I want to start by saying I’m a professional designer. I possess a broad range of skills with the fields of visual communication and interaction design. I’m also very good at it. I got good at it because I loved the work. For 10 years or so I thought of little else other than design. Problems of layout, typography, message, idea, and execution came to me as I woke and stuck with me until I fell asleep. It never felt like a job or a chore, it was all I wanted to do and I’d have done it for free.

But something changed. At some point design became a job and little else. I started earning more money, and I started to do it for money. Of course it pretty much always earned me money but that used to be secondary to wanting to do the work. I still have moments of that in side projects, where I charge very little. I know the work will fulfil me, so the money becomes more of a token of commitment to the project as opposed to a genuine exchange of expertise for value.

In design, as in several other fields ‘tech’ is where you can most easily find higher paying work. A product designer working at a technology startup will more often earn more than a graphic designer working at an agency. One is not better than the other, and a designer may be equally fulfilled doing work in either field depending on their preference. I sort of stumbled into product. The web intrigued me, and the more I worked in the world of functional digital services and applications the more I wanted my work to mean something and help someone do something.

I thought, perhaps naively, that the technology and this higher plain of meaning went hand-in-hand. That I was entering an endless grove of trees from which I could pick fulfilling fruit. I soon learned that as in other fields of design there are projects with meaning, impact, and purpose, and there are many others that are simply a means to an end, where the end is often to make someone more money.

All that to say. Most designers want to work in service of the user. Very few projects are truly aligned to this purpose. I know this thinking is problematic. Design does not exist in a bubble, I’m a product person and I understand there is a balance required between user need and business wants. But the more I work in the field the less I see the set of scales tipping in the direction of user need.

A great designer must understand business. Someone proclaimed that to be a thing, it struck a chord with many, and designers stepped out of their lane to learn about business. The more I learned about business, the more I wanted to un-learn. I don’t have the stomach for it. The vast sums of money blow my mind, the way it moves between parties makes no sense, the reasons people exchange it seem perplexing, and the ease with which it can slip away makes me feel uneasy. Business is money, and I have never been a fan of money.

In the metropolis of design, I wandered down an alley only to realise it’s a dead-end rather than a passage to a plaza. I could continue to dwell in the alleyway, it’s a little dark here and there’s a bad smell. When its raining money it seems to flow and collect in here and from time to time it helps me forget the stench.

I see two paths forward. Path one is actually neither a path nor a move forward. It is to stay here, in the dark alley of business-driven design. I can enjoy ‘the returns’ but at the expense of detaching myself from the work. This path is no better than the one I could have chosen years ago. The job-is-a-job path. The work to live path. I didn‘t think I was heading here but in a town of many intersecting streets wrong turns are easily made.

Path two seems clear but it may easily be another wrong turn. Search for work that is either not business/profit-driven, or is more aligned with purpose. I see many designers searching for this. Aligning their practices and mission statements in the hope of attracting opportunities that are more meaningful. Perhaps we’re all fools, crawling our tired bodies towards a distant, glistening oasis when it may be only be a mirage. Or worse, the oasis exists but when we get there we realise the water is stagnant.

Perhaps money is what ruined design for me. Now that I’m a salary-man, with bills and dependents it seems almost impossible to find that same feeling that I once felt towards design. The me that woke and fell asleep with it on my mind, the me that relished Monday mornings. Perhaps a new muse must take design’s place.