Designers are Singers

We’re not one-hit-wonders either. 

When people ask me what I would be if I wasn’t a designer — my response without any hesitation has always been “a singer.”

The ability to command an audience the way a great singer can — the passion in their voice and the soul they emit is incredibly powerful. For those three plus minutes, they have you — all of you. They control every string of your heart, every single emotion brewing inside of you. Singers erupt the soul. If they are one of the rarest of great singers — they will make you want to hear it again and again, because of what it has done to you.

The greatest of designers, I’d like to think, can command an audience just as well, moving your soul and holding your attention to see their masterpiece. They have the ability to own your heart, take you for a ride and make you feel things you may have never felt. The greatest of designers can create the harmonies of images and time, together shaping a moment worth repeating. The song of a great designer will entice you from the start with an encouraging visual beat, keep your attention with a gorgeous chorus of type and image, and end the moment with a silhouette of lines just worth repeating.

Great singers and great designers have so many parallels — it’s truly fantastic — and that makes me happy. The only real difference between them is that great designers can’t sell their work on iTunes.