To exist is to change...

Katty Barac is a professional designer, or more specific a designer for lightning. But until she figured that out, she had go on circles, repeatedly. Katty Barac talked to us about finding your own passion, your own identity in the design world – at least for a while, before you refocus.

She described everything in life as a circular journey, which could be described as

Focus – express – be valued – fear – assess – repeat…

Focus on a subject, a theme, an area, on moral issue, on a problem.

The express yourself in this theme, get engaged and try.

Eventually, you will master this theme, and you will be valued for it. That’s the comfortable time. You can lean back for a while and enjoy the harvest of good work.

But at some point, you’ll start to become un-patient, you’ll start to fear and you will re-orientate and focus again.

To express and be valued by producing something Great, it is useful to look at Katty’s definition of great design:

Great Design is Design which encompasses both a practical and an emotional element.

The practical part could be seen as the design component, the dissatisfaction about how things work and the improving of products.

The emotional element could be seen as the arte component, the search for beauty and meaning.

Both of these components have to be ‘focused’ on, to understand the motivation behind your design. What do I want to solve? And why do I want to solve it?

If you defined your motivation, it is much easier to define yourself, which in return makes it easier to explain and sell yourself to others.

But, most importantly, this is an endless cycle. You will define yourself for a while, but at some point you’ll have changed enough, that you feel you have to focus again. And that is life, how Henry Bergson defines it:

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

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