This collection of twelve steps is a work in progress look at process. It was presented at FITC and more recently Spread The Word’s April Design is A Superpower workshop.

1. Take note of your impact
Look at your daily actions and consider your impact is a good metal exercise. More often than not, what we do as a job has more of an impact than any of the plastic bags or bottles we recycle. Both the personal and the societal issues we face stem from our routines, so be aware of those.

2. Consider what to preserve and what to change.

All to often we see the future as better because of change. The truth is that humans have been doing fairly well for quite some time. We have institutions, principles, traditions, and ideas that are grounded on our predecessors. It’s important to identify what we want to change, in light of the truth that it’s not all bad.

3. Draw the line, what won’t you do?

Everyone has a point at which they’ll say no. Think about how far you could be pushed until you’d snap. It’s important to realize that we already have a threshold, and the unfortunate situation is when that threshold is slowly chipping away. Your grandparents probably would say that a polluted river is too far. Your parents would say no access to public pools is too far. What will you put up with?

4. Set priorities, what matters most?

Most conflicts don’t stem from a disagreement on values, but rather a conflict of implementation. What is the most important change that needs to happen? What is the most sacred value we must uphold? Do we want cleaner water or more education? Should we spend our time retrofitting houses, or parks?

5. Share the worst deed you did for an evil client.

For us it was having a client who wanted to look green. We were to put a green plastic leaf on their product. When we asked if the product was actually any more sustainable than competitors the answer was an obvious, though cleverly implied, no. Our big mistake was not completely reprimanding this action.

6. Tell somebody you’re about to make a change in you professional work.

In order for growth, someone else needs to know what you’re trying to do. When you tell others, not only do you encourage them and set an example, but you hold yourself accountable. Cognitive dissonance tells us, when you talk the talk, you end up walking the walk.

7. Implement a system to help you.

Our brains are faulty, and our memories are getting worse. Figure out a way to remind yourself on a constant basis why your are doing what you are doing. Have a weekly meet-up to discuss progress with your friends. Change your client brief to include sustainability. Collect the disposable cups you use for coffee.

8. Make an ideal client list. Don’t let it sit there, contact them.

What do you have to lose in attempting to work with who you respect? If anything they will be flattered, and know you exist. Make a list of 100 people you want to work with and then just call them. Imagine that your work could be exactly in line with your beliefs. Isn’t that worth a couple of days?

9. Join Something

Personal progress is best shared. Especially when that progress is also beneficial to a great group of people. Join something, and talk to people. There are so many people thinking the same thing as you, and it is a wonderful feeling to be around them, providing those thoughts are good.

10. Meet-ups and Serendipity

In Hong Kong they have five keys to success, luck is at the top. Put yourself in a position to be lucky, and as we all know, no one gets lucky on their own at home.

11. Do. Then Talk. them Do More.

As we share we grow, as we grow we share. The cycle of growth works through us, but only as long as we tell each other. Make sure you use the words you have to speak about what you truly care about. After all, ask and ye shall receive, and no one really wants gossip.

12. Try these, then try something else.

We really haven’t figured this out, and no one ever will. We only get closer to the truth in different ways. We’d love to hear from you about your pursuits, challenges, and insights. In the age of connection let’s have a global conversation.

It has been a bit of a problem defining what we do here, and not for lack of answers. It seems each time someone pops the question “So what do you do?” the response begs only more questions.

Partly this is due to our insistence on remaining generalists and exploring new avenues of intervention. Partly this is due to the prevalent industry mindset of looking at people’s expertise rather than their inclinations.

I have spoken with engineers, industrial designers, literary critics, teachers, lawyers, writers, and photographers. Despite the differing professions there seems to be a similar divide within these industries. That divide is one of integrated thinking versus intense specialization. Graphic Designers come in many shapes and colours, but certainly there are those who wish to see the biggest picture possible, and those who lean more deeply to the smallest point kernable.

This divide between experts and generalists has me scratching my head, wondering which one I am, and to what extent. If there is anything I have learned, it is that nothing is black or white.

With that said, objectives must be. To move in a direction is to see clear opportunity. So which way am I moving. The answer is clear; toward integrated generalized thinking.

