Essay: In Pursuit of a Good Life

"There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by... Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading--that is a good life."
--Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Do people still search for shooting stars? Is graphic design art? Is what you read who you are? As I write this the wind outside howls through the poplar, oak and spruce. It will be a long blustery night. Through the kitchen window I see an almost full moon through a curtain of trees. They bend and fold from the force of a winter storm. But the moon shines even through the clouds which attempt to mask its existence.

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A couple months ago I had lunch with an older friend and I was amazed (again) by his intellectual prowess. I commented to him that I wish I could have time to read more books. "Better to read deeply than to read extensively," he said as we stood in line to pay for our meal. Coming from a gentleman who reads deeply and extensively, I think I understand what he means--concentrate on one thing and read it well. Too often I find something interesting to read but it turns out to be more of a distraction than a help for my writing efforts.

Examining the books I'm currently reading, (Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by Jane Hirshfield, Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard, The Blessing: A Memoir by Gregory Orr, Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper, Road to Reality by Melvin Tinker and an assortment of poetry books by William Blake, Eavan Bollard and Clayton Couch) it's safe to say the concentration is in poetry, nonfiction literature and spirituality. The danger is to know a little bit of everything but unable to write about anything of importance. It’s the whole jack-of-all-trades-master-of-nothing syndrome.

The challenge is to dwell in the periphery of a subject and avoid the mire of the crowded middle. The middle is boring. It’s the ground which everyone fights for but realize too late that the real game is being won on the edges of the playing field; as in American football. If a football player runs through the congested center he is likely to lose yardage. But if a quarterback passes the ball to a receiver near the sidelines yardage is quickly gained.

Direct mail marketing operates on a similar principle. Those who launch a direct mail campaign know that one out of every thousand recipients respond to the mailing. More people may respond to it depending on the product, price, premium and mailing list. There are a host of other variables, but suffice it to say that targeting a general audience means you’re missing 999 people in a rush for mass appeal. There may be moderate success for a season, but there is no customer loyalty unless it is a truly remarkable, revolutionary product or service.

In the same manner, reading a broad range of subjects and literature may allow one to win at Jeopardy (which I suppose may be a nice goal and accomplishment), but if your reading is geared toward a specific field of interest, say brilliant minds, your reading may be focused. For example, Kevin O’Connor in his book The Map of Innovation routinely draws upon books on the topic of Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Bill Gates. Does this make Mr. O’Connor just like those great minds? No. But it allows him to be inspired and influenced by their work and lives. Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Bill Gates are to him a foundation on which to build qualities and characteristics in his own individual life.

This is not to say one should not read a wide range of interests. Reading broadly is often the characteristic of a great leader and thinker. Despite the odds, direct mail marketing still works and is considered the life blood of most subscription based products. If an American football team is five yards from the end zone and it’s the fourth down, then the most common play is to muscle right through the middle for a goal. What’s important is discerning when to run down the sideline, when to target a niche market, when to focus one’s reading on great minds and when to put down a book and start writing.

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What makes a graphic designer a graphic designer? Is it the computer (MAC of course)? Is it the software (Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator & QuarkXpress)? Is it the black turtleneck? It's really none of these. They're all tools (except the turtleneck -- that's purely fashion).

The next generation of graphic designers assumes that to be a real designer you need to be an excellent pixel painter. In a way, the technology has advanced to the point that these tools (hardware and software) keep you competitive in an aggressive market. However, ask a twenty-something designer how one might use rubylith to create a photo-ready four-color brochure and you'll get a blank stare. Another common sign of a young designer is the confusion as to why a print vendor won't print his RGB files.

Am I speaking over your head? If so, it's probably because you don't speak Designese, the language of graphic designers and print vendors. Designese actually has two dialects: one for the designer and the other for the printer. A good print production manager knows both dialects fluently. It used to be that graphic designers knew both dialects well. But somewhere along the way a new breed of designers have evolved who create print projects with no complete understanding of the intricate process in taking a job from concept to completion.

Young designers have technical savvy that is admirable, but lack ingenuity if their software tends not to perform the way they plan. For example, new designers tend to overuse Photoshop filters to create 3D shadows or embossed images -- yet their art still has a "flat" artificial quality to it. It is because they only think in relation to the computer monitor. Designers who have been working since the late 80s or early 90s were used to manipulating rubylith layers to overprint colors. They had the end product in mind because they understood the process. In other words, older designers understood the idea of consequences for their creative ideas. For example, to obtain a "rich" black in a photo you could include a percentage of cyan, magenta and yellow (depending on what paper you’re printing upon). They could create the illusion of depth to a photo because they knew that there was depth to the ink that is printed on the paper.

