Designer as Trickster

It's been nearly two years since designer John Rheinfrank passed away. I thought about him the other day when this quote was the centering thought at my unUsUal church:

Trickster is a boundary-crosser. Every group has its edge, its sense of an in and out, and trickster is always there, at the gates of the city and the gates of life, making sure there is commerce. -Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

(An aside: The last time I saw John was his funeral service at the UU Church in Pittsburgh, the church I started attending after being exposed to it at John's funeral. And now this appears at my SF UU church. Coincidence? Maybe...)

I once asked John how he described himself, and his answer was "trickster." He said he tricked companies into doing the right thing. Now that I am a consultant again, often for some large companies, I now have a better understanding and appreciation of his answer. Sometimes to do the right thing, organizations have to be tricked into doing it.

I often feel, coming in to a company from the outside, that I am crossing boundaries, bringing things from "the outside" in with me. It's one of the traits that makes designers powerful, I guess, because we do work in many different industries and our discipline has so many sister disciplines that we get exposed to a lot of different methods, organizations, and ideas, which designers then, like viruses, "infect" their host organisms (the companies they work for) with. In this way, the companies learn new tricks and make money. Tricksters "make sure there is commerce."

John, of course, did this trickster business really well. He was a persuasive fellow, and was able to make you feel smart by agreeing with him. This is a trait designers should cultivate.

Originally posted at Sunday, June 11, 2006 | Comments (0)