Building Community
Based on the Story of TypeThursday
Thomas Jockin, organizer of TypeThursday, had the pleasure to speak about the fundamentals of building community at the type design conference TypeCon last week. Below is a summarization of the concepts and process to foster stronger bonds in your life.
In NYC? Join us as we share work-in-progress letterform projects and grab some type swag from R-Typography. Proudly hosted by the Type Director’s Club.
September 22, 2016
6:00–9:30 PM
Type Directors Club
RSVP for Free
In SF? Join our new chapter of typethursday. All the letterform love, now on the west coast.
September 15th
6:00–9:00pm
SF Center for the Book
RSVP for Free
Starting in August 2015, Typethursday has grown from 3 people at a bar to a cultural force in the metro New York area, online and now, in San Franisico. In the one year since starting I have found significant improvements in my professional practice from building community.
I’m here to share with you what I learned building TypeThursday so far. By the end of this talk, you’ll have the fundamental steps to build your own community. You build community in three steps.
Appreciation
Set a timer to 10 minutes. On paper, lost out everyone you’ve related with in the last year. Friends, family, clients, classmates, mentors. If you had an interaction with them, write their name down.
Now, next to each name, write out one thing you value about that person. It can be as profound as “inspiration to become a designer” or as simple as “enjoy conversations”
Write an appreciation note to each person and send it to them. Try to customize the note to your skillet and resources at hand. I used a type specimen promotion as a vehicle to send the notes. When I asked for my contact’s mailing address, I asked what their favorite word is. I set the specimen in that word, wrote my note in the back, and mailed it out. You can read more about this project in an earlier post.
The entire point of this exercise is to be proactive in how you relate to others. Giving the gift of appreciation requires only your intentions. It is the coin to proceed to the next step in building community.
Understanding
People come with an individual context of their life circumstances, how they interpret that context, and what they focus on. Story is the way we share with one another our context, meaning and focus. By showing appreciation for people, the price is paid to enter a conversation with that individual.
Say you enjoyed a fellow designers’ aesthetic. What inspired that point of view? Was there something in their childhood that influenced that perspective? Why did they choose to become a designer? These are questions you can ask to seek to understand where your fellow designer is coming from. Asking simple questions and actively listening opens a treasure chest of an persons possibilities, priorities, and values.
As you’re having these conversations, seeking to understand the people you know, are there overlapping themes? Things that are repeated across various people? Do these people have similar aspirations?
In my case, I noticed a repeated theme: A deep love for letterforms; they were aspiring designers to become a better; to have the critique culture that was in our education but lost once we entered the workforce.
It’s the traditional needs development process in sales, but without the grimness. There was a need and TypeThursday was invented to serve that need. All from connecting with people and understanding where they were coming from. But those are the two steps of building community. There’s a last step.
Trust
While appreciation and understand are done by any individual, trust is created only between two or more people. Trust is the gift given to the organization by participates if the principles and values promised are delivered. As you organize a community, the success or failure of that structure is totally dependent on the leadership. If the principles and values of the organizers do not align with the project, it will fail. The trust entrusted to the organization will be taken back.
When trust is created, people will tell their friends about the organization. They will share your links. They will volunteer to help with the project. You and your organization become influential. Success for oneself comes from being devoted to the success of others.
While there are many steps to creating community, these three steps I have shared are the foundation to begin. It is a learnable skill that I encourage all of you who have read this far into the essay to learn. Building a community of three, three thousand or three million all start with the one.
That one person can be you.
Do you live in NYC or SF? Come meet fellow letterform lovers, have some drinks and share work-in-progress letterform projects RSVP to attend.
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