Your Friends Are the Reason You Are Boring

[drwex]

https://deardesignstudent.com/your-friends-are-the-reason-you-are-boring-aa9a8e456d1#.ygddlsc1l

I'm really enjoying Dear Design Student a blog written by designers, ostensibly for designers and particularly young and student designers. Blog entries range from the practical (don't give two weeks' notice - give enough notice to wrap up your projects and make a clean exit) to the abstract (Doing the right thing the wrong way). And in some cases like this entry they wander into the philosophical. I've long thought that design was as much an avocation as a profession and here Arjun Basu lays out the basic problem - if you live in a bubble of any sort then you're doing yourself a disservice, both as a designer and as a human being.

Being very introverted myself and making new friends slowly at the best of times this is kind of tough advice for me to read. But that's what makes this an interesting blog.

Comments

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

I appreciate his nod to Liberal Arts grads :) Diversity is one of the advantages of living in a city, though here in NYC this is diminishing as the poor and middle class are being priced out.

[dcltdw]

I think this is the same advice as "make sure your life is diverse in its daily experiences", but maybe I'm oversimplifying. It's certainly an adage I try to subscribe to.

[drwex]

Yes and no. Yes, I think that is the core idea but no it's not about (a designer's) daily experiences so much as the company they keep. We're supposed to build things with an understanding of and empathy for those who will use it. If we've trapped ourselves in bubbles of people-like-us then that's going to stunt our professional capabilities.