Sometime earlier this year I stopped posting on LinkedIn. As many of you know I was relatively prolific with my ‘Mind Burps’ commentary on design and anything orbiting it. I’d been on there for years, and deliberately consistently for a handful of years leading up to this point.
But I decided to leave. Not in a flouncy way. Just quietly.
Admittedly I’d ‘left’ a few times before, but only temporarily. More for my own sanity than anything else. A bit of a breather if you will. It can tend to be a bit all consuming if you let it.
But this time I just put the phone down and didn’t pick it up again…metaphorically speaking. The stuff I was writing about: questions about the design industry, the trajectory of design, creative education, design leadership, were all landing a little differently to how they had before. Less conversation. More ambient agreement if not lobotomised apathy. Significantly less engagement, much less interaction. An echo chamber but with ineffective echo.
Some suggested it was the algorithm. Maybe. Whatever the reason, it all felt a little bit futile. The connection I found through my commentary and discourse that made it feel worthwhile, drained away or was deliberately hidden from me.
But whilst it may have been partially a platform problem, it also felt like a bit of a signal (don’t worry…no tin foil hats here). And I’ve been around the houses enough times to – if not recognise the signal – at least acknowledge that it is there and take it seriously.
If you’ve read any of my articles with any regularity, you might have noticed a few threads running in parallel. These haven’t been deliberately ‘threaded’ but I have noticed them in hindsight.
A thread about the design industry. The effort reward equation quietly tipping, design drifting from the decision table to the back room, talented people leaving not because they stopped caring but because the container was the wrong shape. I’ve written about this at length…quite some length as you can probably attest.
A thread about life stage. How stuff shifts around as your kids get older and you become less of a day to day parent. The flexibility and freedom that surprisingly starts to open up, combined with the parental version of altitude sickness that comes with it.
A thread about purpose. What I actually think I want to do. Where to place my skills, instinct and experience in a way that brings me joy (I’m wincing whilst channeling my inner Marie Kondo) but more importantly has impact and relevance. Not simply commercially, but holistically.
About a year ago, I wrote a private article and sent it to a select group of people I know, trust and respect. People who knew me well enough to be honest, who had worked with me closely enough to know what I might be able to offer and those who might nudge me towards things I may not have previously considered. I needed people to help me figure out what Chapter 3 needed to – or could – look like. Challenge me or force me to be brutally honest.
So started a phase of exploration and conversation. I looked at lots of different opportunities. Some suggested by others. Some of my own doing. Some published. Some entirely under the radar.
Some suggested creative education, given how much I’ve written about it. If you are going to moan about it, then maybe try to fix it from the inside? Some suggested incubator style environments, helping science and technology startups find their commercial and creative feet in places where design is needed but rarely present. I explored the digital ‘product design’ space where my experience might usefully ballast faster, younger – sometimes slightly feral – teams. A few suggested the ‘not for profit’ sector where outcomes really matter and design can add significant service value. I had a few conversations with a few of the deep tech Cambridge consultancies, where there’s a tendency for user empathy work to be orphaned from the engineering juggernauts. And a few people suggested I dip my toe in the high-growth, fast innovation, hardware startup space where stakes are real and decisions need to be quick and bold.
I genuinely explored all of these, and to varying degrees of depth.
Some fizzled out immediately as they often do. Some didn’t quite fit expectations or felt in contradiction to my own stance. Some went deeper but didn’t align on timings or principles. For some there was just a disconnect between what they wanted and what I could offer.
What did become clear was that those options that most resembled ‘design’ as I’ve come to know it, felt the least enticing, which was an interesting learning in itself. As discussed in my Chapter 3 musings, I have little desire to step back into ‘agency land’ where my seniority and ‘cost’ would result in my being a bit of a sales donkey.
Two things, specifically, seem to have run their course.
The first is the endless drive to convince. Getting people to part with money for magic beans. Things that are intangible until they exist and only fully understood once they can be seen, felt and handled. It runs through agency life like water and I’ve learned that I’m pretty good at it and can make a connection when it is required. But it is relentless (as many have cited in this recent article) and can eat away at you. I no longer wish to be primarily and professionally defined by it, and given the current state of the industry as I see it, it feels like its moving from ‘polite negotiation’ to something resembling ‘street fighting’. I’ve got less appetite for that blood sport right now.
