If you look back into the archives of this blog, you’ll find it all started as a way for for a grad student (me) to learn about Design in Philadelphia. Not long before, Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class was published and I was determined to defy the brain drain trend that so afflicted the City of Brotherly Love. With several major art/design programs at some of the nation’s best universities in Philly I couldn’t make sense of the masses of creative grads wandering away. Did they leave because of a knee jerk reaction, or was there really nothing here for them at all?
So I explored. I attended events. I took pictures and made friends, connections, colleagues… I volunteered. And I got one, two, three, four jobs in art, design, and marketing. (Sometimes all three at once.) I wrote about these things, and sometimes, for long periods of time, I didn’t. But I never stopped exploring and learning. And I’m still here, in Philadelphia, and I love this city. I won’t be here forever, but it will always be my home town… Shucks.
But enough about me. Why are you here? Are you an designer, an artist, or maybe an architect? Can’t get enough of news-innovation-design-architecture-marketing? Geeky things. (Is Facebook wearing you thin? Me too.) You probably have something to say. A perspective, a voice. Maybe you work somewhere that recognizes it, maybe you don’t. But you continue down this path of design all the same. You love it, how could you not when you work long crazy hours and think of nothing else? When you forget to eat and instead work out the tiniest little details, not for your studio director, not for the client, and really, not even for yourself… But rather, because it needed to be done. The design demanded it.
And you listened.
Which is why you’re here.
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