Dear Designer,

It’s been a while.

The last time I posted to Dear Designer was back in March. Four months is a long time for a newsletter to go silent, especially when this project has felt so vital to me.

But I can explain! This past year, I took a professional coaching course at Concordia University, here in Montréal. It was a life-changing experience, learning the theory and practice of coaching in order to help others maximize their personal and career potential. The course was both book-based and experiential and it ramped up steeply this spring. I worked with 29 other students, 8 instructors, and my own private coaching mentor to guide me, correct me, and build up my confidence and capacity to help others as a new coach.

I was challenged throughout to listen with great care to others and to listen with equal care to myself. I became, well, pretty quiet. (And I’m already kind of quiet! As a kid, I remember people telling me that I had “come out of my shell.” How does one do that at seven? Susan Cain, the author of the book Quiet, offers a correction: “Don’t think of introversion as something that needs to be cured.”)

The act of listening — as a friend, partner, coach — requires quiet resolve. Quietude, being in such short supply these days, is an act of being and being still. In longer stints, it is about being an unencumbered presence in the face of totality. And in this way, I think quietude is critical to the process of becoming. It is inherent in seeking truth.

My coaching training included hours of quiet yet active listening to classmates and to clients, one-on-one, asking questions and exploring answers. One looks for what is emergent, what is transpiring, what is troubling, and what is inspiring.

Because coaching is goal-oriented, I also learned to use a framework that excavates what is meaningful in a conversation — and erects what is possible. By the end of our session, a client walks away with a few actions, or a set of tasks, or a plan to move forward and to start their flywheel — or to simply step out.

I’m now taking on new coaching clients. My focus is on supporting designers, creative leaders, and other professionals who want to change their lives, refocus their energies, or explore new personal and career directions.

If that’s you, please let me know. Just click reply. I’d be honoured to see if there is a fit for us.

I’ve also been attending to other things during this period of quiet. I am stepping back from my creative director role at Mangrove Web, now working about a day a week to support the team and develop projects for clients. It’s been a great honour working at Mangrove these past few years — and I’m now focused on working as a solo coach and taking on freelance design projects.

Slowly (sometimes agonizingly so), I am rebuilding my personal site at andrewboardman.com. It will be more visually engaging (promise), but for now, it houses a bit content about what I’m doing. I will also be posting the Dear Designer newsletter there; you can already find earlier posts from Substack migrated over.

I’m planning on bringing Dear Designer back on a weekly basis again. The content will continue to explore what it means to be a graphic designer (née artist) today and how we might think about the meteoric changes most of are witnessing. I’ll examine what may be on the horizon for us and how we might handle it. I will also continue to explore what I believe makes graphic design in particular so meaningful and culturally important: design is an aesthetic exercise that stems from mystery while fulfilling unconscious societal needs.

More soon. Wishing you a good start to your week.

Yours,

Andrew (signature)

Quote of the Week

“Beauty is not caused,
It is.
Chase it and it ceases.
Chase it not and it abides.”

— Emily Dickinson (TypeQuote)

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