A couple of months ago we listened to a TED talk called ‘Start with why’ by Simon Sinek (if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch). It’s a great talk, very interesting, and inspirational. In essence, Simon talks about having passion and purpose. It got us thinking about why we do what we do.
”People will follow you, people will buy into what you do because of why you do it, not how you do it. If you share why you do what you do, it will attract businesses and people who believe what you believe.
Simon Sinek
Back in 2010, we had just launched K&i and we were putting together graphics for our website (strict HTML, no responsiveness around at that time!). We wanted to communicate our passion and hands-on approach, so we experimented with light, shadows and paper cut outs. It was very fitting, and perfectly illustrated what we were all about.
A few years later, here we are, and it’s time to think about the ‘Why’ again. It is so easy to get stuck in day-to-day routines that we forget to stop and reflect. I think that’s why Stefan Sagmeister takes a 1-year sabbatical every 7 years (also a great TED talker if you’re looking).
Why we do what we do
Why do we do graphic design? It is a great, and somewhat simple, question to ask, but the answer isn’t always so straightforward or easy to formulate. For creatives, it is often a personal reasoning for why we do what we do, but the same thinking can be applied to any business.
We do it because we love it, but why do we love it? For us, the short answer to that question is that it gives us the opportunity, in our opinion, ’to make the world a better place’. Might sound a bit pretentious, but we believe that design has the ability to change the world for the better. It’s obvious that design can make us feel, and for that reason, design can have an impact. Bad design for that reason can have a negative impact on society, same as good design can change things for the better. At the same time, good or effective design can also be used in a bad way, which is a different topic altogether… (Worth reading Tobias van Schneider’s blog post about ethics in design, ‘Can good design be bad design?’)
”We believe that design has the ability to change the world for the better.
K&i
To have purpose gives us the driving factor to push that little bit extra, which sees us working through the night on occasions. It is this passion for creating good work that fuels our beings, which in turn can help transform mediocre work to great work. It is this purpose that makes us get up in the morning.
We ask ourselves: “Can this project have a positive impact? Is it a good team to work with? Will we have fun doing it?” Why? Because it’s important for us to ‘love what we do’. If you love what you do, you do better work. At the end of the day, we are here to give our clients good looking, exciting work, and return on their investment, so we need to make sure we always deliver to our best abilities. And who said you can’t have fun doing it? We say, how can you not?!
