I eneded up not browsing the collection but rather chatted with the attendant instead. We talked about the museum, austin culture, and eventually what I’m doing with my life.

I mentioned I worked downtown at a design agency, and as soon as I said design.. The seemingly calm individual went on and on about his experience with a different local design office and their recent collaboration with the museum. He told me in detail how he was blown away by their laser focus, creative problem solving, and wholistic approach to each project.

He reminisced about his experience with such passion, awe, and gratitude.

I couldn’t get him to quite down for a good 5 minutes straight.

Wow.

It made me wonder, what do people say about their experience working with me? Do they rave about my attention to craft? Do they tell stories of my drive to create the exact solution they uniquely needed?

Or do they even recall working with me at all?

I want people to rant about my craft, my care, and my creativity. I guess sometimes it is good to care about what people think.

if you know me, you know any talk of government bailouts makes me sick, but after having this reaction, i then began to think of this whole notion of mediocrity, laziness, and an unwillingness for a company / industry to change to meet the market’s demands.

so i naturally thought about my industry: web design. while i can easily point out the big three’s faults, it gets much touchier when i took a closer look at web design & development, the state of the industry in the U.S., and my own work aptitude.

If you look around our industry much, you will see that much like the auto industry, their are now many cheap, international web design players / shops popping up every day. if your like me, you might be thinking ‘yeah, there are alternatives, but they don’t speak english, or the western world’s cultural and visible language, so therefore nobody will ever use them’.

but i argue not so fast. I / we can’t get lazy. the big 3 never thought toyota, honda, or hyundai could ever produce a viable product for the american people. obviously, they were wrong. and they got lazy. they stopped innovating. and they assumed america would just accept whatever crap they produced. oh how they were wrong.

so true, i believe we are still along way off from the international market taking over the U.S. web design sphere, but we can’t lie to ourselves and believe it’s unthinkable. it’s almost as if we’re in the 1983 state of the auto industry. we’ve done a lot of great things in the near past (muscle cars / gorgeous flash experiences), but we can’t sit on our butts and be proud of ourselves.

the world is changing, people are consuming and creating content in new formats, in new ways, and with new expectations.

if we / i don’t lead the way, someone else will.

the choice is ours. everyday, with every project, and every client relationship.

we can do the comfortable, predictable solution. or we can stretch ourselves beyond what we thought was possible. or 20 years from now we can write a sappy country song bemoaning the fact that our industry has passed us by.

i’ll choose to fight. it’s the american way. innovation. grit. and hard work.

and besides, it’s more fun to be the leader anyway.