I remember reading somewhere something about happiness starting to happen when you visit old past moments of joy. What happens when memory lane takes a lot of twists, and turns, though? How do you go right back to those pleasant spots and recall the bursts of carefree energetic excitement that comes when you’re just really, truly, very happy?
Making this website something that works for 2022 when most of our client work was back in the 2000s and early 2010s, then stopped for a long while, is a chance to go back down memory lane, for Design Kompany, for me. I’m seeing tons in the old archives and recalling the moments of ‘a-ha’ clarity that came when people just saw it, saw what it was that all that talking precipitated out. We shared. We journeyed into difficult moments of conversation, edged out, redirected, got teams to notice each other’s varying points of view when that might not have been a thing before, and, ultimately, landed on concepts that really worked, for the people that I got to know through the tried-and-true method that DK built, in-house, based on what we learned as we went and added to our toolkit. A video, an article, a book, a memorable conversation… all of these are glimpses in the digital archives of those elements that led to things, things that led to other things, and, when we finally got to the heart of the process, landed everyone involved at nothing short of breakthroughs.
Breakthroughs. How much would you pay to get to one of those?
I find the conversations that develop, through DK’s client work, or, later, through the workshops like SELF and Mirror, to be step-by-step occasions for people who are curious about the process to take themselves upon it. It’s not me telling you go to there. It’s you seeing that one step leads to another, and then, yet another, and so on, until you hit the ‘a-ha.’ I love that part. I think I’ve missed seeing people get there, without any help. It’s kind of like when you learn to ride a bicycle without training wheels. You just… sort of… have the wind behind you, and whoooossshhh.
You are on your way.
And that’s when it gets really real. because you’re writing and sharing and talking and being the person it is you really are. Without getting to that, though, that being a major breakthrough, right, it’s hard to put anything into the world that has… well, something that catches.
And if I’ve seen anything in these hibernation years, while DK was on hiatus, it’s that most things, while ‘sassy’ or ‘animated’ or ‘flying graphics’ or what have you they may be, they lack the thing that… catches.
What’s your thing?
Let’s find it.
Art by Boss
Leave a Reply