September is the most bittersweet of months. A call to the end of summer and with it, the death of sprinklers, watermelon dripping down your chin, ice cubes clinking in the rosé, exposed décolletage, thighs, & toes, a great sensuous lethargy that takes over the heart and the body. Well at least if you’re like me and still refuse to get air conditioning.
September is cloaked in the promise of nubby romantic autumn and all the hygge it brings; but also reality knocking on the door, brass tacks, and back to business. And if your business is design like mine, maybe you’re reconnecting with clients over some logos or a website still in need of that final spitshine or perhaps you’re getting in touch with an enthusiastic lead that took a summer sabbatical. I’ll admit we Americans aren’t as accustomed to taking it down a notch in the summer. And if you’re American and about to disagree with me, I dare you to spend a summer doing business in Italy. You’ll be waiting all summer on that feedback, invoice, kickoff what have you. Everything. Is. Closed. The Italians know how to soak up the summer. It seems there’s a collective agreement over there that there’s more to life than work, and that rest, indulgence and good food is integral to our humanity. I for one, am fully on board. I can almost taste the gelato and negronis. Sigh.
But alas, come September even the most diehard hedonists among us will shift gears towards a more industrious and productive mindset. I find I operate best, balancing the pleasure and pecuniary in equal measure. Too much relaxation actually ramps up my anxiety. So I take a deep breath and boldly dive back in. Usually I review my current clients and projects, make notes on new collaborations and gigs I want to be working on, and look at my website and decide on any new work or design updates to add. And then invariably I get that familiar old buzz back. The excitement of beauty and branding and logos and colorways; websites and animation, interactivity and hell even SEO does the trick. Because the thing is, I really do love design work. It’s problem solving at it’s finest and there is nothing so satisfying as a proper conundrum mended symphonistically. Playing a sweet melody where there was once chaos. Only with color and typography and photography and space and light. But I digress.
So how do you ease back into the September season?
Photo, my own.