Spend enough time around the likes of Alejandro Aravena and you might be swayed to believe so. The Elemental project he so eloquently walked us through at this year’s Design Indaba demonstrates how clear thinking and application of design principles can transform social welfare from a budgetary black hole into an investment that ultimately pays itself off.

Make the house half full, not half empty

Charged with housing 100 poor families on a plot of land big enough for half that number, with a similarly small government subsidy, Aravena conceived of building, rather than a half-sized house, simply half the house, in a way that the residents could later complete the second half themselves. The trick was to build the half that was, in his words, the most difficult for the residents to achieve on their own. That focused his efforts on the main supporting structure of the buildings and a configuration that allowed future expansion into the negative spaces between neighbouring homes.

Not only were these homes able to be built within budget, but on urban inner-city land worth three times as much as the unwanted outer-limits plots typically allocated for low-cost housing. This kept the homes close to transport, services and jobs, which, together with the residents’ own additions, had the homes valued at $20 000 a year after they were built at a cost of $8 500.

This project demonstrates how powerful and important design can be in tackling the issues facing us in the 21st century.

I’ll dwell on two more fascinating examples presented at the Design Indaba.

The first came from J. Craig Venter, a surprise presenter, and not the first name on most creatives’ list of must-hear speakers. The man behind the decoding of the human genome would appear better suited to a medical conference, but his satellite-linked talk raised the tantalising prospect of designing life itself.

Today’s sketch is tomorrow’s microbe

Having cracked the code of human DNA, his research institute is now focusing its energy on encoding custom-designed DNA to create new organisms that could hold the key to sustainable, renewable sources of food, fresh water and energy. While Venter believes a major breakthrough is imminent, I’m not holding my breath in anticipation. But if and when his team succeeds in delivering the power to create new forms of life, design will take a central role in determining what to do with that power. For now this remains in the realm of fantasy, but it does hint at design’s importance in the future.

Doing business in the Design economy

From Welcome-to-the-World-of-Tomorrow!-design, Bruce Nussbaum outlined design’s importance now, in the nuts-and-bolts world of business. According to him, major changes in the world’s social and economic make-up, from the rise of China, India and other nations in relation to the incumbent Western powers’ decline, to the maturing of a generation immersed in a digital lifestyle, have made design ‘the most important business competence you can have’.

The homogeneity of cultures brought about by globalisation and over-exposure to Western influences is dying, and diversity is flourishing. This makes it harder to do business on a global platform, forcing companies to work much harder at communicating with a diverse audience. This is where design comes into its own, helping businesses structure their activities to be more open and more responsive.

‘Design has moved from focusing on artifacts, on stuff, to designing social systems,’ says Nussbaum, and as such he dubs it the most appropriate tool to stimulate economic growth. There is no better example of this potential than Aravena’s Elemental project.

Nussbaum’s area of focus is more in the business world than in social responsibility, but it’s worth noting that running a ‘good’ business is good for business today, thanks to the same factors Nussbaum attributes to design’s rise to prominence. And it’s through design thinking that businesses can find a way not only to pull themselves out of the red, but to contribute positively to their environment.

But what about the beauty?

The likes of Aravena, Venter and Nussbaum present a grand vision for design as a tool for good, for change, for ‘a better world through creativity’, which happens to be Design Indaba’s motto. I came out of their presentations hopeful and inspired by the gloriously designed future they present. But what to make of the designers whose work isn’t so blatantly altruistic? How do the Handspring Puppet Company’s magical horses and giraffes, or Harry Pearce’s witty typographic conundrums, or Troika’s mesmerising Cloud installation make for a better world?

The art of design

Stefan Bucher answered this question in his own quirky manner. The designer behind the Daily Monster explained how he embraces commercial work to let his keep his brain occupied: ‘I take on tasks given to me by others to get out of my head’. For Bucher, kerning type and laying out Modernist grids are the easy work: ‘Flush left is like a warm bath… Retouching calms the brain’.

But the hard work, the rewarding work, Bucher’s labour of love, is his illustration work. He practices ‘greed control’ to allow himself the financial freedom to focus on his monsters. Why? Any creative person can relate to the urge to create beautiful things, but its role extends beyond that personal drive.

Museums are for art, not Sumerian accounting spreadsheets

Designers love to talk about being at the table with the decision-makers in business and in society. But before that stage, we have to recognise that we are artists, says Bucher, ‘because we see things that others don’t see. Things come to us and we must give them shape, and translate them for the rest of the world… What we have to contribute to society is far from trivial.’ For all the talk of design thinking and innovative business practices and creative processes, it’s the art that will endure, that will capture the hearts and minds of generations to come. For that reason, ’sometimes you have to do what’s most dear to you, and most fun’.

