There is a phrase:ex nihilo nihil fit. It roughly translates from the Latin as “from nothing, nothing comes”. Generally, this is a true statement; you can’t create something from nothing. Unless you happen to be a designer.
We designers are in the business of creating something from nothing. A client has the need for something that does not yet exist. They have an idea of where they want to be (they want to introduce themselves to the world, they want to grow, they want to expand into a new market, they have a new product or service) but they aren’t there yet. It’s so far only an idea. I take hold of that idea, sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a drawing pencil and begin thinking in visible form. I call it thinking out loud. Doodles and quick sketches cover the page until things start to look like the something that does not exist. Except that it’s beginning to exist. The seed of an idea has been planted and it’s taking root on paper. It’s becoming tangible. I translate it onto my computer, bring it to maturity it and give it back to the client in completed form.
It’s kind of like faith in that faith is confidence in something that is not yet visible. I know it’s there. I believe in it. I do the work of fleshing it out until it is fully formed. I take ideas that cannot be seen and make the visible. It takes no faith to see what already exists. I need to look down the road in faith and envision what the client will be in due time and design to that end.
I get to imagine what is possible for my clients. I see them not as they are now but as they will be. I invest my time, thinking, imagination and creative effort in what does not yet exist. If I look only at where my client is positioned now, my work is futile. Since success is best measured over the long term, I need to anticipate a realistic future for them that is bigger than they are now. And they should expect to grow to fill the capacity of the design. Think of it this way: if the client is now a half cup of milk now but wants to be a half gallon of milk, the design has to accommodate the capacity of the half gallon, not the half cup.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “A mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions.” If he was correct, it can follow that an organization, a business and even a person, once stretched by design, will never return to their former state.
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