Speaking with an industrial designer, has opened up some possibilities. She told me about the Finnish approach which is a bit different. They have a term called world design.

A solution from an industrial design might be an AIDs truck which educates by moving around, a solution from a graphic designer might be a billboard campaign which educates on a mass media scale.

I can appreciate the diplomacy in seeing each type of execution as a good one, but we must account for appropriateness. In most cases mass media is not the solution, but rather an accompaniment to a better idea, a new way of interacting. This is not to say that graphic designers cannot inform that better way. It is to say that in order to find appropriate solutions we must look outside of the tools we are experts in, and understand the landscape of possibilities.

This idea of design as inventory of possibility is much more attractive than designer as skilled artist. It sees the designers role as a visionary who works with many parties to execute an idea which spans many disciplines; the world of work so to speak. Further more, the world in world designer can be expanded from the idea of the world as earth, to the worlds separate and overlapping.

The world of taxis in Toronto is very different from the world of textile designers. Different but integrated. To see these worlds, allow them to facilitate each other, appreciate the difference, and make new ones when appropriate, is the role of the world designer. To design for the world we share, to appreciate the worlds we do not, and to envision new possible worlds we might face in the future.

“What have I done to make the world a better place?” and the 12 Step program to professional rehabilitation of the 8 lost hours most of us endure per day.

This years presentation for FITC employed collaborative thoughts and work from other creative professionals to help demonstrate the power of thinking big and acting small to generate positive change in the world of design. If you want the hookups, you can get involved and learn more by checking out these fine folks at the following websites

• The Long Now Foundation - http://longnow.org
• Timeraiser - http://timeraiser.ca
• Good Magazine - http://www.goodmagazine.com
• KMDI (Knowledge Media Design Institute) - http://kmdi.utoronto.ca
• Toronto Cyclists Union - http://www.bikeunion.to
• Metronauts - http://metronauts.ca
• Toronto Artscape- Creative Convergence - http://torontoartscape.on.ca/creative_convergence_project
• Two Century Farm - http://twocenturyfarm.com
• Hive - http://joinhive.com
• Contemporary Textile Studio Co-op - http://textilestudio.ca
• Viva Dolan Communications and Design - http://vivadolan.com
• We Can Solve it - http://wecansolveit.org
• Wiser Earth - http://wiserearth.org
• Designer’s Accord - http://designersaccord.org
• Spread the Word - http://superpower.ning.com
• The Little Things - http://today.themovement.info

Or download the presentation as a PDF!

Recently, we threw a party trying to ask the question: “What if work was a party?” Could a bunch of people who are united for a short time produce something more than empty beer bottles? There were some pretty amazing insights, so here’s a look at the rules we set up and some of the observations and principles we can see in the results.

Our Approach:
Create zones for people to work on different parts of a process.
Give them methodologies to get them going.
Reward them for work with our own currency, which buys booze and money.

Get Buy in:
So first thing you do when you come in is sign a big giant contract with everybody else’s name on it, committing yourself to working for the evening under a set of friendly rules. This is important because it helps people understand it’s serious, and that other people are committed as well.

Now, as trainee, you see a map of how this work actually takes place, and a simple 3 step guide to their new “job”, as well as a “company org chart” showing all pieces and parts for details.

Establish Leadership & Contact point for help

Since nobody reads, we made sure that we had a hilarious “Office Manager” to greet you and show you around the different zones, and get you started with a few “The Movement” for a drink.

Incentive’s

Most important to keep everything moving forward, is the fake currency system. People do work and report to the Office Manager, get paid, and get a drink. You gotta keep working to keep drinking, so the cycle is complete. The “Office Cantine” hands the money back over to the Office Manager, and he pays more “employees” as they continue to drink and work!

So what is the actual work? We started the party by prompting a few problems that needed to be solved: Local produce being too expensive and our of reach, Political apathy & confusion, and too many messages bombarding us.

Give clear Actionable Tasks within a Context

We broke down the problem solving process into 5 parts. Research, Analysis, Synthesis, Explaining, and Spreading. Each part of the process was given a zone, or as we call it, a Department somewhere around the party for people to work on that part of the process. The zones are of course clearly labeled, and have their own instructions.

