Last year, I had enough.
In my final year of eligibility, after years of trying, I was refused by the Art Directors Club the title of “Young Gun.” My 31st birthday came and went. I would not be knighted. I was not only not good enough, but now I was too old.
My 31st birthday couldn’t have come at a better time. Given a few more years, I would have proudly gone on spending money on entry fees to become a Young Gun. And it wasn’t so much the losing that got me, but the money I tossed away to have someone judge me unworthy. Is there anything worse than paying to be kicked? Of course, “Young Guns” aren’t just named by anyone. The money goes to be kicked by a boot of exquisite taste.
So we all pay. The winners and the not-winners. But after looking at my checkbook, I decided I just could not financially afford to try to garner design achievements any longer. So I retired from design recognition.
Then a funny thing happened.
My design work ended up in a museum. A big museum. And that big museum had a big show: National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt.
And it didn’t cost me a dime.
I was tickled. Really. So tickled that I hopped a plane on some short notice and went to see it in person over the holiday. It was humbling to see my work amongst the design disciplines that I would argue “matter” a lot: architecture, industrial design, robotics, and Google.
But there it was: a silkscreened poster of a handgun with a corncob barrel.
In The Smithsonian, folks.
Filed, strangely, under “The People’s Design Awards” web site. Good enough for me. That sounds better than “Young Gun,” I think. “Young gun” sounds immature and out-of-touch. A “People’s Design Award” sounds like my work matters to everyday people.
Then another funny thing happened.
That afternoon I helped a friend move some boxes to her apartment. As we crossed busy Houston Street, we heard a loud boom. In the middle of the intersection, as we crossed, we noticed the manhole next to us was open and emitting six feet of blue flame. Soon Houston Street was closed, the fire trucks arrived, and the manhole cover was found two feet into the earth a block away.
And I was being interviewed with my friend for the 11 O’Clock news in New York City.
I saw something happen. A random event. My words “Six feet of blue flame” were shoved under the eyelids of millions. For a moment, my story (and my new Oregon beard) was known to many.
I was “Jimm Lasser. Eyewitness.” I was not “Jimm Lasser. People’s Design Award Winner.”
Nor, to the public, would I ever be.
If a designer wins something, does anyone give a shit?
I really don’t know. Real people do not read Print, ID, CA, Eye. Real people don’t know what a Young Gun is.
Real people do go to museums; however, and I think my bearing witness to another CoEd fuck up is more notable to them.
So why do we spend all this money chasing the dream to have our work in these magazines if we are really just showing off to each other? Because the recognition is what feeds the beast: it generates more business, it helps you get a better job, it writes the history of the craft. It is the carrot. And we need carrots. Carrots make it all worthwhile.
At the airport I received a text message from a designer I used to work with in New York. I think it put my weekend of triumph as the “People’s Designer” in perspective:
“Hey Grizzly Adams, I saw you on News 4. Who was the blonde in the hat?”
so...who was the blonde in the hat?
On Jan.04.2007 at 12:14 PM