Jeff White is my new “Design Role Model”. He’s my Design Hero for the month of June.
Here in Halifax, a place that has at times been described as the Design Dead Zone, Jeff runs a little web design studio called Brightwhite(.ca). He hasn’t written any best-sellers. He hasn’t been featured in Fast Company Magazine, and he’s never given a TED Talk. (At least not yet…).
In a sense, Jeff White is a design everyman. And what I mean by that, is that he represents the field of design in the world that most of us live in. He’s got bills, kids and pets. And when it comes to design, he still has to negotiate his designs into existence with regular people. He hasn’t reached genius status (at least not publicly) and that means that when Jeff engages in a design process with clients, they still have to agree with his ideas before they’re going to pay him to make those ideas a reality. Dare I say it? – He has to compromise.
Just like 99.99 percent of the rest of the field of Design does.
Sadly, the role models of the Design world tend not to be like Jeff. Design heroes tend to be people who don’t have to compromise. Too often, young Designers aspire to the ranks of “big names”, who scoff at the very mention of a compromise. Like great artists, their designs are prized and commodified. Their products remain pure and unspoiled by the uneducated tastes of their clients, who act more like patrons, or benefactors.
And all of these stars seem to work in some huge, metropolitan city that has a culture that is really nothing like our own.
We think of these great designers, in their loft studios of Manhattan, and we lament the fact that our own clients keep spoiling our designs. Designers in this region have long blamed “this conservative little town”, its politics and its unwavering attitudes for the lack of a real Design “scene” in this part of the world. After short-lived attempts at making a living here, most young Designers just pick up and move to where the action is, or go into some other field.
But not Jeff White.
Jeff is excited about the possibilities, and he’s talking about them. He’s talking to people at NSCAD University (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) as well as people at NSCC (Nova Scotia Community College), which have long been considered opposite sides of the regional design coin. He’s visiting High School students and he’s online and offline, promoting social media. He’s not trying to be anyone but himself. He’s learning as he goes, and sharing what he knows. He’s connecting, and in the process, he and others like him in this community are actually making a Design scene.
I have long told Design students that it’s easy to be negative. It’s easy to sit back and fire off about how everything around you is just not good enough. It’s easy to point to other people in other parts of the world that “really know where it’s at”. And it’s easy to throw your arms up and blame your lame portfolio on the lame community you live in, and the fact that your clients “just don’t know what good design really is”.
But we as Designers have to go further than that. Designers have to go beyond the recognition of what’s wrong with the world, to what they’re actually going to do about it. The difference between “negativity” and “critique” is that critique aims to cause positive change; to shape future endeavors for the better. Designers should remain critical, without becoming negative.
I hold that design is a social role, and that every society needs designers to employ their inherent talents for moving the world from what it is, to what we wish it to be.
I’ve been in Halifax now for nearly twelve years. I taught Design at NSCAD, worked as Graphic Designer for MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, and formed Violet Design and Communications with Designer, Angie Hodder. We put together our own identity and website and spent a lot of time looking around at what others are doing. We watched a lot of TED videos and admired the work of Design Stars online. But one day, I found myself reading Jeff’s blog, then watching a video of him and Giles Crouch on haligonia.ca, discussing social media. Regular, local guys, doing what they love, and working in the real world of design. Because as anyone who has made a living in the uphill-battle-of-Design-in-Halifax should know – It just doesn’t get any more “real” than this. I realized that I had spent too much time lamenting the downsides of design in this part of the world, and that I needed to take some of my own advice.
If we aren’t happy with the Design scene, (or lack thereof ) in Halifax, then what are we going to do about it? I contacted Jeff, and we had a phone conversation about the mysteries of twitter and blogging. Now I’m fumbling my way into the pool – for better or worse. Like Brightwhite, Queen Street Studios, Breakhouse, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, The Planning and Design Centre, Eric Wood, Bruce Kierstead and the late Lou Cable, we’ll just keep designing, keep learning and keep believing in what we do. And maybe the scales of this community will finally tip in our favour. Hell, maybe they already have.
So thank you, Jeff. Thanks for staying critical and not giving in to the negative. For loving what you do, and for spreading it around.
Thanks for doing something about it.
Adam
Hey Adam.
I like your POV on the negativity/primadona stance and Jeff is all you say he is, having been collaborating on teams with him over the last year or so. (He makes me feel old!) I think one reason my partner Dennis Page and I had such a successful 20-year partnership (Page&Wood, then Trampoline Creative) was our ability to understand clients’ positions and work closely with them building mutual respect and trust.
