I recently spent some time with my good friend Matt Wagoner who took a job working for Sameritan's purse up in Boone, NC earlier this year. We were catching up on work and how he's figuring out his place at work, and I started thinking about where I'll be in a year from now.
Graduated and moving on, where will I be headed? Here's my top 5 (in no particular order):
1. New York City
might as well be grad school for a designer, the top of the industry, the city that never sleeps, the most exciting place to be, and I LOVE being there. Especially because it looks like my sister and her husband will be there a while. And you can't necessarily go back and do the whole New York thing once you're used to being a grown up somewhere else.
2. CALIFORNIA
matt and I discussed the west coast a lot, how each of us love the relaxed, outdoor oriented lifestyle, the climate, the landscape, the people, the work culture, and even the culture of social responsibility and social justice and environmental conservation. I think I'd buy a hybrid car and have a dog if I lived out there, and those aren't based on stereotypes, but two things I'd really like to do, but I don't see myself doing as easily elsewhere. Gabe agrees it would be pretty sweet too, and admits that the 4 days he spent there with me last summer were enough to win him over.
3. Cayce, SC: open a design studio
I've been thinking a lot about how much I want to be able to travel, and especially I could see myself returning to Africa for different periods of time, meaning I need to have somewhere as 'home' that's not ridiculously expensive and I think I could do okay with that in Columbia/Cayce. I've been dreaming about finding some old but really sturdy building--industrial and abandoned--and putting a new roof on it, cutitng out skylights, and putitng in a really great collaborative design environment. You don't need to be in the middle of the city to be a design firm, though it would be best to be just across the bridge into Cayce or West Columbia, if my address is not going to be Columbia. Anyways, owning real estate in this area is not a bad idea, and I would potentially try to buy a house in the Avenues in Cayce and own my design space in Cayce too, each of which could be rented out for more than enough to pay the mortgage. This would give me the freedom to travel and the capital to start something when I come home.
4. Passion World Tour
This one makes me really nervous to talk about because I need to get on it right away...Passion Conferences is going worldwide and I really like everything they do in their conferences. They push college students out of complacency and teach direct Biblical truths that apply to contemporary life. They are very very good at design and production, too, which especially to me is a great testimony to the fact that Christians aren't dumb people and that you don't have to trade your brain or taste for your salvation. I would love to be a contributing member to their team, helping with logistics, travel, setup, and on demand design, creatively solving problems and utilizing resources at whatever site the tour progresses to. Like I said, this makes me nervous because I need to talk to them very soon, and I'm pretty sure they do all of their design as an outsource thing, so I don't know if they'd even consider me, but it would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that just so happens to line up pretty closely to my graduation from college.
5. Charleston, SC: snobby design in the charming south
Charleston is one of my favorite places in the south. It is where I want to end up living, with the charm of downtown, the beauty of the beaches, and the greatest people in the country. I love the culture of the city and the people who live there and the general feel for design in the city is a pretty snobby crowd, who would at least appreciate what I'd be doing, and a rich enough clientelle to support something a bit more high end. The only problem is breaking into the market. Point of interest, though: David Carson, an incredibly popular designer, lives in Charleston with his family and has an office both in Charleston and NYC. Something to aspire to I guess...
All of these are just my immediate plans for right after graduation and do not at all take into consideration the fact that I want to settle down and have a family eventually, and to be a professor at some school in the south, teaching design (=go back to grad school later)...maybe I'll teach at a school that doesn't have a great program so I could help make it something...
