Ever since the kids have been little they’ve always known that I vanish from their lives periodically. And they never really had any idea what it is that I do. What do I do anyway? If I don’t know why should they?
Utah Phillips
I’m no longer a designer, so what do I do?
A few times a month, and reliably about the same time others are receiving their paycheck direct deposit, I am reminded that I don’t really have a word for what I do, much less an easy description. Most months don’t come with an income representative of my labor, making it all the more difficult to define my vocation. Lately, I’ve been reciting in my head, “I’m a gardener” because at least that has parameters people can quickly visualize to put themselves at ease, if a sense of ease is sought.
Once I was a graphic designer, once I was a bus driver, once I was a book seller. And if asked, I would have said, “But there is so much more to my job.” Now, as I settle into “I am a gardener”, there really is “so much more.” Mostly because it’s a lie.
I’m not a gardener. I am a homeschool dad, a caretaker of the piece of land I’ve been blessed with (the gardener), a business owner (SSTP), a landlord (yes, gross), an Airbnb host (god, I’m getting more disgusting by the word), a house-husband, a volunteer fire-fighter.
Some of those things pay a little, but none of them make me a professional in that area, far less the bread winner.
This lack of income is partly by design (and this is kind of side note, I guess.) But some breadcrumbs lead back to incompetence or if I’m being generous, the non-hyperactive ADD I was diagnosed with in 2007, and a not always robust working memory. What is “by design” is guided by our family-decision to divest from morally corrupt systems of land ownership, the centuries old thinking of “I own therefore I am” and to not be gate keepers of safety and comfort. This is getting into what some people would call virtue signaling territory and actually is not even why I’m writing today. If you made it this far, I hope you’re ready for a shift in topic. If you are my high school language arts teacher, and insist I should have established a more accurate thesis statement at the top, kindly take a hike. This is how I’m writing today.
I’m here to tell you about why I hope to see more graphic designers discover the joys of permaculture design, food forests, restorative agriculture, or just plain gardening. Then I will tell you why. Then I will tell you what I told you. Thank you, Language Arts.
Why designers are natural gardeners
Graphic design is about knowing the craft and the subject matter well enough to be able to ensure efficient and clear communication of a message or whatever goal is in mind. That comes first. It is achieved by planning and organization. Then comes the barely-secondary priority of engagement with the viewer through some amount of artfulness, be it beautiful, playful, stately, referential, conservative, etc. This is driven by the mundane pursuit of commercially viable style and also by the ever-present and urgent desire graphic designers have to create beautiful, useful things.
A productive garden is the embodiment of a beautiful, useful thing and is by nature designed.
A productive garden is the embodiment of a beautiful, useful thing and is by nature designed. So I wonder how many designers there must be who are over the soul-sucking design industry and might be needing this shift toward designing in harmony and especially to the benefit of the natural world. Or alternately, and perhaps more likely, some designers in an age of collapse have found that a cosmic arrangement of circumstances have put us in a place where we can or must, through no less than Herculean effort, craft something entirely new that has absolutely no semblance to a traditional occupation. And you’re surrounded by ecologically impoverished yards aching for not only ecological redemption but the rich texture of life that artists envision so well.
Haters will say it’s fake. It won’t look like a real career.
So sloppily I have told you, “Hey, graphic designers. Look at this opportunity to work in collaboration with nature, using every skill you now use to move oscillating fans off Walmart shelves or some shit. You can quite possibly create a regenerative life around this skill. It will probably take between one and ten other revenue streams, daily discussions with your loved ones, alternating eras of extreme clarity and utter confusion, all the sacrifice you don’t want to hear about, and then a little more sacrifice. Haters will say it is fake. It won’t look like a career. At times it will feel like you’re not doing anything.
That’s because if you’re doing it mindfully, with gracious motivations and humility, you’re simply living your life in the ways it needs to be lived for what matters in life (a full heart and right living with your family, community and earth, for example). It won’t have a title. The IRS won’t have a Business Activity Code for what you do. You’ll become more clever, more inventive, more organized, more grateful, more focused on your community, and endlessly less driven to achieve for the sake of achieving. You will get good at failing.
A Caveat
This is all really easy to say. Entire books could be written about how to make this kind of transition. I fell into this discovery. And so it is really just theory. I couldn’t say all that before without a gross abundance of modal verbs like might and could which don’t make for very inspiring blog posts. But being honest is the right thing to do. I also failed to stress that your loved ones are your new partners, even if they never “help”, so to speak. They must be behind you conceptually, logically, spiritually and more.
And lastly, I don’t want to make a whole thing of it, but if you are moved by this, and you are even halfway concerned about our planet, precede every mention of “gardening” with restorative or regenerative. We are no longer in a place where we can simply garden. The gardens on the cover of mom’s Better Homes & Gardens got us in a real pickle ecologically and entrenched a way of thinking about yards and wildlife that has to be undone.
So if you’ve got to step away from your design career but still got that fire, let’s get together and design land that restores! You can still listen to Bon Iver. That is all. I love you. Have a great day.
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