It's just my observations that a lot of designed pieces these days are rather flat. Maybe it's the education style that teaches the who, what, when and where but forgets the why.

A graphic design instructor and author, Jonathan Baldwin, from the U.K. states that: “Design education is at fault, but the profession shares the blame too. It promotes itself as a surface profession, giving the impression that style and decoration are greater than effect, and idolising a tiny number of heroes who are hardly representative of the vast majority of designers.”

Jonathan adds, “I wouldn't worry too much about the rubylith thing, though - tools go in and out of fashion. When I started designing (at the dawn of the Mac revolution) the generation before were bemoaning the demise of cow gum, spray mount and scalpels. For what it's worth, here in the UK there's a new interest in 'hand made' design.”

In my observation, graphic design education does share half the blame and the graphic design industry doesn't help much either with magazines like HOW and PRINT perpetuating a mythological view of the art director/graphic design universe. The graphic design industry could more accurately be labeled a "creative" sweatshop for skilled employees. The irony is that unskilled factory workers make more money than the average skilled graphic designer. Most factory workers have the protection of the unions whereas graphic designers are "salaried employees" (meaning overtime expected with no financial reimbursement). Still, graphic design is my trade and I enjoy it. Yet there is more to life than failure or success as a graphic designer.

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Has anyone seen a shooting star lately? For the first time in my more than thirty winters of life, I saw a shooting star. As I waited one Friday night for the six o'clock bus to take me home, I saw a white sparkle like the white tip of a thumbnail against the early evening sky and to the east of Lone Pine Mountain. It was bright and I wondered if it would have been more spectacular away from the light pollution of the city of Asheville. I gazed at the dark blue, empty sky until the bus arrived to take me home to enjoy warmed leftovers for supper.

A friend of mine, who is older and wiser than I, chided me that I need to get outside more often. Maybe if I could peel myself away from the computer monitor at work I wouldn’t miss so much around me. Maybe if I could get my nose out of all these books I’m reading and take a look around I might be able to experience some of these wonderful displays.

I used to do a lot of stargazing when I was a child. The Upper Midwest is great for that because the plains are so flat and the heavens so grand. As a boy, my father would take us to his childhood home at least once a year. Sometimes it was during the winter holidays, sometimes during the summertime. It’s a place on the prairie not far from where South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota meet. The farm he grew up on is still in operation. Two of my uncles still milk cows and raise hogs and cattle. They don’t know anything about graphic design but have intimate knowledge of the seasons and the animals and nature in general. All they know of graphic design is that “city folks” do it.

I remember “helping” milk cows in the evening during the winters. The term helping is loosely used, for my brothers and I didn’t really milk anything. We would follow the uncles out to the barn and watch the cows enter the stanchions and then observe our uncles go about their business as dairy farmers. The barn was warm, the cows smelly, the work hard (hauling buckets of milk to the main holding tank was all we could really do) but the reward was leaving the barn and standing out in the yard under the dazzling canopy of heaven. The cold night air would force our gloved hands deeper into our coats as we’d look east at the radio towers’ red blinking lights.

The stars were exceptionally bright in that part of my life. The Big Dipper was the first constellation I looked for on those nights. Find true north by locating Polaris was all part of the wonder and awe of those childhood days on the farm where my father was born and raised. I later learned about Orion and the Pliedes and Taurus, but true north was always first.

Somewhere along the path I changed and thought a career would be a better use of my time. It turns out that career is another word for slavery. “Men are but slaves to life,” wrote Kahlil Gibran. Yet, it’s a choice like all other choices in life. Who will be your master? What rests upon the throne of your heart? I enjoy designing concert posters and marketing promotional campaigns. I love stargazing. But there’s more to life than these things.

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I need to remind myself not to miss out on the good life, which Annie Dillard describes in The Writing Life, but how does an individual have a good day? Is it thinking happy thoughts? Or taking baby steps to a good life? Annie suggests its spiritual in nature and I tend to agree with her. Experiencing a good day (which makes a good life) is being secure and content in your purpose for living. The funny thing about that idea is that it requires an individual to do absolutely nothing! You just rest in the security of your purpose.

Whether stargazing or designing a direct marketing brochure, good days are blessings—gifts. Are you doing the thing you were born to do? Are you content in your purpose? Do you even know what your purpose is? Reading, designing and stargazing are not the formula for a good life—they are the amenities.

Originally published in Wander, Volume 1, Number 3