Professional and Personal Will Never Really Be Separate
While listening to Andy Rutledge’s 5th podcast, the weekend before last, a line near the end made me pause and rewind.
I suggest that if you cannot recognize and acknowledge that purpose in life can only be derived from God, by whatever name you call him, then I’m afraid you do not grasp what “purpose” is. And to you I’d offer my deepest sympathies.
Apparently some other people did the same. Normally I don’t like to add to the noise, but I did want to give my perspective since it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately.
First I’d like to say I often don’t agree with Andy, but he says what I don’t like so well I listen anyway. I think it’s healthy to hear opposing view points, because I like to consider most things from multiple perspectives, including design. Andy also has no problem elaborating on his view in a healthy discussion. After reading his post a while back regarding the National Design Awards he was more than happy to oblige me by explaining his feelings more in depth.
I have great professional respect for him, and so a little line that gave me some pause certainly is no cause to not listen to his podcast anymore or unsubscribe to his site, because he’s still a great designer whom I can learn a lot from, and the overall message of his podcast was valuable whether you’re religious or not.
Now granted, I can see how one might find it bizarre he thought the National Design Awards were not the venue for personal beliefs, but a design discussion was. The difference is a casual podcast is not a national award received in the White House. He could talk about aliens and bigfoot in his podcast for all I care, Design View is his personal site.
That said, I don’t think personal and professional can ever really be separate anyway. I have a professional site, which houses my portfolio, contact information and a blog. I try to maintain a certain level of personal privacy and professionalism, but still the blog frequently verges on personal. I think this is a pretty standard set up for most designers. A while back I decided this wasn’t a problem for me, because in truth I don’t want to work with anyone who would have a problem with anything on my site.
If someone is scared off because I like a 70s doom band called Pentagram (insert any number of bizarre metal band names here), they’re close minded. If someone is scared off because I posted about my girlfriend, that’s just fine because I’d prefer not to work with any homophobes. So if someone wants to talk about their religion on their web design blog, that’s fine by me. It’s a strong possibility they don’t need business from someone who’d judge them based on their beliefs either.
Even agencies have a hard time not blurring these lines, you can see it in the projects they choose to take on, particularly in the non-profit sector. And no matter how much professionalism you try to maintain in the office, relationships with your team rely on a certain amount of trust and comradery into which the personal will slip. I’ve met my co-workers mothers, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, brothers and sisters. I know their favorite sandwich and that they have bowling league on Wednesday nights. Because of this, we’re able to work better together.
I’ll be honest, I used to be a little scared and intimidated by a lot of the religious leanings in the web design community. When you’re talking beliefs it’s hard to not feel like someone with an opposing belief is judging you or trying to convert you. It’s hard for me not to be afraid of religion when it’s the religious right trying to keep me from having the same basic rights as everyone else. It’s hard for me not to be intimidated when it’s this group telling me my family isn’t really a family. I’ve had to learn not to judge Christians the way I think they might be judging me, because the truth is it’s only a small fringe group who really care more about gay people getting married than poverty, health care, and world hunger.
It’s also important to keep in mind part of the reason groups/sites like Godbit exist is to help put technology to use for churches, which because of the budgetary concerns common in non-profits, are often left a decade behind in the tech world. I think it’s great to put our money where our mouth is, and I feel it’s important to use our talents for causes we believe in.
No matter what our differences are, we still have common ground as fellow designers, and hopefully the mutual respect not to judge each other. We should foster personal expression on other’s sites assured the same courtesies will be extended to us.
