The Designer as a Lover of Justice
The question I have gotten most often this year, from clients, students, colleagues and friends is:
How can we make social impact through our work?
Throughout 2021, whether speaking with design directors or undergraduate students, the question of social impact came up around all kinds of projects, from the simplest digital services, to large environmental designs. During this second year of global pandemonium, I felt a sense of urgency greater than any I have experienced hanging around design circles over the past two decades. There is a sincere desire for change in the way we do what we do.
Simultaneously, in my personal life, I found myself more and more grateful for the daily centering practices that have helped me to maintain clarity and focus throughout my career. As the year ended I was inspired to share one of these practices — tarot card reading — with my coaching clients. Tarot of the Working Woman allows me to combine my tarot practice of twenty years with design leadership coaching. This new approach has been a revelation. The cards help to create a space with my clients where conversations about design leadership can extend beyond theory and technique, to cover questions of a designer’s deepest motivation and ethics, and even how we take care of our bodies while we work.
To reflect upon my year’s biggest question, I am drawing two tarot cards from the Salvador Dali deck:
In these strange times, how can we, as designers, make social impact through our work?
The Lovers: The role of the designer
This card suggests that the role of designers is to lead with love. This is not the same as the romance, fast talking, seductive sleight of hand that we often bring to our work with clients. Instead, there is a painful sincerity in The Lovers. This is a mature love. There is a willingness to listen to the other, to mirror and reflect the other, to acknowledge the other’s brightest brights, and shadowy depths. This person can face the pain, sit patiently with their discomfort. The Lovers is plainspoken: “I care for you because I care for myself. I see myself in you. And I want you to see into me. I am here for the long-haul. I am committed to showing up to this work everyday, bringing my whole self. I will reach you, no matter how far away you are. I am a friend, I am a partner. And because I love you, I will not lie. I create a space between us, where we can tell each other the truths that we might not otherwise be able to say.”
Justice: The action to be taken
This card points first to the need for clarity in negotiation. Clear contracts, developed in good faith relationships, with the aim of creating balance between all concerned. There is a judge’s concern with determining the facts of the case, and the sense that small details can hold the weight of the world. Justice has an eye for correcting what is out of balance, but she goes further than pointing and saying “hey, that’s not fair.” Balanced on one foot in the center of the storm, she asks: “How do we live a decent life in a world that is so unfair, where the suffering is so imbalanced?”
Making social impact right now
Imagine being a person who is connected to the source of their joy. Imagine bringing this source of joy and love to your work. It would be infectious. And what if your commitment were to build lasting relationships with colleagues, with clients, with users and all who might be touched by your work?
As a designer, you are plainspoken. You speak the truth with love and clarity, because you have an eye for the beauty in justice, for the elegant dignity that it takes to live in an unjust world. You are a person who inspires trust and loyalty. Working from inside your hard-won relationships of love and friendship, everything becomes possible.
