We’ve reached that critical time where we’ve been home longer than the span of our vacation, where we should now be unaffected by the experiences we encountered and unhindered by the freedom that was several weeks of vacation. At least the equation goes something like that when enduring the effects of a break-up — hopefully it’s more lasting for the positive effects of vacation.
Roman ruins in Conimbriga, Portugal
Now four weeks after the trip, the greatest impression left lingering was the great perspective of visiting well-preserved Roman and prehistoric ruins in Western Iberia. Specifically, the concrete evidence (pun intended) that empires go in cycles, and many Portuguese, as well as citizens from other countries that once ruled the world (i.e. Greece, Italy, England) all know that the clock is ticking for the current US empire. Of course you can think about this independently, but standing in front of acres of evidence — standing within the walls on tile floors where families ate and kids played 2200 years ago — is quite overwhelming. This notion of empires passing the torch is realized more in countries with longer histories and makes the American cultural invasion that much more palatable. This made me feel neither good nor bad.
But what did make me feel good was seeing my ever-radiant in-laws and Portuguese friends. It’s incomprehensible that we only get to see them for a few weeks each year (and I’m not the one who’s 4000 miles from home). For the last month I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out a way of straddling the Atlantic a bit more often while keeping gainfully employed. Simply moving to Europe would cause the same problem in reverse. Living for part of the year in each place, to keep friendships close (and reap the benefits of both cultures), is key.
It was a hot Portuguese September with temperatures approaching 40C (104F), and now Seattle is dark, damp and cold in comparison. The serveral weeks of silence on this page were the result of the inevitable post-vacation blues: the transition between weeks of constant simuli and spontaneity in all aspects of daily life, back to the holds of work and routine. Lots of northerly staring-out-of-windows-into-the-silence (think Edward Hopper) has ensued. This is character-building.
And now for some sweeping generalizations of Portugal:
- Portuguese are masters of language, and instead of not knowing the language when traveling — inconceivable! — they’ll insist on adding a fifth or sixth language to their personal repertoire to stay in-the-know when traveling to a new land.
- The nightlife. In Lisbon, hanging out with friends, you look at your watch sometime after dinner and think how did it get to be 5am already? because there are thousands of people on the street, more than an 9pm Friday night in downtown Seattle. Some bars are open only from midnight–6am, Thursday–Saturday nights. In Seattle, the streets are dead after midnight, and even though legal closing time is 2am (a lunatic idea when explaining the concept to Europeans and frankly a lunatic idea in its own right), there are only a handful of places that actually remain open until the very end.
- There are no non-smoking areas in public spaces or the majority of offices and workplaces.
- The national sport for old women in small non-tourist towns way out in the country is to stare blatantly and unabashedly at strange, tall, light-haired cityfolk who stop in these small non-tourist towns to take pictures of fountains, mills, and other artifacts unworthy of notice to these old women. Maria Amelia, look, now he’s taking a picture of the goats!
- The crazed driving culture is completely contrary to the pacific Portuguese way of life
Pictures, soon!
Last week I attended an AIGA lecture given by Clement Mok, president of AIGA. For those who don’t know, he’s the rebel-rouser behind a movement in the design industry to garner more respect for the role of design and to take the focus off designers and onto designing. Communication Arts also ran a copy of Mok’s article this summer to maximize exposure of his message throughout the community.
He’s been giving this lecture for a year and a half and, frankly, he seemed unfocused and tired of the material. From the perspective of this audience member, it was far too abstract to do anything with. Then again, my attention span has been a bit edgy after watching a 4-hour play (Homebody/Kabul) and a 4-hour movie (Lawrence of Arabia) within a few days’ time, but I digress. The lecture’s take-away was a 12-step guide aimed to unify the collective process of design and demand respect from our colleagues in other professions. The goal is achieved, as Mok explained, when a potential product needs created and they invite a financial guy, an engineer, a manufacturing specialist, and a designer to the table. Respect of design means that designers need to get involved from the beginning. But this riling up is reduced to a 12-step guide?
I believe most of what Mr. Mok said is true, that design is often reduced to something the black turtlenecks do to a product at the end. But if this is meant to rouse the troops, I think we need a more exciting message—a lot more jumping around and less placating lectures. If the shit’s hitting the fan, why the calm repose?
One problem, it seems, is that there is no easy way to evaluate a designer’s abilities, and the way we interface with clients is inconsistent and often hypocritcal from designer to designer and from firm to firm. Even when a new designer joins the team, there’s often a sense of threat if they have too big a role and too little qualifications — since these qualifications are currently left to subjectivity in the design field.
Doctors can’t perform certain procedues unless they have the education and experience. Even mountaineers have a strict code to show one’s abilities. You quickly know where a climber stands if they can lead on a 5.9 rock route, and can quickly evaluate if they’re qualified for a particular outing. In design, you can ask a candidate to whip out their portfolio, but what was their involvement in a particular piece? What experience, in thinking, in research, in getting things done, do they have beyond the finished portfolio pieces?
We can find benchmarks in our field—if we can’t evaluate ourselves on specific criteria, how can our clients? I don’t believe our portfolios should be a our only criterion in which we’re judged. As the dot-com bubble proved, I think we need some further level of status to separate those designers who are committed to the profession, and those that have abruptly switched gears, ripped-off another’s style and thrown together a pretty portfolio to become the Art Director of a new start-up. This happened in huge numbers in Seattle in the late 1990’s.
But Clement spoke against all of this, if only briefly. Instead, he said that we need more people designing to expose the value of what we do to as many as possible. I don’t disagree with this notion, but I stand firm that the problem lies not only with how we talk about design but also about how we talk about ourselves.
But I haven’t really addressed the heart of what he said—most of his talk is in the articles, which you can read for yourself by following the links above. You can get a more interactive version of the 12-step designing process with examples at designing.aiga.org/.
Oh, and I’ve returned from Portugal.