Then we broke down each step into a set of possible actions and put them on game-cards. (The game card set will become available in a future post.) People would pick up a card, do what it says, put their work back on the filing table, and it would be ready to be pushed to the next phase of the process.

Have fun Workin!

Ok, so about 100 people showed up and actually got to work. Can you believe it? Here’s some of them working when there was enough space to take pictures.

So what did we learn, & what can You use?

People will do what everyone else is doing if it looks fun. Here’s a few things that were critical to the success of the party as we could tell.

1. The office manager driving people to the work, and being very deadpan hilarious about the whole thing.
2. A small critical mass of people starting the work, so that as others arrive, the right course of action is clear. People seem to have no problem trying something new if it looks like other people are having a good time with it.
3. Incentives, its the beer and constant peer affirmation through joking about the money, joking about the drinks, and so on, that were able to drive some serious thinking and conversation.
4. Lots of easy starting points, that were challenging and open to interpretation, that have a high focus on individual opinion and values.
5. Good people.

Dont do…

Coffee break. We decided everybody needed a break a few hours in, and never got the momentum back. You can’t stop people from fraternizing once they start doing it on a mass scale, so be prepared to have your event slip from work mode to party mode at some point and just celebrate it rather than fight it.

Thanks to Eleni Alpous for photo-documenting the early parts of the evening, and check out her flickr for more shots. Open up the Google Doc if you’re interested in seeing some of the ideas and solutions in text-only format, of which our lovely intern Lauren painstakingly transcribed for us.

Good luck holding your own work party or collective action event, and just send an email over to us if you need any help or would like more details from ours.

Question: My business often does socially responsible work, and we lose money. Luckily we make good money elsewhere to support this. Am I doing a good thing?

Well, you’re not alone. All across the world companies do a “good thing”. They charge their good reliable paying clients market prices and turn a profit. Then along comes some great NGO, some genious startup, some altruistic charity, or somebody else who’s about to do something really good and they need the services. Catch is they don’t have the cash. Said company does some social arithmetic and comes to the conclusion that they can do the job at cost or slightly lower, because it will mean good things for society.

It seems like a good thing doesn’t it? Hells yea!!! At least at first…

Think about it like this: The company that feels the urge to be socially responsible is the one who ends up losing money for doing the right thing. Still sound like a good?

Even worse is that it’s often hidden! Disclosing you can get into trouble. Try saying this to a client “Yeah, we did work for these guys for cheap, but we gotta do it for you for full price.”, or ” We judged you, you’re not doing great things for the planet, you’re simply a gravy train for us, cha-ching!”

What is happening here is the silencing of good deeds, which we can probably agree should be celebrated & encouraged instead.
The question comes up: How can we work around this?

Two parts of the Problem:

1. The client doesn’t get a say in where their money goes
2. It’s often pretty fuzzy, and there are few legitimate economics in place.

Answer: The Non-Profit-Margin.

1. Client involvement in choosing where to spend the Non-profits.
2. A fund where X% of a job (the Non-Profit-Margin) is held.

The first can exist in many forms, like a list of general categories the client check off. A list of actual groups you’ve got lined up (a la good magazine), or already donated time & money to. A hotline where the client can refer organizations they think would benefit from your services with a specific dollar amount tied to the referral.

The second, is really not complicated at all. Ask your book-keeper to open a separate account at your bank to funnel the Non-Profits into. Keep a simple spreadsheet with each clients contribution into the fund, and the information collected from the client on where they’d like it to be spent. Then have some discipline when offering discounted services, by consulting the books and sharing them with the group getting the discount.

Lastly, tell everyone. Talk to your friends about it. E-mail your past clients, let organizations you’d like to help with. Tell all the future clients that come in the door, get your sales rep on-board, do whatever you can to let people know what you do is the shit.

With any luck, you and your band of Merry Men/Women will be on your way to invoicing the rich and discounting the poor with no quarrel from either!

The outstanding folks over at FITC have recently posted videos of 2007’s conference. Among them, the presentation entitled “You Can’t do Everything” by yours truly The Movement.

Download the presentation in pdf format, or, go check out all the presentations.

What is it about Other People’s Problems? As a designer, you listen to other companies problems, do some research, analyze them in great depth, and then synthesize a great solution to said problems. Sweet. Cha-Ching. Next!

