By Dwayne Cogdill

“Poppies have a personal message for each of us.”

— Christopher Lloyd

It is my personal opinion that every designer should keep a garden. Tilling the soil and nurturing plants is a great counter balance to the break-neck pace we creative professionals often keep. To design with living things, to touch, to smell, to taste is to be alive. To be quiet and listen is to be self aware. It is an excellent vantage point from which to view one’s career choices and to count the cost of advancement.

It was in the garden that I found myself one Saturday when the sky was the color of blue that you just can’t get from CMYK. I was weeding and looking over my California poppies with their true green stems and bright orange flowers. These plants are something to behold. They breakout in song each Spring letting us know that life is budding, that the death of Winter is past.

I could feel the stress of the design firm evaporating into the air when I came upon a small corner of the garden where it was still Winter. The poppies in this corner were anemic and flowerless. I grasped one plant at the base of the stem and pulled it up by the roots, and it was then that I saw something amazing.

Just below ground level on the stem where small capillaries had pulled away from the main root, the plant was bleeding. A bright orange fluid leaked down the stem and dripped onto the earth. In the bright sunlight, I wept.

The garden had allowed me to see my life more clearly, to think about being a designer. I could see the consequence of my choices. I felt as if my potential was dripping to the ground, wasted, unrealized, unappreciated.

Sure, I learned a lot from the fast-paced design firm where I was working. I had learned that I really could make bricks without straw so long as I was willing to add a sizable dose of my own health and well-being.

I had conformed to what was required of me, but I was still the person I had always been. I longed as much as ever to pursue the questions I had in college. Questions like, what is design? What is art? What is the meaning of life?

A week before the garden incident, I was rocketing along at 90 miles per hour in a top-of-the-line european luxury car. I wore a suit on my way to meet with the president of a bank. I was unhappy. I had sat in similar meetings with Presidents, CEOs, CFOs, Heads of Investor Relations. I was absolutely convinced that money cannot buy happiness.

So why is it that designers often live like this? Why are we unable to keep a normal schedule? Why do we sell our souls in order to sell design?

Why can’t we take the same principles of design that we use everyday to help companies be successful and use them to make our own lives meaningful? Should we not design our careers, our marriages, our parenting, our lives for success?

Surrounded by the smell of rosemary with poppies in my mind, I quit my job.

Now I work from home. I have made the choice between home-office and office-home. Years ago this may have been seen as a step backwards, but I have never been so convinced that this is the right decision.

I mentioned working from my home to some designers one evening, and their eyes dropped to the table. We were having dinner and an advertising executive asked me if was still able to do good work. Was I crazy? Had I finally taken a long dive off the deep end?

Well…… let me tell you.

In the past, I have seen creative directors pass jobs off to clueless kids right out of school. I have seen miscommunications that would make your hair stand on end. I have lived under unrealistic expectations and deliberate oppression.

It used to be that I kissed my infant son goodbye on Monday, and sometimes I didn’t see him again until Saturday. I was often working at the design firm after midnight on a Friday. 

But, just on the other side of the garden wall, there is a place where clients always speak to the creative director, where there is no miscommunication, where freedom of fancy breeds innovation.

When logos are printing on my color printer, I am playing my 4 year-old. I stop for lunch now, something I didn’t do for five years. I eat, yes, but more importantly I push a child in a swing or I meet my wife. I sit in the garden and read e-mails and do thumbnails.

I often begin the day by reading. I read poetry, Walt Whitman, David St. John, Dorothy Parker. I read short stories, T.C. Boyle, Flannery O’ Connor, The O’ Henry Awards. I read theology, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, and of course the Bible.

I am doing a lot of work, work that I have chosen. I get letters telling me that I am a terrible designer, that my work is garbage. Illustrators love me. Students want to work for me. My clients are happy. I make more money, and I work less hours.

Maybe you are skeptical. You think no one can do good work from home, that no one can do a good job for their clients from the garden, that one cannot have good ideas and vacuum.

Yet, I am doing the best work of my career. I believe it is because my life is full and meaningful. There is more of me to bring to my work now than there was when I was burned-out and exhausted.

Since I opened for business in 1999, I have won more than 60 international design awards. I have had my work displayed in Communication Arts, How, Print, the Logo Lounge books, the Publication Design Annuals, galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Europe, and the American Museum of Illustration. I was even privileged to be a judge for the Communication Arts Illustration Annual.

So, I say to you. Dream your dreams. Love your wife. Don’t be consumed by your business. Don’t allow yourself to be dominated. Design your life to be good. Ask the big questions: Is there a God? How can I have a good marriage? How can I be a good parent? Where am I going? What am I learning? How can I help someone? And, yes, maybe even, should I begin working from home?

I have learned that design is more than projects, that the garden is more than yard work. Make no mistake; THIS IS THE BIG TIME!

Best regards,

St. Dwayne of Orange County

©2008 by Dwayne Cogdill. All rights reserved.  This essay first appeared in the August 2002 issue of Communication Arts.