What if a design could help people remember which medicine they are supposed to take and when to take it? Neha Tulsian, a designer friend, released an open-source design solution knowing that her solution would solve the struggle many people face, and also hoping that pharma companies would notice and adapt that into future packaging.
This made me smile. Such a simple yet wonderful idea.
Neha is one of those designers whom I have a lot of admiration and respect for. Nothing seems to be boring for her – just take a glance at her company’s diverse portfolio. I remember her passionately stating that a property (real-estate) brochure is fun and a property client is “interesting” when many others will just label the segment as “boring”.
Despite running a busy studio, Neha still devotes time to exploring ideas beyond commissioned work.
I have interviewed many designers. Their usual reason for wanting to change jobs: it has become boring. Churning out the same old same old every day. Routine. Mundane. Not creative.
Does a client become boring after a while? Maybe.
But to the extent of having absolutely no room to pursue new perspectives, inject new ideas, try something different?
Maybe the problem actually lies with the designer.
Maybe the designer didn’t try hard enough. Maybe it’s not the client or the brief at all. Maybe it’s the designer who is not interesting.
A friend — studio owner — gave me this example.
Many South-East Asian clients give out red packets as a corporate gift before Lunar New Year. The design concept usually focuses on the zodiac animal for that year. Year of the pig — loads of pig designs in the market. Predictable. Safe.
My friends at Foreign Policy Design in Singapore had a different take:
My friend knows his team would most likely have come up with iterations of graphic pigs. And then looked at Foreign Policy’s work with envy. The excuse for doing the predictable thing? “The client is boring. The client will never accept new ideas.”
“But do they even have the fire in them to think differently? How can you blame the client when maybe the designer is simply not creative enough?”
That question is worth sitting with longer than most people do.
Jiahui owns Fable, a busy award-winning studio in Singapore. Self-initiated projects — the fun ones, the award-winning ones — occupy a fair chunk of his studio’s time. But he demands his team place equal emphasis on everything else too.
“There has to be a balance.”
Marketing promotions for GrabFood. Organising discount information clearly for KFC, PizzaHut, other merchants. Unglamorous work. That’s the job of designers too, isn’t it?
The interesting designer finds something in both.
I once asked Massimo Vignelli what kept his interest alive, despite having done pretty much everything that can be done in design. Lella, his life partner, was sitting next to him. She chuckled.
“He still gets excited over every phone call on any book project.”
“Every project is a new opportunity to test out a new design idea, a new grid, a new typography.” Said Massimo.
It is not about the project. It is not about the client. It is what’s inside the designer that keeps the interestingness alive.
