Dear Client,
A doctor has a thermometer to assess a patient’s fever, an accountant has a calculator to see if the numbers add up, but I have no tool to objectively assess the ‘beauty’ of my work. As soon as my product transcends its functional use, it become harder and harder for me to explain you why it came out the way it did. I can easily confuse you with loose jargon, on the volume of spaces, the juxtaposition of forms, the dialogue of colors and textures, but the fact is, I did it because it felt and looked ‘right’. But what this ‘right’ is and how ‘right’ is ‘right’? I don’t have an answer to these questions and I sincerely hope I never will.
The first thing that they taught me at design school, was not sketching, it wasn’t drafting and it certainly wasn’t how to make 3D models. . They yanked me out of the pre-concieved notions I had of the world around me, and forced me to start seeing the world anew. I felt like a child again, sitting on the terrace gazing onto a sunrise as if it was my first time, looking for faces in passing clouds, bewildered how the sky changes to a different ‘blue’, every few hours. This process of clensing and sensitization was the first step in the making of a designer.
Noticing and paying attention to the forms, textures, the colors, the aromas in my surroundings made me aware and humbled by the creative prowess of nature. It was this exposure that provides fodder to the imagination and the work that I do. There is an old adage amongst writers, “A man can only write what he knows”. I feel that It holds true for any creative person. My memories, both successes and failures, my relationships, my travels have all enrichened me and manifest in my work in ways I still don’t understand.
I see an imperfect, an incomplete world, and work hard each day trying to make this feeling go away by ‘designing things’ to correct/ complete it. You look at magazines, billboards, televsion soaps, movies, and compare my work to established master pieces, passing fashions and slam me for being non-conformist. But I hope you do realize that works yous swear by, design movements like Modernism and Minimalism which ‘seemingly’ inspire you, were all once eccentric. Most designers shy away from taking this road less travelled and I have always held it against them. But as I have gained experience, both proffessional and personal, that resentment has begun to wear away. Negotiating with economic constraints, unrealistic deadlines, strict design briefs, unyielding clients, etc… and still having one’s vision realized in the final product (how ever diluted) is difficult enough!
This project has been a test(ament) of not only my creative abilities but also of my professionalism. It seems that the only way out of this deadlock is for me to bow out. I am a youg man (young enough to afford a few mistakes!), brash and arrogant, who actually feels that he can shape this world. Hence, I would like to most humbly resign and distance myself from this project.
Yours sincerely,
Aman Sadana
