Today I discovered that sometimes (in fact, most times, unless you happen to be the PR for a company that has proclivity for stumbling from one disaster to the next of their own authoring) a crisis isn’t really.
A true time of actual, viscerally intense difficulty or physical danger doesn’t really barge into the world of a graphic designer all that much (in a professional capacity, rather than a private one.)
What usual passes is an awkward moment, a slip of the mask of decorum (and while we’re here, swearing about a client isn’t quite the same as swearing at them.)
Nor is the choice of the wrong presentation uploaded or file shared with the wrong person. In the company. Rather than the competitor with the same email name-prefix.
That’s awkward, but not the end of the world, however much it might feel like it in the moment.
What prompted this reflection was reading that if you look carefully at a word, sometimes it’s rather more revealing as to what it could represent - rather than the blanket application of it as a ‘one-word-means-all’ stand-in.
If you take the two characters that in Chinese shape its meaning, you end up with ‘danger’ (‘wei’) and (for want of a shorter definition) a ‘tipping point / of change’ (‘ji’.)
With this reading, instead of crisis as a thing or place to ‘arrive at’, using another language affords me a point of departure. It allows for options and choices that include as many positive decision-takes as negative ones. The precipitate situation, while sudden, could easily - well, if you subscribe to the notion of sunny nihilism - be worthwhile of real engagement or attention, as opposed to the (natural?) response of fight or flight.
Given the opportunity to engage with the problem - and let’s see that through the lens of a design issue; lightweight by comparison to an oil spill, political corruption, all or any of the terrible things happening right now, that need much stronger language applied to them - that has finally surfaced, that we have to meet eye to eye, isn’t a reason to behave as if the sky is falling.
On reflection, I suspect that my usually calm (or often rather misplaced attempts humorous diffuse) response could easily be mistaken for ambivalence - or at least as ’someone not in full possession of the facts’ (as the line goes.)
More likely than not I’m trying to hide my enthusiasm because, at last, matters have come to head; and there’s not much point in turning back now. Unless you really do thrive on adrenaline-thrill-crisis hits of dodging the danger of change. I think I’m rather happier embracing it.
Picture credit: pamela_d_mcadams - stock.adobe.com