The Design Indaba sends a clear message that creativity plays different, equally valid, and equally necessary, roles. I have the deepest admiration for those designers that are actively contributing to solving the world’s social, ethical and economic ills. They really give hope that design can save the world. But I’m not ready to step up to that challenge. I take my cues from the wit, charm and beauty of the Pearces, Buchers and Troikas of the world — if I can create work that captures someone’s imagination, steals a moment’s breath, elicits a smile just for a minute, I will have contributed to a better world through creativity.

But back at school, games occupied a much higher place on my list of priorities. Space Quest 3 and Commander Keen and Doom were far more important than the dreariness of homework and chores. There were vital skills to be learnt in the fantasy realms of platform games and shoot-’em-ups, and I took to acquiring them with great enthusiasm.

In the classrooms of Civilization and Simcity I learned the virtues of patience and resource management. Lemmings taught me to solve problems against the pressure of a ticking clock. But the most frequent lesson I had drummed into me was timing.

Every game, from Arkanoid to California Games to Wolfenstein 3D, presented its own challenges and tactics to overcome them. But total mastery – the ability to finish levels in mere seconds and set stupendous high scores – could not be achieved without a fine-tuned sense of timing. If you could just synchronise your mind’s beats to those of the game – feel the ticks of the computer’s clock – dominion was yours. It was something akin to the moment Neo realises he can transcend the rules of the Matrix.

Of course the real world is far more complex than the pixels and sprites of the game world. It’s not a closed system, for one. Nothing is perfect or symmetrical, making that magical metronome rhythm exceedingly difficult to master with any consistency. But with practice, persistence and luck, we can have glimpses of that beautiful synchronicity, when the world’s heart beats in harmony with ours.

I’m wary of calling this experience inspiration, because that burdens it with having to seek us out. Fun as it is to sit patiently with an open mind and a vacant grin, it’s never taken me beyond the heights of my beanbag. If I want to find inspiration I have to go out and find it myself. Even at the peak of my sedentary childhood, I knew I had to work to conquer a game.

If the greatest achievement was to crack the code of a game’s timing, it came through the lessons of persistence and patience. That sense of the computer’s pulse came only after many hours of gameplay, figuring out tactics and refining techniques.

Today I’ve left my games behind. Apart from the occasional fling with World of Goo or bout of Wii Boxing, I have a Grown-up Real Life to live. But those lessons haven’t left me. I dabble with various diversions and sidelines, but my proficiency, and my interest, in most of them remain superficial. The skills in which I can see my ability growing and flourishing are those I give the most time over an extended period. Amazingly enough, the harder I work at my writing and my illustration and my running, the more often I find that inspiration.

Malcolm Gladwell has it right. Whether 10 000 hours or a little less, there’s no getting around the perspiration that precedes inspiration. It’s a long, hard slog, grounded in the labourer’s qualities of consistency and endurance. Eventually, and with increasing regularity, the toiling is punctuated with moments of mastery.

And when those moments come, they are truly sublime. Ideas gush from your mind, perfectly formed before pen hits paper. You run without effort, feet barely touching the ground, the world standing still around you. Every word you speak and every move you make hits its target with exactly the right impact.

And that is why we do it. It’s the dream of god-mode that keeps us playing.

This is why running is so addictive: physical fitness aside, it’s the mental battles of self-discovery that keep us coming back for more, pushing our limits further than we knew we could.

The old way: alls and nothings

I’ve always been naturally lazy. In school I pushed the limits of handing work in late (my record: 13 months) and I crammed for exams the night before. In my working life this has also been my biggest challenge. Big projects invariably see me plumb the depths of procrastination before pulling an all-nighter or two as the deadline stomps closer.

I’m right in the middle of my busiest two months since I started this business. It’s exciting stuff, but there’s no margin for error. Sloth beckons to one side; on the other lurks the urge to sit up all night and plough through the to-do list. The former is plainly wrong, and the latter, while tempting, means I’ll lose too much productive time recovering from my exertions.

A better way: comfortably hard

One of the first, and toughest, lessons I learned from running was to slow down, to pace myself. At full speed I couldn’t last more than a minute or two, and it took a full five minutes to catch my breath again. Stiffness and fatigue lasted well into the next day, hampering my efforts to maintain a good fitness schedule.

As I grew in fitness I learned to run at around 70–80% of my maximum capacity. Dropping the pace to ‘comfortably hard’ made all the difference. Not only was I able to complete much longer runs without walking breaks, but I could get up the next morning and do it all again.

Working like running

I realised last week this approach has begun to creep into my workflow. I’m tending away from the long nights and chugging happily along during regular waking hours. At this comfortably hard rate I can get through the workload for the day and get up the next day fresh enough to keep going.

