Co-designing, no designer is an island

No designer is an island

No designer is an island, or a designer island for that matter

The title of this entry can mean dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. To me it means that no designer is an island. I´ve wanted to write some­thing along these lines for some time, so here goes.

I was dri­ving home from a gig I had one day and a thought occurred to me of how strange it is, as a designer, to say “I designed this”. It´s not really true. When you give it some thought it´s quite impos­si­ble to design some­thing by your­self. We are totally depen­dent on other peo­ple and our envi­ron­ment for every­thing, absolutely everything.

If we take a very nar­row view of it and only look me, Gummi, we will see that I cant even get up on time with­out the help of a cell­phone man­u­fac­turer. Sony Eric­s­son made my cell­phone. Then only look­ing at the design part, try to imag­ine all the peo­ple that made Pho­to­shop. And then all the peo­ple that affected the peo­ple that made Pho­to­shop and so on. None of them would be able to get to work with­out the help of other peo­ple, get food, be inspired, love or just be alive. I think is was the Bud­dha that said some­thing like: “this is because that is”. It was called the law of co-arising.

Ubuntu, not the oper­at­ing sys­tem, but the phi­los­o­phy is also all about this. Peo­ple are fully depen­dent on each other and would not exist unless the other per­son excised. There is no up unless there is a down, no black unless there is white & no designer with­out Pho­to­shop :) There is no musi­cian unless there is a lis­tener and so on.

Or as the Zulus would say, “Umuntu Ngu­muntu Nga­bantu”, which means that a per­son is a per­son through other per­sons. We affirm our human­ity when we acknowl­edge that of oth­ers.
Quote www.buzzle.com

So the next time I open Pho­to­shop I´m gonna try and remem­ber that things are not as they seem. Try to feel appre­ci­a­tion for the oppor­tu­nity of being a designer, and be thank­ful for the incred­i­ble “fact” that I am here and now doing what I´m doing because of the help of all the peo­ple that ever existed and the fact that a star some­time exploded to make this moment possible.

My mind can never com­pre­hend the com­plex­ity of this world, but I some­times feel like a real part of it. Like this world is part of me and I am part of it.

No one or no thing is here by accident.

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10 Responses to “Co-designing, no designer is an island”

  1. Dwayne WayneNo Gravatar says:
    16/07/2009 at 21:45

    “There is no musi­cian unless there is a listener”

    How do you fig­ure that one out? :)

    Couldn’t you be bud­ding musi­cian in your bed­room with­out no-one ever hear­ing anything?

    Not being anal here, just a thought

  2. gummisigNo Gravatar says:
    20/07/2009 at 09:52

    Hehe, Dwayne it´s ok to be anal some­times. Maybe every­thing I wrote here is total bs, but to me it seems like it has a grain to truth to it. There is always a lis­tener though, even if it´s just you. But there is a dan­ger of sound­ing like the Sphinx in Mys­tery Men;

    “The Sphinx: Your tem­per is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to mas­ter your rage…
    Mr. Furi­ous: …your rage will become your mas­ter? That’s what you were going to say. Right? Right?
    The Sphinx: Not necessarily.

  3. Valur ThorNo Gravatar says:
    20/07/2009 at 10:49

    This reminds me of a story I heard from a sin­gle mom. She told me the hard­est part of being a sin­gle mom is not hav­ing to do all things your self with a sin­gle income, but it is to have no one around, to share the expe­ri­ence, when you wit­ness the small mir­a­cles like baby’s first smile etc.

    To me design (and being cre­ative in gen­eral) hasn’t got very much value if I can’t share it with people. 

    They can give you valu­able feed­back and chal­lenge your design and your ideas, wich again enables you to evolve as a designer. And isn’t that what it’s all about… :-)

  4. brenblueNo Gravatar says:
    03/08/2009 at 21:29

    I know that design­ing is a sin­gu­lar thing I may do with all sorts of activ­ity and thoughts fly­ing high in my mind but when I put it onto paper the thing becomes alive and it is for everyone.

  5. Timmy JNo Gravatar says:
    04/08/2009 at 09:37

    Gummi that was a great post! 

    Per­fect when I am ‘try­ing to get cre­ative’ about my per­sonal folio website… 

    I think as design­ers we love the rush of feel­ing we have cre­ated some­thing, but really we are express­ing what is already cre­ated — our gift!

  6. gummisigNo Gravatar says:
    05/08/2009 at 13:51

    Thanks for all the com­ments, they are always very nice. I hope to write more stuff along these lines, as it is very close to my heart so to speak.

  7. miaNo Gravatar says:
    29/09/2009 at 13:05

    Great post, and you are so right!

    And I couldnt stop star­ing at “your” design…again! It’s great!

  8. miaNo Gravatar says:
    29/09/2009 at 13:06

    And your commentlist.…I just wanna keep post­ing com­ments to see whats hap­pen­ing, lol! Beautiful!

    Ha en god dag! ;)

  9. gummisigNo Gravatar says:
    29/09/2009 at 13:14

    hehe, thank you Mia. Drop by any time

  10. KuldeepNo Gravatar says:
    29/09/2009 at 15:16

    \m/! Good 1 Gud­mundur! really Inspir­ing! :)

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