pilot without a plane. Like a cyclist without a bike. Just bored people.
But like a cyclist you have to practice to cycle fast. To compete you have to train a lot. To become a good designer you have to experiment a lot with different styles to know which style suites you best. And then you can make your form of design a way of art. Then you get more than just the design. A whole philosophy and design thinking going in depth about the What?, How?, Why?.
A designer without inspiration is like a fireman without fire.
Good designing is making solutions for problems. But with a sense of making it look better. To express myself. To promote a way of living as a manner for people to feel good. Aka ‘The Designer Lifestyle’. Kind of everything a designer does is cool. To have a certain feeling attached to my design. Because the artist in me want to express. And so when you buy that design you buy the ‘artist-feeling’ or art, if you can say art about design. And with having that design (read art) you are someone special.
How to apply that kind of ‘artist-feelings’? Not every form of design has something to do with extreme feelings. Most business design is about subtle tones of businesslike approach. In the business to business market you as the owner need to be more trusted as reliable or stable. So in design terms you speak of solid colors like blue or grey. In corporate typefaces as Helvetica and simple logos with a word mark. And no need to have a very colorful imagery visual style or pictures as logo. That’s more for the consumer market.
Good design is offering solutions to problems whilst making it better looking.
But mostly for lifestyle brands and some forms of art you need to express yourself heavily. Like Nike does when it gives buyers the feeling of being an athlete with distinct typefaces, a photographic sphere & mood and an original contrasting color palette. The difference between businesses and lifestyle brands is that the first want to connect via textual messages and thus with reliability trough the subject matters. The second want to connect by showcasing a lifestyle attracting the people who want to distinguishes themselves and be that living example ‘The Athlete’.
However, more and more you see even in the business to business markets that the lifestyle approach is copied and applied. Because you can’t ignore and see that visual messages, like pictures via Instagram (if you’re smart you start a business account on Instagram) vlogs (Insta-stories) and short films are much easier and faster to understand than reading an article. I know with writing this article I’m speaking against myself. But if people are interested they still will read. As long if you can learn something from it and it isn’t complete nonsense.
