This post continues the discussion designer Greg and I were having on the SpeakUp comment board. Our misunderstandings were telling. Each had something he wanted to say, regardless of what the other was saying. Rather than interpret each other, we rephrased our own ideas. In the end, I believe I wanted to say something grand about one's psychological and philosophical relationship to work while Greg wanted to air grievances against and remedies for designers presuming to be artists by promoting their own styles, irrespective of client demands. (My sense is that designers bend over backward to satisfy clients, not the other way around; perhaps this premise was responsible for our continuing misunderstanding; I saw the client/designer relationship as one in which the client has the power, whereas Greg thought (I'm ascribing thoughts to him; I shouldn't) that the designer wields the power).

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[An excerpt from Greg's response: “What if instead of creating your own style based on stuff you happen to like, you were to expand your knowledge of existing movements and try to use them as best is appropriate? Perhaps this reveals me as a classicist, but I don't think we've explored what we've got enough to go filling the heads of young kids with notions that they have to ‘discover’ their own style, plant their flag and wait for someone to need them. ‘Here's my work; love it or don't,’ is what an artist would say, and newsflash: we're not artists. I'm not saying there's no need to be creative, and I'm not saying appropriate, appropriate, appropriate. In fact I think it takes more creativity to use what we've built over the last hundred years and combine things in a new way, than it does to try and extend a style you've built for yourself to cover the needs of others.”

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I think we're talking past each other. I'm reacting to your original proposition that we can be everything to everyone, that there isn't much to be anyway, and that being everything isn't hard. Now I think I understand that you didn't actually mean that. After all, you have to admit that it would at least be kind of difficult for one person to design type, magazine layouts, cover art, websites, film credits, books, street signs, tshirts, catalogs, and packaging in any style in any combination. A client could exhaust your capacities in no time. "Do a little Sagmeister with a dash of Venezky. No, too much Carson. How about more Hans Schleger? A dash of Rian Hughes. More Pentagram. Too much Emigre." This is a parody of the process, but the process can feel like parody. What you're getting at, I think, is that certain kinds of stubbornly egotistical designers put too much stock in their own "distinctive" style, and that their refusal to bend is arrogance in action. In other words, no prima donnas. So you have certain real designers in mind who tick you off. That's fine, but I couldn't care less about them (although in the market guide, you should see how often editors/ad folks insist on freelancers showing portfolios with a consistent, discernible style: employers ask for style, probably to make their decisions into the easy binary thumbs up or thumbs down). You could, empirically, survey the aesthetic styles and project-development styles of designers and then prescribe a remedy to various identifiable "types." The problem is what's your model? What do you want them to be, and why? I think it's simply impractical, if not impossible, for everyone to be good at everything, and I don't desire this outcome. To get around this, you argue that being everything only means being facile with a few "looks." I'm guessing you'd ask a client whether they want clean/dirty, traditional/hip, slick/grungey, Baby Boomer/Gen X, Y, Z. I often do the same thing because obviously you're right that explaining the principles of one discipline to someone in another discipline requires some translation of concepts into different jargon (designspeak to businessspeak or legalspeak or litspeak or Hollywoodspeak, etc.). But this shouldn't be confused with the much grander proposition that we can be all things to all people. I can't even talk to everyone, let alone design for everyone. There are differences in language and priorities and emphasis and, at bottom, my own limitations (and my desire: I turn down work if I can't or don't want to do it). Okay, so let me wrap this up. You're focusing on designers loosening up and responding better to the needs of their clients rather than stubbornly pushing the infallibility of their own "style." Fine. I'm arguing, first, that personality is not style; second, that facility with all historical styles is empirically impossible and morally undesirable; and third, that through their own relationships to work, individuals create their own personalities (I'm talking philosophy/psychology here, not the style of a website or poster). Okay, gotta run. It's been fun.

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[Greg’s final sentence his response was: “What I'm saying boils down to this; don't focus on one thing or one style and only do that well. Do everything well. Or at least try.”]

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And I say, again: impossible and self-defeating to do or try to do everything well. On one extreme, you have the self-promoting purists who insist on the superiority of one (their) style. On the other extreme, you have your ideal designer who is a master of everything. My designer is somewhere else on this spectrum, maybe on a different spectrum measuring something other than facility with the shell game of style. I don't care about pushing envelopes or where designers fit from the perspective of Design (teachers may push you to take your place within Design's larger narrative, but that's a different topic). I'm saying after you survey what's out there, after you know a little and experience a little, after you wade ankle-deep through the shallow pools of market guides, you have to decide what kind of work you want to do (desire), how well you're going to do it (capacity/will), and how intensely you're going to focus on it (hobby/livelihood/calling). You can't live your life or pursue design by clicking on the drop-down menu of history. What I'm saying is doing this is harder than what the style snobs do (stand in the place where you get paid) and harder than what your jacks-of-all-styles do (jump around, jump, jump, jump around). Trying to do everything well is a rationalizing strategy that covers up the dilemma of not knowing what you want, where you want to go, who you are. Again, don't confuse style with personality. You can bite someone else's style, but you can't make a personality by mimickry.

It doesn't look like anyone else is listening to our little discussion, but I think it's been productive to work out what we're talking about, even if we're still working it out. Unpaid, I might add. And in our own styles. Because we're stubborn.

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