I don’t think I belong in the same article as many of the above-mentioned notables. Now, we’ll have to meet sometime!
Lou Cable. Can you even mention the name without a warm smile coming over you? I wonder what he’d be doing today had he lived past his 30′s? He’d be on this social media thing “like a fat kid on a Smartie”.
Cheers, Eric Wood
Hello Eric,
Jeff and I have both taught in the Design Division at NSCAD, and he and I worked together on the new website for MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. I am aware of you through the presence of your businesses, and a great friend of mine is a cousin (I think) of Dennis’. There are only so many of you, who’ve managed to keep working here over the years. That’s why your name ‘deserves’ to be included. The great majority of design exists in what I might call “blue collar” design practices. They are not ‘stars’, but just hard-grinding, passionate people who keep engaging, and keep shaping much of the world around us.
I never knew Lou first hand. He was just always in the conversation when I was an undergrad, as he was then the employer-to-aspire-to for students, and he hired interns and whatnot. So I knew young people who worked for him. The fact that I never knew him personally is a testament to his importance to the local design community. Then I heard the buzz when he got sick, and heard how he refused to really accept what was happening, and thus, never really ‘passed the business on’. It pretty much died with him. But Lou had a presence that was felt beyond him. And that’s what a design ‘scene’ requires. It goes beyond direct contact of the individuals, and is felt in the work and the conversations that the work springs from.
Jeff is heading that way, and I’d like to do my part to further that. I’d like to make more of a design presence here through the collaborative effort of designers than has ever been felt before. I’d like to do my part to get people excited about design in Halifax, (and get excited about it myself in the process).
So yes, we will have to meet sometime. A lot of us should.
A
What a great piece about one of the most genuine people I hardly know (but would always like to know more of). I met Jeff on Twitter and got to meet him at podcamp Halifax and read his blog occasionally and have sought and given recommendations on hires. A real person, without pretense but just a true desire to share and help people find the answers. Great professionals (not necessarily the rockstars) are willing to lead clients to better work when they’re willing to follow and be positive for those who won’t.
As long as you keep designing, learning and loving what you do… I’m not sure how much it matters that the “scale of the community” tip. In fact, I wasn’t even really aware there was an issue. But I think I generally approach design more as problem solving and craftsmanship than an end in itself. And I think of myself as an artisan rather than an artist. I have a feeling that Brian MacKay… who legitimately is a superstar… might say the same.
Hello David,
I agree with your comment about loving what you do. That goes a long way for anyone. However, Design as a profession is a service-oriented occupation. It’s not Art (at least not in the romantic tradition that art has come to identify itself with over that last 100 years). That means that Designers must be included by others in order to take part in the activities of problem-solving. Design is a social activity involving collaborative work, before the Designer can get back to his or her computer in that ‘artisan’ capacity that you speak of.
The ‘issue’ can be seen in the number of places that work is being done that could or should engage the Design fields, but does not. Design is not highly-valued in this part of the world – yet. The more it is valued, the more it will be included. Gaining that value requires an increased social activity and presence, hopefully resulting in a better social position.
Brian has spent an enormous amount of energy on his outward image. It’s not just the work (which is of course of central importance), but it’s also the work you emphasize, the work you diminish. It’s the speaking engagements; where you speak, to whom, what you say. It’s in the books you’ve written and who’s read them. It’s all the years of teaching and connecting with people. There is a huge social component to Brian’s success, and he is very much aware that it helps him gain access to the work that he wants to do. He told me the other day that people are just starting to listen to him. That’s because all of his effort has finally gained him a social position which fewer people will argue with.
However, you are right in this: Typical of a Design Star – Brian will say that he’s just a craftsman, doing what he loves. It’s part of the myth, but it’s not the whole reality.
Hi Neighbour
(Literally. Look at my contact page!)
I guess my point was… the idea of designers as “artists” who think they’re above their “ignorant clients” and blame their “lame portfolio” on our “lame community” really bothers me. I imagine we all agree. We are, as you say, collaborators and service-oriented professionals.
At the same time though, I would agree that the value of what we do is sometimes under appreciated or misunderstood. And perhaps this issue is more pronounced in Halifax. Having never been a great designer living in a Manhattan loft, I wouldn’t know. LOL. But I believe it’s true. So I think what Jeff is doing is fantastic of course! And yes, we should all meet more often.
So while I may sometimes wish to be more appreciated, I would never presume to know all. Mits once said that “I don’t know” is the warrior’s true wisdom. I try to approach each project with a “beginners mind”. No easy task