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- 23 January, 2012 -
- Economics -
- Tags : economy, marketplace, meaning, personal identity, purpose, work
- 3 Comments
I am just sick to my teeth of client work. I’m not even sure any more if it’s the right way to work any more. A couple of things have led me to that.
First: I’m up to my nose in cause-related work from some organizations traditionally thought of as the ones advocating for The Common Good. Unfortunately, neither is doing much of interest when compared against the larger backdrop of the social web, neither really gets why they should be, and the work they’re asking us to do is, in the long run, disappointingly workaday—a fact made even more disappointing by my conscious decision to chase a clientele I thought could advocate social good. Every time we make a recommendation countering something we find ill-advised, the result is meetings, conference calls, requests for approvals from higher-ups, and then nothing interesting. Few people are willing to try anything new, even with a complete roadmap laid out. Fewer understand what they stand to lose if they don’t try something new, and even less than that understand that it’s harmless to try something new. In short, I’m a little burned out with billing for meetings that amount to not much.
Secondly: We’re working for a restaurant called Yusho lately, a turn that’s making me reconsider my market composition. Chef Matthias Merges, who’s been working for years owns Yusho, but it’s his first property under his own steam—previously, he was chef de cuisine for Charlie Trotter’s, and as such essentially trained a huge number of younger chefs now making a splash at other restaurants around town. The people flocking to him are other cooks from other restaurants. So this means: the people building the hype are other practitioners. (Here’s a link to Yusho’s Facebook page, which is largely populated by local chefs.) Those same people are the ones spending money on his food.
Basically, this is going to create a ripple effect for the restaurant. Since these chefs are all talking in public about eating at Yusho, their own fans are seeing it. Those fans are going to take advice from the chefs, and then those people will start talking. And so on and so forth.
Wonder how this would work in design, without the path to public mass-popularity? I doubt the ripple effect from designer to design fan would be nearly as broad as it is in the restaurant community—but even the base notion of designers buying designers’ work is interesting. Would it simply end up with with a smaller economic community of designers financing other designers’ posters, clothing, typeface files, and so on? I’d love to know the dollar amount designers already spend on designer-created objects. If the design community is anything like the food community, the biggest fans are the ones already making their own blend, and hungry to try others’. Heaven knows Society6 is full of lovely things for designers’ fans.
This addresses something bubbling in the broader scheme of American culture too—the importance and meaning of work. Everyone likes the notion of being able to attach some greater meaning to their work, some way to get some self-worth from their occupation. But increasingly, that’s not viable.
So what would happen if workers and craftspeople began to leave the larger economy and focused on closely-held customer pools? Would we see a community of microeconomies flourishing for shorter periods of time, and under different rules? Would it be more conducive to a learning process, if we were freer to jump from vocation to vocation, knowing we had a pool of purchasers already in place? I’d love to know how to leave client work behind.
Maybe that should be my 2012 project to cure my overall disenchantment.
We’ve been talking about this a lot in the context of our new startup.
This post pushes me to think on two tracks. The first is the cost (opportunity and morale-wise) of taking work that is not the kind of work you want to do. This is the deal with client work. You can bill for it, as you note.
The other is the benefit of working with people you respect doing work that is challenging to everyone on the team. In my read of your description of the chef community – there’s a spirit of support, collaboration, and peer reward for doing something new. I know it sounds cliche, but that’s the kind of growth everyone wants in their work no matter their chosen vocation.
So the trick is aligning the two. I guess this is all a long way of saying i appreciate your post and I’m trying to think about the same things. Thanks for writing.
I too have been having similar thoughts, and have also determined that I’m not taking client work this year (although I still have some things to finish from last year) unless it’s extremely interesting or extremely lucrative. I had a really shitty year last year, taking more kill fees than ever before, and it totally wore me down.
So, with some trepidation and the uncertainty of “self-directed projects” I’m planning on making an attempt to leave client work behind and see if it actually is viable. Furthermore, although I don’t usually give advice, I’ve counselled a friend to do the same!
we actually had to threaten a client—a VERY well-known designer—with legal action for nonpayment. he stopped paying for no reason whatsoever. took us a solid year to get paid. last check got here yesterday.
talk about soul-shredding.