Bear with my hubris, but I think I’m onto something: we weren’t made to run at 100% effort. That’s our emergency reserve; our secret weapon. We’ll bring it out on race day, rely on it to outrun unruly canines, let it pull us through a big launch. But for maximum efficiency we have to pull back to 80%. That’s what’ll get us from the starting line within sight of the finish, from brief to deadline, only to do it again as many times as we have to.

Measured progress

Between frequent interruptions and the regular afternoon slump, it’s hard to push through a full day’s work. I recently happened upon the Pomodoro technique for time management. Silly name aside, it’s easy to understand, easier to implement and is proving surprisingly effective in helping me manage both concentration and energy levels.

The Pomodoro technique emphasises simple consistency — in timekeeping, in focus, and in brief regular breaks. It’s reminiscent of the disciplined pacing that running demands. The enforced breaks help me catch my breath in time to tackle the next chunk of work and work comfortably hard throughout the day. There’s a sense of progress too, that comes with noting the number of Pomodoros (or 25-minute units of work-time) completed in a day, just as I’ll memorise my kilometre splits on a run.

Things are building up to a final sprint in two weeks’ time. I’ve been pushing through the days and weeks, checking off tasks and getting things done, but four big deadlines in the same week mean I’ll have to fire up the 100% secret weapon. But without puffing along at 80% for the past six weeks that final push would have already been uncomfortably impossible.

The next month the debate re-emerges, hostilities are renewed, rants and rebuttals reloaded and flung, with cross-references and back-links to the last battle, just in case the other side forgot what was said then. And another iteration passes without the changing of minds.

The debate in question is the spec work one: should designers (or any other creative professional) produce speculative work or participate in unpaid pitches and design contests, without any guarantee of payment for their time and effort? Should we submit ourselves to being crowdsourced?

I won’t rehash the actual arguments here. Others have done a much better job of it than I could.

If you need catching up, NO!SPEC has a wealth of resources. This interview with SpecWatch on Webdesigner Depot is enlightening, while Eric Karjaluoto has discussed, rather eloquently, a recent case involving Tim Ferriss. Michael Bierut, less recently but equally eloquently, covered the topic at Design Observer. This last one especially is worth a read for its comments from some of the industry’s heavyweights.

There are enough valid reasons for both clients and designers to oppose spec work, amongst them legal risks, economic sense and ethical concerns. Frankly it’s surprising any of us could countenance sullying ourselves with spec.

Nevertheless there are also enough unscrupulous, ignorant or indifferent clients and (loosely defined) designers out there happily engaging in spec work to ensure the argument can’t – wont – be won.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

It’s clear spec work isn’t going away. If anything it’s growing in prominence and gaining acceptance in the mainstream, helped by its association (and confusion) with the much-hyped Internet phenomenon of crowdsourcing, and the related culture of ‘Free-conomics’.

As designers, woe-is-me-ing and pox-on-you-ing aren’t doing us any good. We’re better served acknowledging (though not legitimising) spec work and learning to live with it.

Know the enemy

The easiest way to avoid getting burnt is to not play with matches. A smarter way is to know how to use the matches. Educate yourself about spec and understand the risks. If they outweigh the potential benefits, keep away.

There will be times when the reward is high enough and the effort is small enough to be worth your while. Consider all the factors carefully, ethical as well as economic. If you’re satisfied that your participation in a design contest won’t harm you or your fellow designers, spec away.

Let it be

Accept that spec work is now part of the design ecosystem. Cheap and nasty designers have always attracted a similar calibre of client. You don’t want or need to compete with the cheap-and-nasties, nor work for them. Let the Crowdsprings and 99Designs of the world be matchmakers for the bottom-feeders while you get on with your job of being remarkable at your job.

Show why you’re a better option for a more discerning client. You know how to think strategically rather than chase trends blindly. You offer a more refined result, better suited to the client’s market. You can be relied upon to deliver professional, honest work.
It’s all part of what you’ve always had to do to market your services: educate your clients. Which leads us rather conveniently to my last point…

Educate, but don’t preach

Don’t get me wrong. When I say above that we should learn to live with spec I’m not advocating ignoring the problem. It is a real problem that poses real risks to designers and clients alike.

A lot of spec work, especially in its most insidious forms, happens only because of ignorance. Clients don’t realise they’re wrong to expect free work or don’t understand the real cost of that free work. Likewise designers are unaware of the risks they face.

The onus is on those of us who know better to give the right advice to those who don’t. When interacting with fellow designers, especially those younger and less experienced than we are, we have a responsibility to educate them about the implications of getting involved in spec work. It’s as simple as pointing them in the direction of NO!SPEC or SpecWatch. If they persist regardless, good luck to them.

So too for potential clients. It’s in their interest (and ours) to ensure they understand the differences between spec work and hiring a professional designer. But if they still choose the wisdom of the crowd, they must live with what it serves up.