But what about our own problems? We’re quick to talk about our own problems, complain about stuff, blather about current trials and tribulations. But when it comes down to it, do we really want to solve our own problems as much as we want to solve others?

Perhaps by spending more time helping others, you can ignore negative things about yourself. Perhaps by focusing on yourself, you may feel selfish and would rather be helping others! Perhaps something else altogether. But just ask yourself: How many times have you chosen to work on somebody else’s big problem rather than your own, which might even happen to be your own big idea…

Our favorite Japanese business intern, Takahiro, is making his way back to Japan. After spending 3 weeks with us, here’s what he has to say:

I had taken the Internship in The Movement for 3 weeks. It was the first time to do Internship in my life. I guess The Movement was the best place for me to take an Internship.

The people working here were kind, friendly and really professional. Their works are so remarkable and interesting. Their design and everything made me interested.

I was involved in a project which is called Mapping on the street. I liked this project so much because the project was helpful for many people. Although I could not complete the project, I got great experiences.

We also talked about business trade between Japan and Mexico. That was my assignment to do. Their opinion was skillful. It helped a lot to improve my assignment and my knowledge. I wish I could speak English more and discussed more deeply with them,. They are so attractive that I wanted to stay longer.

I feel thanks a lot to them, and my experience here in The Movement will surely connect to my future.

I will visit here again in the future. See you then.

Takahiro Matsumura
from Japan

It’s been pointed out more than once that designers do a crap job of explaining their services to clients. The result is often black box where money goes in and design comes out.

The remedy? Use big words.

I spend a lot of time speaking in plain English, making things accessible, and in every-day terms. Recently, at the Design Thinkers 07 conference, I had the pleasure of hearing some serious professionals explain how a few tweaks of language can command respect for all the things you probably already do.

Notably, Jenn & Ken Visocky O’Grady of Enspace made it clear that an item line of “Research” in an invoice is pretty much a joke. They made a serious case for what it means to break it up into the things we generally already do, such as “Media Scanning”, “Formative & Summative Studies”, “Triangulation & Convergence”. “Etic & Emic” ethnographic perspectives. “Literary Reviews”, “Primary vs. Secondary Research”, and so on and so forth.

In my youth, I would have gotten angry at this. No really, isn’t this bloody murder of the creative process?

Dissecting it like a helpless squirming animal on a table, to stripping away all of it’s beauty & mystique to tastelessly redress it with ass kissing corporate jargon for ignorant money-grabbing suits?

Just the opposite. These guys have learned the secret handshake: How to Articulate Value.

Fact is, big words can convey a lot. When my accountant uses words I don’t know to describe services I can’t perform and don’t specialize in, it highlights his specialty to me. It clearly articulates the value the accountant offers, so that I feel better about paying for their help.

Nutshell? Use nomenclature that conveys how special your specialized skills really are.

My original plan was to go down to New York and settle there right after graduation. But when Alan emailed me about a contract job at The Movement, I found myself sitting at their solid wood meeting table the very next day, showing my portfolio and talking about my passions. The studio space was inviting, the projects I were to be working on sounded promising, and the short-term commitment was perfect for my situation. I welcomed the opportunity.

When a designer joins a new studio, there is a bit of an adjustment period when both sides familiarize with each other’s process. This is especially the case in a small studio comprised of three or four people. As my first job coming out of school, I had to learn to take my personal style of working and make it accessible to others, so that there can be a constructive medium. I found that my experience working in a team for the York-Sheridan graduation show interface was invaluable in that respect.

As I learned more about the work at The Movement, I became intrigued by the harmonious variety of projects. There is a balanced mix of print and web design. There are two streams of projects. The first type is the more structured graphic design for corporate clients, which tend to fit within traditional forms of business promotion and commerce—the bread and butter. The other type covers the projects where there is no client, or where the studio is its own client. These are more conceptual, experimental forays with potential for social change and interaction. The combination of these two types of projects developed a well-rounded diet of practical and abstract thinking.

Despite the valuable lessons I learned in regards to business and design, I believe I’ll most cherish the conversations with Al and Pat—the silly, the philosophical, and everything in between. In the end, I had everything I could ask for—a paycheque, some portfolio pieces, a great experience, and a couple of solid friendships.