Dear Reader,

Thank you for coming here week after week to read my thoughts on design, communication and strategy. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

As the year draws to a close and my mind turns to the final post for 2008, I thought ‘who cares about design stuff 3 days before Christmas?’. Likely – only me.

With all of the doom and gloom in the news and in our inboxes every day, I didn’t want to add to that.

Every year at this time, I get reflective about the past year, and like to look at the things I did right and some of the things I wish I could do over.

This year will go into the books as a turning point in my small shop. It was the busiest ever and the most challenging.

I’ve “met” so many engaging people who are inspired by what they do, the change they bring and and effect they have in this world. We’ve had some great conversations and arguments and all move forward having learned something.

I’ve learned quite a few things – and this won’t be a complete list:

- People inherently want to help other people. I have a problem – I broadcast that problem to whoever I think might have something to say about it – and I hear solutions.

- Writing a blog every week is very hard. Thankfully there are a lot of other bloggers out there I can use for inspiration or work with clients who give me a lot to think about.

- Collaboration is a wonderful thing. I work with writers, consultants, designers and printers – to put our collective brains together to come up with something different than I would have thought on my own. And it’s fun! And hard!

- I love what I do. When the weather is nice and there are no pressing deadlines, I try to get out to the driving range, or go for a long walk and enjoy the world around me. Sometimes, not often enough of course, when I do a good job a client will call me and say “good job!” which makes me love them forever.

- Business is strange. You never know where you next piece of business will come from, who knows who or who will talk nicely about you (or badly!). I like the control and challenge of running my own shop but dislike the frustrations of billing or the unknowns of what will happen next – but I can do this the way I want and learn from all of the mistakes of my former employers (and copy the successes!).

I look forward to 2009 – to have the ability to take all I learned this year and make it work better next year is a wonderful thing. It seems every day I hear from someone new who might offer an opportunity to learn something new or make what I do better.

It will be a whole year of unknowns, new connections, different challenges, unique learnings and wonderful inspirations.

Thanks to 2008 – you have been great to me. Come on in 2009 – lets have some fun!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. See you in 2009.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 10:18 am and is filed under Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.