Finding Inspiration in the Unknown and Out-of-My-Control Spaces

A few words some weeks out from Noosa, from a Sydney-sider who left for Melbourne.

Amid all the problems that the business of communication design solves for modern commerce today, is there still a space for play?

As communication design forums evolve into design effectiveness forums, this speaker asks, 'how does one find the balance of being business minded and also being that evocative creative type that people in the client world would find enticing, sometimes scary?'

• What is wrong with a cottage industry with its fair share of triumphs and tragedies?
• What is wrong with having an industry rich with all sorts of players?
• Is it good for business, for all of us to be 'good' at business?
• Is it 'good' business striving to plan the risk out of everything?
• Is it good for design, for all of us to be 'good' at design?
• Is it 'good' design striving to eradicate the faults from all that we touch and see?

Having experienced a vast amount of ordinary time, some extraordinary and some dismal failures in the past fifteen years or so, the greatest insights I have enjoyed are to be found in the unknown and out-of-my-control spaces.

A healthy sense of play (among all the other things that is required of the modern designer) allows one to enjoy the riches in the process, rather than, always looking to the end result as a measure of ordinary, extraordinary or dismal outcomes.

You'll have to come along on the day and see if I am a speaker of my word, or a lazy git that wants to show off, or maybe a pot-stirring show-off. All I will guarantee is that my son Will's appetite for most foods will challenge any hotel smorgasbord.

See you there!

(I am the bloke who needs to loose 10 or so kilograms and looks like a bouncer at a bad strip joint).

Andrew Ashton, Studio Pip and Co. Melbourne