Winter storm
Thanks to Tsutaya, my book stack is very tall right now. Thanks to one guy who is rapidly improving my thinking on independent consulting, I am moving through it slowly. When I get into this space, I seldom remember where I got a book or who recommended it to me.
So I’m now poking at a slender text, one you can read in about a half-hour, that came from nowhere, I think. It confidently talks about how designers are in demand, how designers have all sorts of confidently-held viewpoints, how they have a certain form of expertise that is non-transferable to the rest of the organization.
I look back at the copyright date: 2019. Right. This is, in fact, how people discussed design in 2019. We had a lot of power & respect! This does not make the book less relevant, of course. Reading it gave me a lot of feelings about a good end state for us: one where we do in fact belong, where we step back into our collective authority.
We spent a lot of time in 2019 complaining about our “seat at the table” for a group that was actually literally sitting at the table at the time, right?
As we brace for a longer design winter, it’s worth returning to the idea that people in power buy design for specific business reasons, and those reasons are being corrupted. Contemporary technological trends are a labor issue that is not being litigated or regulated as a labor issue, and it will likely require vast screwups & unimaginable destruction before there’s a significant correction.
The fortunate thing is that we are speedrunning this, and there will be a deeper reckoning soon. The unfortunate thing is that while this all is happening, people still need jobs, and so they are leaving the industry. There will be a second knock-on effect of the loss of top-performing human capital as we lose quality people who know better than to rely on current technological trends.
The goal, then, as in all forms of societal decline, is survival: finding the places where people correctly believe in the human side of technology, the slow side, areas of stillness. This is possible for some, but not for all, and it sucks and I remain uncertain of what to do in a wider sense. For me, I’ve repositioned, and I’m staying in my lane and doing what I need. That’s enough, I think, for now, but the long goal is to expand the circle, bring more into the lifeboat, and brace against the storm, which is already here.