There are two kinds of graphic design pieces: usability and marketing. My portfolio focuses first on usability pieces. I’ve done marketing pieces, but I don’t tend to keep them.

Usability is not just for technology, but the word is commonly applied to computers. A machine that becomes like an extension of your fingers is a thing of beauty. Some software makes you feel like you have palsy. Ever get that feeling? That’s probably because the person who paid for it is somewhere higher than you in the company and will never have to use it, so they don’t even know it’s difficult to use. But I love finding a new piece of really usable software. I don’t even care what it’s for, I’ll use it just to get that feeling, that it’s just an extension of my body, it’s made for users to use!

You’re looking for information, somebody creates a publication for you. An annual report, a schedule book, a dictionary. Your attention is in limited supply, so it’s like a form of currency. The creator of the book has no need to grab your attention, because you want something and you’re going to go hunt for it in that book. You’re pushing, you’re not being pulled by somebody’s message. And what if it’s laid out in such a way that you find it, like an extension of your memory? That’s usability, and that’s a happy user. I’ll tell you what sir, I’ll tell you what ma’am, it’s a day like that to make my heart sing.

You know what users don’t seek after? Ads. Billboards. Direct mail. Unwanted messages.

Marketing pollutes your information ecology, and sir, ma’am, I don’t want to do that to you. I’ve made a piece of paper with ink on it, and held it in my hands, and known the sadness of having paved paradise to put up a parking lot. I don’t mean I had a “creative vision” and somebody tampered with it. No, I’m not attached to any creative vision, it has nothing to do with that, it has to do with my users. I mean that there were times in my career when I was paid to make a document which was anti-user because it was intended to be. I don’t want to use my talent to make something if I wish it didn’t exist. Too much marketing is defective by design. Annoying users by attracting their attention– no, by confiscating their valuable attention with a message they don’t want, about something I don’t use myself, is no way to live out my life. I don’t sell, I evangelize. That means if you don’t want anything I advocate, you can go on your merry way. Go with a smile on your face and another one on mine. Ain’t nobody trying to change you. I just love what I love and that’s why I’ve got to tell everybody about it.

So that’s how I market myself. I want you to feel like spreading word of mouth as a satisfied user. My ambition, what I want to advocate to someone who would pay me, is my passion for the user. I keep looking for business models in which users pay me because they’re happy users, or a business will pay me for publications that give readers what they want. For my work to hit the eyes and ears of your customers, I want them to be better off, not to use them to enrich you at their expense. If you are a consumer who is looking at something I made and you don’t want it… if you only have it because somebody paid me to “target” you, to “get” you… well. There may be money in sales and marketing, and that’s cool and nice and I congratulate those making it on a craft well done for those who can pay. But they can see the writing on the wall to that way of life, just as sure as I can see it.

See it coming, off in the century of internet search? Maybe that’s the century when you pay attention to an ad, and your payment of attention is treated as an actual form of literal payment that gets you an ad-supported web service, and the culture changes so you no longer regard “ad-supported” as “free”. So that you’d rather donate money to support something usable, than pay your valuable attention for something cluttered with unwanted messages. Maybe that’s the death of getting paid by somebody who isn’t the user, to make things that the users don’t want.

Raise a toast with me, because it’s going to be awesome and we’re going to love it.