It’s important to present the facts without getting too excited. Clients don’t want to hear about third world teenagers whoring themselves with pirated software. That’s our problem, not theirs.

Spec is here. It’s taken its place, unwelcome and uninvited, in our industry, and there’s little we can do to get rid of it. If we can move past that and get on with our jobs we’ll be able to focus our energy on more productive pursuits and happier clients. To me, that trumps any rant or rebuttal.

Postscript

The upheaval that is the Internet has hastened the departure of outmoded ways of thinking as quickly as it’s paved the way for new ones. One site that’s joined the crowdsourcing fray with a welcome freshness is Idea Bounty. They appear to have done their homework and tweaked the variables in the risk/reward equation enough to create a far happier, more successful environment for both clients and creatives. Their differentiation between ideas and actual work is important too, but I’ll leave that for another post.

There is nothing more frightening than nothing. Try imagine nothing. You can’t. The nothingness you imagine is still a ‘-ness’; a thing. We just aren’t adequately equipped to comprehend nothing.

That’s why the most difficult step in any creative effort is often the first. Faced with a blank canvas, an open brief, a new document, my mind doesn’t know where to begin. The sheer blankness of it all is overwhelming, and without direction, I’m immobilised.

Virgin Moleskine Blank-fright

A little over two years ago, around the time I started out working on my own, I decided that if I were to be taken seriously as an Independent Creative, it behooved me make time to sketch daily. Making the time was the easy part. On Day 1 of my new mission I sat down at my favourite coffee shop, pulled out my trusty mechanical pencil and marvelled at my shiny new 9 × 14″ Moleskine sketchbook. Inside the black faux-leather elastic-bound cover were 240 pristine white pages just waiting to be filled with works of art.

240. Blank. Pages. What to fill them with? What could I draw? I began with the mohawked gentleman seated at the table to my right. The couple at the table to my left. My fist. My receipt. Competent sketches, but nothing of the sort one sees showcased on Flickr or in hard-cover design books. Inspiration was notably absent. I ended my first session there. Later efforts were no easier, and became increasingly sporadic. It took me a year to fill the first 25 pages of that sketchbook. I’m not the only one grappling with blank-fright. Web designer Rob Hawkes confesses to a similar problem on Grace Smith’s blog:

I remember the first time I got a Moleskine I didn’t draw anything on the first page for fear of ruining the notebook. After a while that fear of not being worthy of the off-white pages subsides and you start to enjoy using it as a functional piece of idea-gathering equipment.

Like Hawkes, since my first experience it’s become easier for me, more natural. Today I am halfway through my sketchbook, industriously populating its pages with notes, sketches, ideas and doodles. From time to time I indulge in a little reminiscing and flip through the Moleskine, revisiting my old scribblings, wincing a little at some. But what always stands out to me is how long it took to really get started. It was tough, and the start of every new endeavour is equally tough.

A very good place to begin

However, over time I’ve stumbled upon several tactics that help me get over the blankness and get moving a little quicker and less painfully.

Act. Now.

It’s the vast openness of a blank canvas that makes it so intimidating. Just take the first step, however clumsy. You’ll right yourself on the second and third, and by then the canvas is blank no more: you’ll have something to adjust, adapt and move forward. But dwelling on the blankness simply makes it more daunting. Joel Bradbury, also featured in Grace Smith’s aforementioned post, makes this even easier for himself by starting his sketchbooks “about a third of the way in, seems to help get over the crippling fear that the first page in a brand new book brings with it.”

Make the box

If I can just get myself moving I can speed along, but without direction I won’t get very far. The trick here is to give yourself direction by creating artificial constraints. They can be arbitrary, but they’ll fool your mind into thinking it doesn’t have to create something from nothing. A mind that has something to work with is a happy mind.

Take it easy

I have been known to over-analyse and plan ad nauseam, looking for the perfect start. It doesn’t exist. Don’t be precious about what goes onto the page. Focus on filling the page rather than doing so perfectly. You’re allowing quantity to trump quality, but the trick is that the quality needs, is born from, the quantity. Photographers are really good at this. They’ll take hundreds of shots in a shoot, all for the sake of the dozen gems that will emerge. I’ve also discovered recently that the permanence of ink allows me to doodle much more freely and confidently than with a pencil, when the possibility of erasing any misstep makes me think twice – once too many – about every stroke. The result is a fuller, better-fed sketchbook that rewards me more often.

These tips need not apply only to sketching specifically. I’ve adapted them in various forms to help me get over my too-frequent bouts of avoidance-procrastination. It’s become clear to me that the obstacles at the start of a task are usually either imagined or not yet relevant. It all really comes down to ignoring those obstacles and getting on with things. Even if the outcome is not what I had anticipated, it is invariably something. Which is better than nothing.