The second is what you might call ‘altitude’. Agency life, by its own rules of engagement necessitates circling at a certain level. You arrive, you contribute, you move on. The client holds the deep knowledge, and you hold the process. For sure your input and contributions are meaningful, sometimes step changing and often welcomed (mostly), but there’s a level of knowledge that you will simply never get the opportunity to develop before the ‘profit clock’ rings its time. I’ve been craving what lies beneath for some time. The opportunity to dig and dive deeper to further my knowledge and follow a question all the way down.
There’s a third thing, which I’ll attempt to keep brief as it’s something I’ve spoken about many times before. My daughters. For twenty plus years, the primary lens through which I have measured and judged every career decision has been them and the impact any job, business or opportunity has had on my ability to be ‘present’. Available. Not simply as a provider but as someone who wants to be as much a part of their lives as I can possibly be. It wasn’t something I was forced or ‘guilted’ into – just a self imposed set of constraints I used to evaluate if something feels off or needs changing.
But both my kids are at University now. They are both adults meaning these constraints have changed somewhat. Not gone, just shape shifted.
So these three things have been playing on my mind for a while.
And they’ve led somewhere specific.
I’ve recently accepted a role with Össur (part of Embla Medical), experts in prosthetic and orthotic devices. I’ll be working between the UK and Iceland, leading a small team focussed on the future of device technology through a user-centred, proof-by-prototyping lens. I start in August.
Doing. Digging. Discovering.
But this time things feel a little bit more real. The stakes are tangible. Not that they weren’t before, but agency folk are always one step removed from the gritty realities of delivery, much as we’d love to be closer. It’s just how it is. What makes agency life exciting is the very thing that often limits its penetration. We serve. We are bought. We advise. We have no real ability to control the real outcome.
This feels different. I’ll be closer to what I’m solving. The people engineering it, building it, marketing it, understanding it, selling it, regulating it, fitting it and dreaming it will all be in the building. Desk neighbours. There’s no room to hide. I don’t get to walk away from the client presentation this time.
It feels uncomfortable. But not in a bad way. Like the feeling you get when you’ve been shoehorned into a harness, lashed to a zip line and safety checked 4 times by a ‘dude’ in wraparound sunglasses. You are dangling there, staring at 3000m of empty metal wire stretching ahead of you and a precipitous rocky drop falling away beneath your belly. You can just about see the other side with tiny ant like figures waving with encouragment. You know it’s going to be fun. Exhilarating even. You will talk about it for months and years to come. But right now, your stomach is churning, your eyes are a bit blurry, you can’t help but catastrophise and it takes all your effort to smile and feign happiness.
But you know it’s gonna be amazing. And it is. And you look back when the ants become human scale and your nether regions are recovering from the garrotting harness… and smile. A smile of accomplishment and relief and reinstated self-belief.
I’ve only ever known ‘consultancy’, save for a very brief stint at the start of my career, which was more a lesson in survival than anything else.
This new chapter hopefully allows me to leverage (I hate that word) what 30 years in agency land has given me, whilst simultaneously feeding me significantly more to learn. With more depth, less hustle-level selling and working with bona fide geniuses (genii?). It feels a little unsettling leaving consultancy behind, and I’ve asked some of the people I will be working with to call me up if I ever fall into agency habits that need calling out. Best of luck with that.
During one of the interviews I was asked how I felt about “…no longer doing industrial design?” as the role is not a ‘design’ role. Having thought about my Chapter 3 for some time now, I’m entirely OK with this. I’m not wedded to ID as it stands.
I like solving. With people. For people. That’s it.
For sure, ‘design’ will always be in my blood but I don’t need it to continue.
Speaking of continuation, Four Beards does so as a vehicle for mentoring and advisory work in whatever form doesn’t tread on Össur’s toes. And obviously as a home for my writing, which I hope to continue.
TTFN.
PS. You’ll notice that the rest of the Four Beards site hasn’t quite caught up with this article yet. It will. Bear with me.
