Q: Three women walk into a bar. Which one’s the vegan?
A: Don’t worry. She’ll tell you.
There are a lot of equally funny variations on this joke (e.g. substituting atheist for vegan). I imagine the reason it works is because it’s so true. Certain types of people just can’t wait to tell you how special they are.
Like those of us who make our livings as “creatives”—a loathsome term that, Scout’s honor, is used in this industry without irony. (If we’re so creative, maybe we could come up with an actual noun instead of co-opting an adjective, mmmkay?)
Let me back up. When I started in this business, I was appalled at the egos surrounding me. I’d never been around so many people so supremely confident in their own abilities, so convinced of the inherent virtue of their craft, and so bent on telling me how awesome they were. I chalked it up to arrogance and a natural competitiveness, and silently plotted my escape toward a career path populated by fewer narcissists. (There isn’t one, by the way. Designers are just more honest about it.)
Then I happened upon something Alice Rawsthorn said:
“Design has always been a culture of plenty, intellectually and commercially. The underpinnings of design have been about this belief that the new is almost always better than the old. There is a solution to every problem, and everything can always be improved upon. That lends an almost moral imperative to design that makes designers feel happier about the virtuous part of what they do.”*
I asked around the office, and everyone pretty much agrees. So I’ve come to the realization that what separates the sheep from the goats in this business isn’t a clash of personality types; it’s a difference in Weltanschauung.
In other words, I see the absurdity of life, shrug, and tell people that’s just the way it is. Meanwhile, my coworkers are looking for a way to fix it. Neither is necessarily correct—but the designers I know are right far more often than I am.
*Helvetica/Objectified/Urbanized: The Complete Interviews (Hustwit, 2015).
