Ten years. I want to try to say what has actually stayed true.
I have gone from a concrete crew to a racetrack, from a racetrack to the Grey Nuns, from the Grey Nuns to a classroom, and from a classroom to the City of Edmonton's brand. On paper that looks like a person who could not settle. From the inside it has felt like one continuous argument with the same problem.
The problem is this. Somebody needs something, they cannot always tell you what, and everything you add makes it harder for them to find it.
That was true of a stranger looking for their seat at a racetrack. It was true of a nurse walking a corridor. It was true of a citizen trying to get a permit. It is true of every website I have ever built. The medium keeps changing and the problem has not moved an inch.
So the through line is not print, or web, or brand. It is restraint, and it is service, and those two turn out to be the same thing wearing different clothes. Every good decision I have made in ten years was a decision to remove something so that a person could get where they were going.
The tools will keep changing. I have already outlived a few of them and I will outlive a few more. What I intend to keep is the question, because the question is the only part that has ever been worth anything.
What is this for. Ten years, and I am still asking it, and I have finally stopped being embarrassed that it is such a simple thing to ask.