What is a “Day Off”?
We once asked our very cool and wise professor at Pratt: “When do you take time off?”
She looked at us, a clueless young bunch of aspiring designers, busily pinning up our little sketch studies about the translation of jazz music into diagrams, and quite seriously stated “There are no days off”.
Fast forward into life fifteen years later, while there are indeed vacations and holidays, the creative mind can never rest.
As any designer can attest, there is no moment where our surroundings are not being evaluated from an aesthetic, poetic, or functional perspective. Even now I am plagued with recognizing every seam, trim and transition in the spaces I occupy. Every point, line, plane tells a story. Sometimes we like the story, and if we don’t, we agonize over how it could be enhanced. It’s enough to want a nap - for in dreams at least we can remain a passive witness - resting from our role of occupied pragmatist.
The realms we inhabit speak evocatively in ways words cannot. Our spaces have the ability to inspire and perform, referencing eras bygone while supporting plans for the future.
In this transitionary time of my life I’ve been reflecting on my days when I “work”, and how I got here.
The work of my youth was a constant struggle between imagery and environment. A collegiate thesis obsessed with constructing a building-sized camera obscura programmed as a theatre was born out of Derrida and Barthes, with image and environment forever bound. Both ruled by compositional harmonies, image existing for itself and the voyeuristic pleasure of the other whilst the environment laying in open submission to all, functioning daily and in four dimensions while rigorously upholding certain functional qualities.
In both applications form and light combine to become something intentional that is poetic, historical, allegorical, and personal. The environment re-invents the stories we’ve heard, pushing them into the present.
The work of my 30’s has brought such idyllic narratives into scaleable (and let’s be honest), economically focused solutions for consumer-facing marketplaces across the global retail landscape. Implementing retail design through tiered programs, these past fifteen years in the professional sphere have brought on conclusions that are perhaps a full brain blend, with translating brands into the supportive pieces and parts for prototypes and rollout functions. The practice of conceptual design is one thing. The practice of design as it relates to a certain business end is quite another.
Left unbound, desire culminates into behavior. For me, desire is channeled into the manifestation of visions, from a mind into the tangible, constantly evaluating and refining the built realms with, I hope, refined intent and poetic nuance. Work is slowly becoming just “Being”. Observing, describing, encouraging, guiding and manifesting the visions of clients and designers. Identifying what it means to succeed and removing roadblocks to that which may become reality.
Even now as I write this on a day off I can’t help ruminate on what creative endeavor is up next.