What design has done for me

When I was 19, I stumbled on the knowledge that there was an occupation called Design. This momentous discovery made me feel like I had won the lottery. Designing was something that I did instinctively, and if I could get paid for doing it, than I had found my life’s work. Even before I knew what it was officially called, I knew I had some talent for it. I’d been practicing since I was very young.

The circumstances of my youth were such that I spent a lot of time in church. The pews were hard and the sermons interminable. What’s a boy to do? I imagined the pulpit in a configuration that was more pleasing to my young mind and eye.

Then the pews and the light fixtures overhead benefited from my reconsiderations. And, once I was done with the interior, there was a whole parking lot of cars that could only be improved by my design (daydreaming) ideas. This got me though some hard times (the pews).

As a young adult proprietor of a store, I imagined jewellery and clothes that I couldn’t buy from my wholesalers. So I sourced materials, I sketched up, or mocked up ideas, I found small short-run shops, and then what I had imagined showed up in my store. I came to loath retail, but my reflections on the satisfactions that I found in the activities of designing and making stuck with me. Once I realized that this was a legitimate occupation, my life took a turn for the better.

I don’t have the capacity as a writer to adequately describe the excitement that accompanied me to design school. I had gone to pre-secondary school in the northwest corner of Alberta and our curriculum wasn’t burdened with useless courses like art, so I felt myself to be at somewhat of a disadvantage. But I was determined and very motivated. I felt like I was absorbing my instruction throughout my whole being; I practically vibrated with what I was learning.

Whereas I had always been somewhat aware of my surroundings and curious about the material world, I now knew who had designed what, who had taught whom, who had painted what, why things were made the way they were and all sorts of other useful things. Nothing would ever again look as it had before I learned to see things with my educated eyes. It was easy for me to imagine myself becoming a member of this privileged group.

My life was expanded exponentially. Nothing I looked at, touched, tasted, or even thought about would ever be the same. My horizons were, literally, expanded. With my fellow students, I visited other cities, like New York and Washington. I went to the great museums and stores. I started acquiring design-specific books and I read all the design magazines I could find. My life was transformed.

Looking back on this now, I’m struck by how fortunate I was, to discovery an activity that meant so much to me. I was suited to it and it was, by wonderful coincidence, suited to me. I’ve managed to make by living by doing what I loved. This living wasn’t always easy or particularly remunerative, but there were periods what things clicked like I had imagined that they would and I thrived in every way. I’m not rich or famous, but I feel like I am represented by a respectable body of work.

I have met and interacted with a very diverse set of characters, from the wise and generous to the mean and treacherous. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because of the diversity of activities that are associated with designing things, and making them, and getting them to market, I’ve had to learn a great deal about a very wide range of occupations and skills. And I have been enriched by all of them too.

Something I had not anticipated, as the young don’t think this far ahead, was how fresh the world of design remains for me to this day. I regard much of what gets published by the design press as often a bit silly, but so what? It’s wonderful that the young have the energy to try new things, however doubtful the conclusions might turn out to be. I’m happy to still be able to, and want to, cheer them on.

Paul Epp is a professor at OCAD University, and former chair of its Industrial Design Department.