My history with owning one own’s business began from a young age. I spent the majority of my diapered years at my parents’ pre-press business. My primary colours weren’t yellow, red and blue but instead their process counterparts of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. I forwent candy beepers for the real thing. My dad has always been entrepreneurial and my mom pragmatic. Many hours of my childhood life were spent on SE Belmont sitting on light tables, tearing masking and lithographer’s tapes against razor blades. Everything that my parents created was of their own accord, to their own exacting standards and of many labourious hours. Dad is always the one with the ideas and the insanity to execute, whereas mom is the one with the figures and pragmatism to prevent the blind optimism from spiraling out of control. Eventually my schooling took priority, but the entrepreneurial spirit proved itself a difficult thing to suppress, as my parents eventually re-opened a digitised version of their once-successful business. The second go ended less ideally than anyone ever anticipated, but I wouldn’t say it was a waste, because the second time struck something within me that is only beginning to resurface.
In 48 days, 22 hours and some odd change, I will end my stable income, health care, 50 hour work weeks, and a (relatively) normal desk job in order to pursue something that I’ve been wanting to pursue—consciously, at least—for many months now: true self-sustainability with my graphic design business.
The past few years have been spent in a way that’s Mother Approved (do I have to pay if I only used half the saying?)—I work my hours and pay my student loans. As much as I disdain regret, I can say I most certainly don’t want to spend the next few years doing what I’ve done. I feel as though I’ve worked hard and learned much in my time at my last job. And it’s not that hard work in it of itself isn’t fulfilling, but working hard for a cause that isn’t your own isn’t. It’s hard to be happy being a part of a large machine you didn’t help to invent. Passion can’t be convincingly faked, not even by the of best liars.
If I run a poll of my emotions right now, it would go something like this: 70% excited, 20% scared shitless and 10% boozeahol. The mom in me is telling me how I shouldn’t forgo stability for a chance. The economist (and Economist) in me says I’m putting my student loan payoff-retirement plan at risk. But the entrepreneur in me craves the adrenaline of successful cold calls, the relief of a site built and launched, and, most superficially, the reach for the Fortune 500. The entrepreneur and business owner in me scolds me for not trusting in the business that I’ve built for the last three years.
And it’s hard to—the responses to a 25-year-old business owner are usually, “oh, so you freelance?” There are expectations of discounting and charging student rates. Managing my own time presents its own challenges, and not knowing what I’ll make each month is unsettling. Even with the anxiety and uncertainty, I know that this is what I want. Design gets me up in the morning (even if sometimes it’s just because I hate the way my desk looked when I went to bed), and after successful days, allows me to sleep soundly. Design challenges me to solve an endless array of problems. Design further sweetens travel, by reminding me that everywhere—anywhere—good design can and does exist. Designers might have constructed a small army in comparison to the world’s problems, but its army is passionate and not easily dissuaded. Design is my cause, and I look forward to continuing to build my own machine.
As an individual, it’s always been hard for me to accept being called ‘well-rounded’ as a compliment. Besides just its potential innuendo of rotund or portly, it can also mean that an individual lacks focus, or is unable to engage a topic past superficial strata. In a family that valued specialisation (and professions that required it), it was hard for me to find my niche in any one corner.
Throughout college, this meant that my academic interests fluttered from building to building, never finding rest in any department. My environmental studies professors found me too hard and logical; relying on definitions, proofs and formulas to prove ethical dilemmas. My math professors found me too soft and indecisive, seeing multifarious routes when one would suffice. And of course, nothing angered them more than ethical arguments that began “but this way would also…” (an aside: My random-interest professors—art, languages, economics—found me flat out bizarre for loving both the indecisiveness in environmental studies and concreteness of math. Then again, they never rejected my “no, you can’t recycle that” and/or computational help on syllabus grade breakdowns that didn’t quite add to 100%.)
In a business, being ‘well-rounded’ carries similar connotations. Consumers demand, in most vocations, that businesses can complete one simple task—plumbers damn well know how to plumb, and gardeners ought to know how to wield a spade. Yet no one asks a plumber to nanny. And certainly, no one would ask Fran Drescher to plumb. The exception to this rule of course is in the world of design.
To call oneself a ‘designer’ leaves much to be explained—fashion, graphic, web, interactive, textile, industrial, interior, exterior, landscaping, zen and Buddhist garden, flower float, colour, cake, visual display, packaging, jewellery… you get the point. Each job presents its own clogs and requires its snaky tools, but yet somehow to those living outside of the design world, they’re all a bit interchangeable. You might ask your interior designer friend to fix your wedding dress because he/she is handy with a sewing machine. Your artist friend owns Adobe Creative Suite, so maybe he/she can throw a website together for your neighbour who owns a food cart.
And since this happens more than not, the creative world becomes saturated with interior-exterior-designers SLASH photographers, graphic designer SLASH filmmakers, jewellery artists SLASH muralists SLASH graphic designers. We’re all double- and triple-dipping our hands in each other’s jars, eager to help the left-brained half of the world add a bit of colour to their otherwise monochromatic, fluorescently-lit existences.
All of these individuals become diluted versions of one another; trying hard to identify themselves amongst a sea of well-rounded buoys. Some certainly much more talented than others; those less talented hoping that the ambiguity of it all will mask their ambivalence. Struggling to float, these individuals form collectives (professionally known as “design studios” ) which are equally, if not more vague than the employees who comprise it. Design studios that create websites, clothing, installations, cakes. Anything peripheral becomes territorial with the simple question of, “hey, do you know how to…” quantified by a “because I need a…” Uncertainty like this muddles the market, and confuses the general public on how (and why) to quantify design both monetarily and emotionally.
In this, we lose the dedicated few brave enough (myself not included) to define themselves by one term alone—furniture designers, graphic designers and all of those terms that make the obsolete phone book useful. Individuals with enough wherewithall and restraint to pick and refine. I commend the individuals strong enough to sacrifice throwaway hobbies for their isolated passion. Please continue to build your individual talents; one day I’m going to recruit you to make the fattest—I mean, most well-rounded—design group out there. No cakes, though. I’ll leave that to Duff, Geoff and crew.